RIDLR: Leveraging Data Analytics for Mass Transit
Competitive advantage is the quality that empowers an organization to outstand its competitors. This gives the organization a lofty range compared to the competitors and creates value for the organization and its management. Competitive advantage should be demanding, if not non-viable, to duplicate. If it is straightforwardly imitated or copied, it is not contemplated as a competitive advantage. Some of the competitive advantages achieved by RIDLR are; access to technology, cost leadership, differentiation, operational effectiveness, and the information advantage. Access to technology is the service provider’s ability to use the existing technology to better its services. RIDLR uses a mobile application to provide information and ticketing to be used by public transport modes by India’s people. Supplying on-premises involved installing and managing the software in a customer’s in-house infrastructure, such as on a local server or a computer. They adopted software as a server system that was a cloud-based dissemination approach in which suppliers hosted its applications and made them accessible to users through the internet. This has been made possible by the rapid change of technology that makes mobile phones perform various tasks. RIDLR effectively and efficiently leveraged the digitized wave to supply 100 million commuters daily with appropriate information and mobile ticketing.
Cost leadership is the use of an attractive pricing strategy to attract more customers. This strategy makes RIDLR have a competitive advantage. Operational effectiveness is also a factor that has promoted RIDLR’s competitive advantage. For example, the suggested customizations sought to maximize cashless transactions by eliminating paper-based tickets while issuing commuters with an appropriate way to make payments. Differentiation is a factor that favors a competitive advantage. Differentiation entails using an approach that is different from other service providers offering the same service. While other modes made the travelers wait longer leading and face potential traffics, leading to uncertainties, RIDLR adopted a different approach of real-time management. They launched a mobile application to provide to the point information and mobile ticketing for public transportation, which led to the expansion of RIDLR in India.
Sustaining competitive advantage is an approach that RIDLR should do to enhance its performance. Sustaining competitive advantages are organizational attributes and abilities that are cumbersome to duplicate and provide a high position for a long time. RIDLS should focus on affordability, availability, convenience, and trust and safety to sustain competitive advantage. Affordability if the state of service to be cheap enough for people to buy. It is usually quoted as the maximum price a buyer can invest in a service. RIDLS noted that buses were the most affordable public transport mode for the users or commuters. This affordability attracted more Indians to use buses. A survey from the “Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority” stated that close to 5000 households understand the commuting trends and discovered that, on average, 8.4% of income was depleted on transportation. For sustainability, RIDLS should adopt a more affordable cost for their customers. Availability is the state of being able to be used when needed. RIDLR noted that a majority of public transportation moves on a specific route and a specific schedule.
Most travelers decided to use a mode of transport available, and in the direction they wanted to go. RIDLR should adopt a more advanced way to make their transport modes available to travelers always, and in the direction they want to move. Convenience is to fit the traveler’s needs and wants. RIDLR stated that “last-mile connectivity remains a hindrance in the usage of public transportation.” RIDLR gave an example of Delhi with a bus line of at least 1 billion yearly. Therefore, RIDLR needs to meet the needs and wants of the commuters to sustain its competitive advantage. Trust and safety is the base that allows total strangers or unfamiliar to handle each other fairly and peacefully. RIDLR figured out that women’s safety has been a concern in India, leading to some women holding out against using public transportation or even rejecting to take part in ridesharing on their own. Children and senior citizens also faced this risk. To sustain a competitive advantage, RIDLR should adopt a trusted system and provide safety to all commuters. This may be done by offering insurance cover to all the commuters using RIDLR mobile application.
Business to Business (B2B) strategic positioning entails marketing strategy directed towards an organization or a business. Any organization that sells products and services to other businesses uses a B2B marketing strategy (Zhao & Guo, 2012). For example, if the manufacturing of an automobile. People are aware of some of the greatest consumer-facing commodities, but they assemble plenty of other company’s products in every design of the vehicle. To assist get an advance idea of the types of customers in B2B strategy, there are four basic categories: institution, resellers, producers, and the government. Business to Consumer (B2C) strategic positioning is referred to as the system of selling goods and services to the consumers. This strategy involves lower involvement purchases that are more emotional, and that’s how it differs from business to business (B2B) strategic positioning. This strategy helps companies interact more persuasively and effectively with the consumers (Zhao & Guo, 2012). Instead of selling SaaS software services to a company, it is encouraged to market products directly to consumers. For example, advertisements on television. Someone will see a well-advertised product due to its outstanding features and decide to give that product a try when visiting a supermarket (Zhao & Guo, 2012). Business to Business to Consumer (B2B2C) is a strategic positioning where an organization does not communicate directly to the consumer; instead, it communicates through another business. In B2B2C, the distribution technique may be different from the buying decision technique. For example, in monetary services, the insurance provider sells through a financial mentor who is responsible for developing straight forward investment recommendations. From a marketing point of view, it is fundamental to identify the buyer’s interrelationship and impact on the buyer against selling the buyer and marketing and selling to the buyer by the customer. RIDLS’s strategic positioning should be B2B2C since this strategy focuses on modeling an exceptional commuter experience. This model generates techniques that allow for commuters to customize what they expect from the mobile application and the drivers to offer transport services in a way that matches the needs and wants of the commuter, which is providing real-time information and flexibly offering its services.
A go-to-market strategy is an operational scheme that designates how an organization will outreach target customers and obtain a competitive advantage. The go-to-market strategy’s main objective is to provide a blueprint for distributing a service or a product to the final consumer accounting for distribution and pricing. Go to market strategy is used during various events, for example, when launching a new product, the introduction of a new product in the market and when relaunching the brand. RIDLR should assess both the internal and external environment. The internal environment involves the strengths that RIDLR has, identifies its weaknesses, captures the opportunity in the market, and avoids the competitors’ threats by providing exemplary services (Christodoulou & Cullinane, 2019). The external environment involves India’s political conditions, the country’s economic conditions, what the society believes in, the technological aspect of the community, and the legal factors from the India Government (Christodoulou & Cullinane, 2019). By assessing the internal and external factors, RIDLR will develop a more advanced blueprint on how it will get into the market and improve the company productivity by providing quality transportation services to the commuters.
RIDLR can play a significant role in Ola’s future growth. Ola’s management team has a plan for global expansion. Through mass transportation in India, RIDLR can assist drive growing optimization and use of the city to city public bus service and aid in designing effective and efficient transport plans considering the destiny and factors such as the type of road, the time, and the day. Internet-based businesses globally had begun to enhance value delivery by interconnecting supply with the demand for mass transportation in India. This smart city constituted a potential opportunity for RIDLR. Ola cabs are the owners of the RIDLR mobile application. Ola cabs are currently using a strategy of expanding their area of operation and gaining commutes located in numerous cities in India. The main idea is to acquire economies of scale and gain market shares to provide an exceptional customer experience to build its reputation positively. This can only be achieved through RIDLR mobile application due to its ability to be available to all commuters. Since the launch of the RIDLR mobile application in 2015, the company has expanded, and by 2018 it was serving 21 cities when Ola acquired it. This is a clear indication that there is a possibility of future growth due to its competitive advantage.
Reference
Christodoulou, A., & Cullinane, K. (2019). Identifying the Main Opportunities and Challenges from the Implementation of a Port Energy Management System: A SWOT/PESTLE Analysis. Sustainability, 11(21), 6046. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11216046
Zhao, L., & Guo, S. (2012). The Value Creation of B2B2C E-Business Mode based on SaaS. Journal Of Electronic Commerce In Organizations, 10(3), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.4018/jeco.2012070101