Business plan of the daily Independent

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Strategic Business plan

Executive Summary

This report aims to make a business plan for an upcoming daily news paper to search the opportunity of this business in the market and how to utilize it and make a successful business. This report starts with analyzing company overview and then analyzing industry analysis and ends with long term sustainability of the business. The overview concept of the business is to launch a newspaper where the main priority is to assure high quality features and standard news for the customers and to ensure that the news they are providing is true and real. The growth of this market is also escalating. Though there are many established English newspaper in Bangladesh but there is a scope to grab the customers by providing good news and features. There is industry analysis which includes five forces, SWOT analysis, core competencies and competitive advantage and also there is market overview where the target market has been identified. The target customer of Daily News Express is everyone but mainly focusing on corporate personnel, foreigners & students. In overall strategy both long term & short term strategies have been made. In value chain analysis future competencies, facilities, equipments, production process and quality assurance have been properly analyzed. Marketing plan includes strategies of pricing, place, production and promotion. There are also advertising budget & distribution strategy. Human resource strategy and planning includes key issues, staff requirements, structure and expectations. There is financial planning in which assumptions have been taken, income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statements are analyzed. Total investment of News express is 6, 68,500 TK of that amount 100% have been funded by the owners. Finally, there is a long term sustainability plan which tells whether the newspaper can sustain in long run or not. Extensive effort was rendered to justify each step so that creation of any sort of confusion among the readers can be avoided. Hopefully, the rational pattern and easy writing style of this report will help the readers pass through at a glance.

Company overview

 The Newspaper Publishing industry comprises that carry out operations necessary for producing and distributing newspapers, including gathering news; writing news columns, feature stories, and editorials; printing newspapers; and selling and preparing advertisements. These enterprises may publish newspapers in print or electronic form.

3.1 Mission statement

To provide news that is true and legible by developing diversified features to inform customers or readers the latest news so that they can enhance their knowledge and get the real news. We are promised to help the readers to know what is going on around them. Honesty and integrity will be a part of all our efforts.

3.2 Vision Statement

To assure a standard that makes every banking transaction a pleasurable experience and our Endeavour is to offer our loyal customers razor sharp sparkle through accuracy, reliability, timely delivery, cutting edge technology, and tailored solution for any needs, global reach in trade and commerce and high yield on your daily news.

3.3 key products/services

The products that our company will provide are good quality newspaper, business article every week, newsletters, breaking stories, new product reviews, journals, news advertisements etc. we’ll also have our own website for other information.

Strategic goals and Objectives

Strategic Goals

Our goal is to achieve a distinction like the luminaries in the sky. Our prime objective is to deliver a quality that demonstrates a true reflection of our vision – Excellence in serving good quality news.

 Objectives

To produce high standard newspapers that satisfy customers by providing a news publication that adheres to high ethical and professional standards and news will be objective, well written, well edited, sensitive, enlightening, challenging and useful. By creating a challenging workplace for employees who are interested in growing in experience and professional skills. That workplace will foster good co-worker relations, will recognize outstanding contributions by employees and will encourage all to participate in creating new products that are a source of pride to the company.

Industry overview and analysis

 Industry analysis is one of the most important elements of external analysis of the newspaper firms. It helps to understand the situation of the industry and the stage where the newspaper industry stands. The newspaper industry has become extremely competitive. More and more newspaper firms have been emerging. The demand for the bangle newspaper is in the dominant position against others. The leading newspaper firms are Daily star, Prothom Alo, Ittefaq etc. The more customization and modernization are applied in designing the newspaper making a competitive edge in the field. Today all these newspapers are providing interesting news on sports, movies, media, beautification, diet and cooking in addition to political news. Newspaper industry has become more responsive to the demand of the public and taking each and every step to gain competitive edge. Following this trend it can be seen that this industry is in its growth stage. This growth is positive and leading to higher competition in the marketplace. Every day the newspaper industry is coming up with new communication style and promotional methods. The development of the labor force is also expanding its potentiality. This growth is welcoming more and more consumers and expanding its market as much as possible. The following sections will analyse the external environment of the newspaper industry.

Porter’s five forces analysis

Porters fives forces model is an excellent model to use to analyze a particular environment of an industry. We will use porter’s model that will help us to find out the competitiveness of the newspaper industry.

Rivalry among the competitive firm

A starting point to analyzing the industry is to look at competitive rivalry. Generally competitive rivalry is high for the newspaper industry. The switching cost of the customers is relatively low. There is already Daily Star, new age, independence, Bangladesh observer is in the dominant position among the other English newspapers. The strategies that commonly followed by our newspaper are similar to strategies that our competitors use. The existing newspapers will try to defend us by the following tools:

ü Brand equity

ü Capital requirement

ü Access to distribution

ü Learning curve advantage

ü Absolute cost advantage

Power of suppliers

Suppliers are essential for the success of the bookstore. For our business suppliers do have less power. They have low bargaining power because there are more than one supplier who provide us the raw materials for printing the paper. The office tools are also available at cheaper price. There are many suppliers available in the market from whom we can buy the equipments and tools at a lower lost. The switching cost for our newspaper business is also relatively low.

