Executive Summary
Several sections are included in this business proposal. In the first section, brief
description of URS Corporation and Australia LTD will be conducted. Secondly,
PEST, Porter five forces, client, competitor and root cause analysis will be provided.
Lastly, marketing approaches of URS Corporation and Australia LTD and marketing
recommendations will be discussed. From analyses, URS Corporation and Australia
LTD have a great position in this industry but lack of marketing power. An integrated
marketing strategy is recommended by applying interactive communication tools.
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Company profile
URS Australia Limited is a professional consulting firm, which provides engineering,
construction and technical services within Australia. The range of their clients
includes governments (Federal, state, and local) and private sector companies. They
have a wide range of expertises from environment and engineering to business and
communities within Australia. URS Australia is a wholly owned subsidiary of the
parent company URS Corporation, a US public company listed on the New York
Stock Exchange.
URS Corporation’s oldest predecessor company was founded in 1904. URS
Corporation incorporated in 1957 as Broadview Research-a research group active in
the area of physical and engineering sciences. From 1970s to 2007, USR continued
to expand their business through acquisitions to enhance their engineering,
architectural and environmental practices.
URS’s key business market sectors are Federal/National Governments,
Infrastructure, Power, and Industrial & Commercial. The U.S. federal government,
national governments of other countries, state and local government agencies are
their major clients in the United States and internationally, and also fortune 500
companies and other multinational corporations. (URS Corporation, 2010)
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Marketing for consulting firms
Why marketing a consulting firm is different and difficult?
Marketing for a consulting firm is totally different from other industries which
have solid products. They sell their services or specialised technical skills, which
depends on how credible and cost-effective their services to their clients. That is,
services need to be experienced to prove their quality. But for consulting firms,
their services comprise a wide range of specialised skills and human capitals to
complete projects. Thus, “trial” projects cannot be provided as product testers for
customers, to prove the quality of their services. Other marketing approaches,
which focus on client relationships, are needed.
Client-centred marketing model
Chan, P.(1992) proposed a client-centred marketing model for market
professional services. In this client-centred marketing model, four major
elements, performance, referrals, targets and promotion, are included.
Performance depends on their financial conditions, existing clients, existing
markets, and existing services. Referrals source can come from present and
past clients or other contacts from consultant’s networks. Targets of influence
and opportunity are those clients who desire consultant’s services or non-
competing professionals who serve the consultant’s prospective clients.
Promotion includes personal and non-personal basis selling. After understanding
this model, consulting firm can come up a strategic marketing plan. Firstly,
service analysis and identifying your targets (markets and clients) are needed.
Secondly, reach your targets by promotion. Personal basis promotion can be
working past or existing clients by phone and friendly letters, joining professional
memberships, sending client-centred Action letters, and attending public
speaking and seminars.
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For non-personal basis promotion, publishing (newsletters, books, magazines
articles, etc.) is a good way to build reputation, establish credentials, create
favourable impressions and generate enquiries related to their projects. Other
promotion method, such as regularly newsletter published, publicity, direct mail
advertising, firm information brochures.
Integrated marketing communication (IMC)
Seven themes of IMC applied on to professional services firms, including
communication, branding, relationship management, cross functional planning,
integration, synergy and market orientation, are discussed.(Moffatt et al., 2007)
Marketing communication, which provides the only evidence of firms’
representativeness, is the most influence with new clients, comparing to
advertising. Public relations work considerably powerful by illustrating one’s
competence (speeches, seminars and articles) than which assert it (brochures,
direct mail and cold calls). On the other hand, this tactics should focus on face-
to-face conversation individually rather than broadcasting a general idea to a
mass audience. Another important thing in PSF’s marketing is relationship
management, depending on the proper management before, during, and after
the project encounter.(Filiatrault & Lapierre, 1997) That is, both suggestions from
clients before the projects and feedback from clients during and after the project
are important.
Bring marketing culture for PSF
For PSF, professionals like engineers and technical staff are assets of consulting
firms, they provide services as their company’s “products”. Thus, bringing
marketing culture into the company by training their engineers and technical staff
is a key point when developing a marketing strategy for a consulting firm.(Teoh,
2008)
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URS situation, environment and market analysis
In order to find out a better marketing strategy for URS, analyses focus on
situation of industry, company, clients, competitor and their existing marketing
strategy will be provided in this section.
PEST analysis
Political
Australia has been ranked as the third in the world Political stability in the IMD
World competitiveness Yearbook 2010, it’s a safe investment location. (NSW
Government. 2010a).
Latest Work Fair Australia (WFA) legislation- new safety net for employees-
minimum wages and maximum working hour per week. (Stewart, A. 2009)
Economic
Australia has performed remarkable well in 2009 despite of financial turmoil from
the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Growth to accelerate to 4 % through 2010
from Westpac’s forecast (Westpac, 2009)
Lending to the construction of new dwellings jumped 70% over the year to
August from Westpac’s forecast (Westpac, 2009)
Public investment growth (Westpac, 2009)
Outsourcing non-core functions to professional services tends to increase.
