Business development by entering power plantsservice market of Iran for Mapna Pars co.

In recent years, the energy industry of Iran is experiencing several changes. By the saturation of Iran’s domestic energy sector and decline in demands the activities related in electricity section have been dwindled. Besides, gradual aging of power plants has created a golden opportunity for engaging players of electricity industry in service rendering. As a result of such fundamental changes in the market and also being fueled by the privatization law of governmental companies, we have witnessed many small and large businesses during these years that have been established with various degrees of capabilities to engage in this beneficial market.Mapna Group as a leading company in power plants industry has recently decided to play the leading role in the service market, too. To this end, Pars Co. as the sole provider of power plant services on behalf of MAPNA group has the authority to utilize the facilities and know-hows available within both MAPNA and its subsidiary companies in provision of maintenance services. However, since the main focus of Pars is mainly on designing of generators and acting as contractor and investor in the power plant industry, Pars has shaped most of its activities around manufacturing rather than providing upstream services to the customers. Hence, on the one hand, Pars needs a competitive advantage to survive in the market of service provision and needs to develop and employ efficient strategies for establishing a prominent status in competition. On the other hand, the profitability of Pars is decrease from 30% to less than 20% which urges the company to find new market offerings in order to cover this loss. In this paper, we have developed strategies and recommendations for Pars Co. so that it can enter and sustain in the service market such that the profitability of company is enhanced to a value about 25% by 2016.The approach adopted in this paper is firstly to use the list of companies qualified by Ministry of Energy and the repair plan of the National Dispatching Center for determining the market share of player companies in the market of maintenance service provision to power plants. Secondly, the field research is adopted to analyze the competitive environment using the strategic management tools of porters’ five forces to identify bottlenecks and gaps then the required data for market study were gathered via questionnaires from Iranian’s power plants. These questionnaires are designed according to porter analysis results. Thirdly, SWOT analysis is employed for devising strategies by means of Internal/External (IE) matrix. In order to form the IE matrix, at the input stage, we developed the External Factor Evaluation (EFE) and Internal Factor Evaluation (IFE) matrices according to the gathered information. Next, at the decision making stage, through utilizing Quantitative Strategic Programmed Matrix (QSPM), a variety of strategy alternatives are identified2which later have been evaluated and elected in the strategy selection step. Eventually, the results of this analysis are aligned with the principal elements of the Marketing Mix 7P framework in order to outline recommend strategies for various organizational domains of Pars, so that the success of the marketing strategy is facilitated.

Keywords:

Business development , Marketing , SWOT , QSPM , Services Market