Power of buyers

Buyers or customers can exert influence and control over an industry in certain circumstances. They create a great impact in our business also. For the newspaper the buyers have high bargaining power. This is because:

  • There is little differentiation over the newspapers.
  • Customers are always sensitive to price. They will switch whenever they will get lower price. As the price of our newspapers is relatively high so that they move to the outlets where the newspaper can be found at a cheaper price.

Threat of substitutes

As it is a competitive market there are many substitute of our newspaper. These are like: Daily Star, new age, independence, Bangladesh observer and some Bengali newspapers. The customers can purchase those alternative products over our product that offer the same benefit for the same or less price. The threat of substitute is high for our newspaper because –

  • Price of that substitute product may fall.
  • The customers are always willing to switch to substitute.

Threat of new entrant

The threat of a new organization entering the industry is high when it is easy for an organization to enter the industry i.e. entry barriers are low. This threat of new entrant is also high because the newspaper industry is competitive.

Core competencies:

Core competencies lead to development of the core products. A firm’s core competencies are difficult for its competitors to mimic, allowing the company to differentiate itself. Most core competencies will be applicable to a wide range of business activities, transcending product and market borders.

Skilled manpower: Our manpower will be skilled and qualified enough to explore the opportunities of the success. We will recruit the best employees of other organization to capture their knowledge and experience.

Bigger space on the newspaper: We will publish our news with bigger space. The page limit of the newspaper will be 18-20 pages so that the news can be provided to the general people.

Faster services: The newspaper will deliver the right news faster comparing to other competitors. It will try to maintain up to date news for the public.

Quality: We will provide high quality services in related to printing, updating news compare to our competitors. We will also ensure superior quality in news presentation.

Good market information: We will employee the fast reaching agents so that we can get the potential market information.

Industries SWOT:

The SWOT analysis is important because it guides whether the position of the newspaper firm is healthy or unhealthy. Its aim to produce a good fit between a company’s resource capabilities and external situation.

Strength:

  1. Technological advancement in the global arena: the technology is allowing tremendous change in the business operation. Through implementing technology the business can communicate much more better way.
  2. Superior quality in news presentation: Quality of news presentation is critical to success of newspaper business. The competition is promoting quality news presentation.
  3. Professionalism: The people are becoming more and more professional day by day.

Weakness:

  1. No strong government supports or subsidies: The government is very reluctant to help the media industry.
  2. Lack of potential risk takers: as journalism is a risky work so much of the student avoids joining in this field. They are more attracted to service organizations.

Opportunities

  1. Increased demand for newspaper from countries with aging population
  2. The growth of technology.
  3. The growth of educated labor force.
  4. Fast-paced life style increases demand for the knowledge of the recent trends.

Threats

  1. Political influence
  2. Heavy competition in the relative field.
  3. Shortage of labor in the area etc.
  4. New regulations

Competitive advantage

The core of the internal analysis is identifying the core competencies of the business. We have identified our core competencies.  We will use these core competencies like weapon to compete against the competitors and gain more market share.

 The diagram above shows that the combination of resource and capabilities of the newspaper will help this business to create a distinctive advantage. This newspaper firm possesses heterogeneous resources and capabilities. These resources and capabilities serve as the foundation for core competencies for this firm. These distinctive competencies like skilled manpower, superior quality and innovation will give us a competitive edge over the market and thus create high perceived value of the customers and increase the profitability of the organization. To get higher market share we have to develop valuable competencies that will help us exploit the opportunities and neutralize the threats. These valuable competencies can be created through a standard policy and coordination among the departments.

Additional strategic consideration

Main strategy of our business is to provide independent, unbiased, upholding social values and modern out look to the newsreader for the betterment of the community. We have to adjust and coordinate our strategies according to it. The external forces that come from society, environment, politics and cultures will shape our strategies in much more advanced pattern. The strategies that is taken for increasing our profitability is supported by our resources both human and financial resources. We want to ensure the optimum use of our resources and capabilities. We want to earn profit by protecting the social value and interest.