Knowledge outsourcing is expected to grow to more than $17 billion in sales by
2010, according to Evalueserve, a business and financial research company
(Mukherjee, 2007)
Social
Australia government and society care about environment issues than lots of
countries in the world. Environmental issued are dressed at the national and
state levels of Australia, and local government. 2010 environmental performance
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index ranked Australia eight in the world, which includes the impact of water and
air pollution on humans and the environmental burden of disease.(NSW
Government. 2010b)
The aging population keep increasing. According to Australian Government ICT
Sustainability Plan 2010 – 2015, the number of aged 65 and over’s Australians is
predicted to increase dramatically, from around 2.5 million in 2002 to 6.2 million
in 2042.( Australian Government. 2010)
Highest ethical standards play an important role in consulting industry
Technological
Intra-office forums improvement (URS Corporation Asia Pacific. 2009)
Fast speed and higher broadband penetration (Euromonitor International. 2010)
From PEST analysis, political factors should provide evidence for company to
invest in Australia, even fair work regulations may involve more costs to maintain
wages margin. Economic factors reveal a great opportunities for URS Australia
because of increasing of house construction and public investment, directly relating
to its services. Additionally, environmental, health and safety issues become more
important in Australia, which directly related to its core business. From technological
perspective, Internet infrastructure and speed can be provided more opportunities for
marketing and knowledge sharing across the region.
Porter five forces analysis
T he entry of new competitors
Entry barrier is high, emphasis on experiences and reputation, also due to
minimal capital requirements and benefit of scale.
URS Ranked #2 Overall and as one of the Top 3 Firms for more than a decade
on ENR (Engineering-news records) which creates barriers to entry to new
competitor in the engineering consulting industry.
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URS focus on providing excellent services and cut down transaction costs for
clients create barriers to entry from new competitors
The intensity of competitive rivalry
According to consultant Australia, about 16,600 engineering firms in this industry.
660 firms employed more than 20 people.( Consult Australia. 2007)
From reputation perspective, main competitor: AECOM (Ranked #1 on 2010 top
500 Design firms engineering news-records)
The threat of substitute services
Low threat of substitute services in engineering consulting industry
The bargaining power of clients
Clients tend to be relatively concentrated depending on familiarity of the firms
Switching cost to other services provider is higher
URS provides lots of industry information through media release and publishing
to decrease bargaining power
URS provides a wide range of different skills to decrease the power
The bargaining power of suppliers
Significant suppliers to engineering consulting firm are employees. URS
supports project management certification and ongoing education for reducing
bargaining power. (URS Corporation Asia Pacific. 2009b)
URS provides certification of the URS Health and Safety Management System to
ensure their labours’ safety (URS Corporation Asia Pacific. 2009)
From porter five forces analysis, URS Corporation and its direct subsidiary in
Australia has a great position in this industry. Due to the increasing of
competitiveness, URS corporation and URS Australia LTD still have to concrete their
relationship with existing clients and expand potential clients by providing cost-
effective services to keep increasing their competitive advantages.
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Clients analysis
The combination of URS’s Clients URS has diversified their business into four
key markets sectors- federal, infrastructure, power, and industrial and commercial.
They provide service for every stage of a project from program planning to operations
and maintenance. As shown in Fig.1, the project revenue from Federal government
accounts for 45%, industrial & commercial and infrastructure respectively account for
22% and 18%. (URS Corporation Asia Pacific. 2009c).
Fig.1 revenue by market sector (Sources: URS corporation annual report)
Based on analyses above, URS can expand their business into industrial &
commercial and infrastructure due to outsourcing management increase. From
marketing perspective, URS can consider to establish different professional images
through media to gain more opportunities to diversity their services.
Existing marketing approaches of URS corporation and Australia LTD
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Publishing and Media release shows their professional services
Through publishing and news release from URS Corporation and Australia LTD’s
websites, their past and potential clients can gain access to their pervious project
information, their papers and presentation on special issues, and their awards.
Get Clients feedback from projects
URS Australia successfully achieved 95% overall clients satisfaction. But the client
feedback only from less than 20% of project closed (203 projects). Thus, the
sampling of client feedback is not enough to represent Client’s responses. (URS
Corporation Asia Pacific. 2009c)
Professional’s rewards announcement and training
URS tried to market their services from their qualified professionals and provide
training for their staff. (for example, RogenSi Managing and Developing Client
Relationships program)
Focus on their values to market their services
I ssues from their marketing approaches
Three issues are recognised:
1. Not enough client feedback
2. Slow client complaints responses
3. Passive marketing approaches
Root Cause analysis from issues
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Fig.2 Root cause analysis for issues 1
Fig.3 Root cause analysis for issues 2
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Fig.4 Root cause analysis for issues 3
Competitor analysis-marketing approaches learn from AECOM
AECOM is a one of the largest engineering and management support consulting
firms in the world. They have been ranked #1 n 2010 top 500 Design firms
engineering news-records. (AECOM, 2010) From marketing perspectives, they
provided not only client-centred marketing strategy for their company, but also taking
advantage of improve of innovative technology and internet freebie tools to market
their business. Compared to AECOM, some different marketing approach can be
learned from AECOM to improve URS’s marketing approaches.
Transparent and detailed professional profile
AECOM put their detailed profiles of management team on their website to set
up their professional images by marketing their professional services.
I nteractive communication with their clients
AECOM tried to use more interactive way to communicate with their clients.
They have their own YouTube channels to show how their professionals work with
projects. Additionally, Twitter and Email alerts system help them to update their news
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to their clients regularly.
From above analyses, URS need to change their marketing communication
way by integrating different their existing own resources without involving in too much
extra costs.
Recommendations for URS marketing strategy-differentiated
Driving marketing culture with their executive plan to train their professionals
to market themselves
Increase Client feedback surveys
Build a more interactive client communication system to maintain and
expand client relationships
Internet freebie: twitter, YouTube, Blog, and so on.
Official website reconstruction
Identify and build their own brand images
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References
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Chan, P. (1992). How to Market Your Professional Services: A Strategic Approach.
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Conference(ANZMAC), p1575-1583
Filiatrault, P. Lapierre, J. (1997), Managing Business-to-Business Service Marketing
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URS Corporation Asia Pacific. (2009b). Why URS?. Available:
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