History, development and growth
The privately owned Coursera Company was founded in 2012 and has penetrated the online education platform as is one of the major beneficiaries of the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in the United States. The company has been in a position to secure massive funding through partnership with capital venture firms such as the New Enterprise Associates and Kleiner Perkins among others.
Through securing good funding to a tune of $65 million, the company has been in a position to develop series of online course platforms in the year 2012 and the year 2013. Besides, the company has partnered with more than 85 educational institutions to support their online programs and courses. The wide catchment area may be attributed for its quick expansion and success.
At its inception, the Coursera Company Company concentrated in the local market of America. The company has experienced growth in the last two years and has substantially expanded its markets beyond the traditional online courses market of America. At present, Coursera Company is one of the most profitable online courses support companies in the US business arena.
In order to survive and control a sizable share of the US online courses platform sector, Coursera Company has endeavored to remain competitive through adoption of different coroprate strategies.
The Coursera Company has adopted the corporate strategies of product proliferation, product development, corporate culture and foresight to not only achieves the goal of sustainability but also to maintain its competitiveness in the US online courses support platform sector.
As the first in the customized online courses service, the company reaped from the first mover advantage and expanded to all the states within the US. Later, other companies’ endavour such as the Udacity and edX to participate in this niche only decreased rivalry as competition was increased.
In order to remain relevant, the Coursera Company has established a unique market for its customer through tailored optometry online course services such as the premium service.
Coursera Company has been able to partner with 85 institutions and hire 65 employees within just two years of inception. This is a clear indicator of growth in the company’s market share. This has been made possible through the introduction of the unique Coursera brand that has won the heart of traditional and non-traditional learning institutions across the US.
Through this, the company’s revenues have grown. The Coursera has endeavoured to use its dynamic online courses support models as a strategy for balancing the institutional forces. Fortunately, the Coursera Company is geared to further penetrate the market since it plans to introduce more products.
The company was able to establish an efficient support team through streamlining operations that fit with appropriate set standards by these institutions. For instance, the company introduced the charge for content delivery to learning institutions which are not among its partners.
The company also introduced a levy for the premium services such as confirmation of registration and fee structure with the learning institutions. In fact, the inclusion of different products which include the premium service, courses, technology, and company gears such as branded clothes and caps gives the company a competitive advantage over its rivals such as the Udacity and edX.
Therefore this strategy was very crucial, especially in forecast of future direction as the US institutions offering online courses are used to customization and the introduction of special aspects in the instructional delivery.
Coursera’s Corporate Strategies
Corporate strategies are the prerequsites for efficient operations especially when a company intends to localize production tools such as labor, distribution, language, ethics, and culture in the market. Often, in the contemporary business environment, managers face challenges in line of duty especially when the survival of a company is directly affected by unfavorable market swings.
In response, several corporate strategies have been put forward by the Coursera Company to ensure efficiency in doing the online courses support buisness. These strategies include product prolification, human resource organization, foresight and proper marekting.
Product Proliferation
Reflectively, product proliferation as a strategy is the same as strategies that companies adopt to create opaque barriers for their competitors. Through this approach, the market share leader will automatically have the discretion to reap maximum benefits ahead of its closest competitors.
For instance, this strategy was beneficial for the Coursera Company when it became the first company in the world to provide online courses support in a personalized account platform. For instance the premium service offered by the company is the first of its kind in the online courses market.
Product Development
Product development entails the innovation process aimed at modeling the existing product or improving on it to balance with the changing preferences of the customers. The product development variables at the Coursera Company are connected at the central point of strategic planning which encompasses costing, speed, quality, flexibility, and dependability that creates a smooth continuous operation tracking model.
Therefore, the major part of the success puzzle for operations implementation management strategy delivery for this company operates on the periphery of the soft skills involving the timeless vision of organizational principles, defining value of the business, determining requirements, clarifying the vision, building teams, mitigating task, resolving issues, and providing direction as incorporated in the customer support department.
The management of the Coursera Company through the two directors have realized that its success lies in the credo and corporate strategy rests on these values. The corporate strategies of the company are based on marketing, human resource, and efficiency monitoring units that are distributed to meet the local business standards.
Market Channels Development and Stratification
The company has developed a highly structured marketing distribution channels that operate independently of the partnering institutions. As a result, the company has been in a position to capture the fastest growing markets such the non-traditional learning institutions and the corporate segment that require online training modules for their employees.
As a matter of fact, Coursera Company’s online stores have improved on their performance in terms of online subscriptions by almost a third in the last 6 months. Through series of the company’s promotional strategies, Coursera has increased its potential of penetrating the non-traditional learning institutions and corporate training segments.
Market Foresight Strategy
Foresight is very crucial since it gives a company rough perspective and an overview of the future concerning the expected and unexpected changes and challenges.
Therefore, Coursera Company had to carefully examine and evaluate their past and endeavor to adopt relevant skills that will be relevant for future challenges and responsibilities. In the quest for efficiency, the Coursera Company opted to use the local labor as a strategy to include in the management team members through the training of young and talented employees who are skillful.
Through identification of critical trends defining the online courses support functions, the company was in a position to break them down into significant elements. For instance, the company’s online support platform has features that can be customized by the partnering institutions to suit their desired needs.
In addition, the company embraced trend identification especially in the technological strategies of managing its platform. In order to maximize gain, Coursera Company stepped in to cut a sustainable niche in the online courses support market by pushing for parnerships that saw the company expand its area of operation by convincing more than 50 public and private learning institutions to use its platform.
Unique Corporate culture
Despite communication being rated as a high corporate strategy, actionable planning of communication method is of essence to create solution oriented task and strategy implementation secession.
The main success parameters for the Coursera Company include customer acquisition, customer retention, quality services, and proactive response to different business situations. For instance, direct engagement with the customers has ensured fast growth since customized products delivered to the customers has created confidence and loyalty in the US market.
Coursera Company has active presence in the US and has an expanding presence in emerging markets such as Europe. The company’s vulnerability to risk is generally lower since it has endeavored to offer high quality online courses support platform that is customized to meet the demands of its clients.
Coursera offers competitive price tag and free support services to the partnering institutions as long term strategies for expansion and retaining the market share. In order to stay afloat, Coursera’s competitive pricing has ensured that it remains the choice the traditional and non-traditional learning institutions in the US.
Through this strategy, Coursera Company is well position to survive in the competitive market through gaining form economies of scale, competitive price tags, and strong customer base.