5. Market overview

Potential Customers

In any types of industry customer always play vital role. Attracting a new customer is 5 times more costly than retaining an old customer. Since we are in the newspaper industry so we have to keep in mind that we are providing news to general public it is considered as giving service to them. We have to meet the satisfaction level of our customers. We have to satisfy our customer by providing latest news and informing them quickly than other newspaper. The changing environment of the industry and huge competitors makes it critically important that as an organization we focus time and attention on understanding what our customers want and responding to their demands. There are several factors that determine the types of service a customer chooses to satisfy their needs:

1. The price of the service

2. Service quality.

3. Responsiveness

In case of our newspaper, we are setting reasonable price. Secondly, our features should be differentiated in terms of quality of the news of our news paper. So, customers will be attracted to our newspaper. We have targeted our potential customers. We are launching a newspaper which will be national and also our target is to make it standard as global newspaper. Keeping in mind this, we have decided that everybody is our customer. At the same time the main focus will be on corporate personnel, foreigners and students.

Size and Growth of the market:

Market size is very important and a business vastly depends on market size. Because to gain profit you have to know your market size very well. We are planning to launch a national newspaper, so we have to sell our newspaper all over the country not any specific area or city. Our target customer is all people throughout the country. That’s why the size of the market will be huge; it will be all over the country. We will cover the whole country by setting standard. Market growth is good and the growth rate is also flourishing of the industry. Our paper is providing many features compare to other papers and it emphasizes on marketing and promotion a lot. So, it will not be so difficult to capture the customers. There is potential growth for the newspaper.

Strategic Group Analysis:

Established

The Daily Observer The Daily New Age

The Daily New Nation The Daily star

The Daily Independent

Moderate-Low Price High Price

The Daily Sun

The Daily People’s View The Bangladesh today

Less Established

Overall Strategy

long term and short term strategy:

Long term strategy:

Our long term goal is to capture 7% market share within 5 years. To achieve this we will take the following long term strategies:

  • Global expansion of the market. We want to create our offices in abroad so that the Bengali people live there can attach to the nations. We have plan publish weekly newspapers in London, Dubai, Canada.
  • Improvement of the web edition by providing more materials in the web that will not present in the hard copy.
  • To arrange programs so that people can learn English in addition to Bengali.
  • We have a plan to create a institution where masters in journalism will be provided so that more educated and skilled workforce can be gotten.

Short term strategy:

§ Ensuring high ethical and moral standard.

§ Achieving excellence in news presentation quality.

§ Maintain professionalism in every aspect of business

§ Making decent work environment for the employees.

§ Ensuring customer satisfaction.

Company value chain analysis and operational plan

Value Chain Analysis describes the activities that take place in a business and relates them to an analysis of the competitive strength of the business. Value Chain Analysis is important for our business because it helps us to identify which activities should be given priority. It helps to understand what activities that our business undertakes is directly linked to achieving competitive advantage. If our newspaper business wishes to outperform its competitors through differentiating itself through higher quality it will have to perform its value chain activities better than the opposition. If our strategy is based on seeking cost leadership than we require a reduction in the costs associated with the value chain activities, or a reduction in the total amount of resources used.

Existing core competencies:

Our existing core competencies would help us to attract the market and to increase perceives value of the customers. These core competencies include:

Skilled manpower: Our manpower will be skilled and qualified enough to explore the opportunities of the success. We will recruit the best employees of other organization to capture their knowledge and experience.

Bigger space on the newspaper: We will publish our news with bigger space. The page limit of the newspaper will be 18-20 pages so that the news can be provided to the general people.

Faster services: The newspaper will deliver the right news faster comparing to other competitors. It will try to maintain up to date news for the public.

Quality: We will provide high quality services in related to printing, updating news compare to our competitors. We will also ensure superior quality in news presentation.

Future competencies:

The future competencies will help us to retain our customers and hold the competitive position over and over again. These include:

Good communication: As we will arrange seminars, public relationship programs; we hope to create a good communication with our customers.

Quality market information: as newspapers are the highest disposable products. So we will hire the best agents to give us useful and important information about the consumers need and want.

Collaboration and teamwork: we will ensure good relationship among our employees and assign teamwork. When they will work with team they can come up with superior creativity. It can be our future competency as well.

Product/service overview

The products that our company will provide are good quality newspaper, business article every week, newsletters, breaking stories, new product reviews, journals, news advertisements etc.

Facilities:

For building our newspaper as a global standard we will provide our customers the following facilities:

  • We will publish our own website for other information.
  • Web Edition

Web edition is a successful step that most of the newspaper are obtaining to increase popularity and market share. Through web edition the newspaper firms can publish news in web. Its easy and convenient for the consumers. Like others we will also publish a website for us.

  • We will use three to four hotlines to accept complains and problems of the customers. Through these hotlines the customers can provide necessary information about our product, the major complaint about community etc. There will be segregated department for this purpose.

Equipment and machinery:

Machineries: We will us the CTP technology so that we can ensure good quality printing. This technology is imported from Newzealand. We will also apply 2 press machines. The capacity per machine will be 25000 papers per hour. These machines will be imported from India. Using these techniques we can add value to our products.

Land: 3000 Square feet [10 katha], Land acquisition fees

Building: The building will be a 3 storied building approximately of 3000 square feet. The basement will be allocated for car parking; the ground floor will be the press. The first floor will be the office of the junior employees and the top floor will be office of the editors and conference room. The 2nd floor will be allocated for canteen, rest room.

Production and manufacturing process:

The product blueprint:

Research and Development:

Research and development is important for us it will help us to develop our product in more attractive and innovative manner. But; our cost does not support us to perform heavy research and development work. We will invest more in research and development work after reaching to breakeven.

Quality Assurance:

Quality is one of our core competences. So ensuring quality in every aspect is our main issue in doing business. There are two dimensions to achieve superior quality and that are:

Product reliability: Attaining superior reliability is based on implementing TQM. We will form a highly delegated TQM committee which will look after the quality issues of the newspaper. TQM committee will have 5 members. Two of them will be business executives and other three will be consultants. TQM members will be elected each year by the vote of employees and consultants. By implementing TQM we can get the following benefits:

ü Improved quality in product.

ü Increase in productivity

ü Increase profitability that leads to attract more potential employees.

Product attributes: Our newspaper will contain quality print. Our newspaper will contain 18 pages. It will hold the features like – political news, entertainment, games, business, computer technology, job sites, advertisements, culture and social aspects, tourism related news etc.

We will also ensure quality of our employees by providing training, performance measurement, morning meetings, and high accountability. We will establish a collaborative working environment and break down barriers among the functions.

Marketing plan

Sales & Marketing

A marketing plan forms one of the integral parts of the business plan and the business cannot do without it. It would provide the guideline for the pricing, promotion, distribution, the service make-up, personnel, physical evidence and process, that are needed for developing a service mix. Four P’s should be considered while deciding to form a strategy for this business. This is because the strategy will help to target certain clients and try to maximize the success of the business. These 4P’s are crucial because it’s them that will have a big impact on the clients. This is because each P will determine to some extent how much money the business takes in.

Pricing Strategy

In most business, price is the key influence of purchase. Customers purchase depends on pricing strategy. Our targeted customer is everyone and moreover, we are new in business so we have decided to have reasonable price. We will charge 8 TK. Per copy of news paper. It is reasonable price because many English News Paper of Bangladesh are charging 10 TK per copy. We are charging less than that with more features. So, it will be easy to grab customers.

Place

Place is an important element for setting up a business and lot of things depend on it. For our news paper office will be in Maghbazar. The building will be a 3 storied building approximately of 3000 square feet. The basement will be allocated for car parking; the ground floor will be the press. The first floor will be the office of the junior employees and the top floor will be office of the editors and conference room. The 2nd floor will be allocated for canteen, rest room.

Product Features

We have many and diversified product features by which we can grab customers’ attention easily. We will bring new dimension in our features and we will give more news than any other news paper. Our news paper features are given below:

Ø It will have total 28 pages.

Ø It has a reader’s forum named “Express Forum”.

Ø The daily news features will be National news, International news, express business, express sports, editorial, IT, letters, arts & entertainment etc.

Ø Weekly features:

ü Sports Corner for sports lover

ü Express Literature

ü Color of Life

ü Tech World & New generation

ü Tintin for kids

ü Fun unlimited

ü Stars & Entertainment

Promotion

The news paper industry is very well established in Bangladesh. It is not so easy to compete with established competitors without strong promotion strategy. So, without promotion not many people will hear the features and news we are providing. Therefore it’s absolutely essential that we choose the best methods to promote the business and the business name. However, we must consider the cost and justify it against the effect it will have on the business. The advertisements are a very useful method because it will give us a chance to show the internal view of the news paper.

We have to take following promotional strategies:

ü TV Ads:

We have to make TV ads for strong promotion. So for NEWS EXPRESS we have a plan to promote TV ads. Because the emotional feelings of the consumers can be better pulled up with TV ads.

Print Ads:

Print ads are another important form of promotion. Many people read news paper. So it is very important to publish advertisement on news papers.

ü Billboards:

Billboard is a good source of giving advertisement. Because it attacks people more frequently. So using billboards as a media will boost up sales immediately. It will attract everybody’s attention.

ü Press Conference:

Before opening ceremony we will arrange a press conference which will publicize our news paper and it will be advertised in news paper earlier.

ü Road Show:

We will have a reader’s forum named “Express Forum”. It will arrange rally and road shows with different types of people such as teachers, students and other professionals.

ü Event Management:

Our news paper will be engaged in event management. For example, arranging round table discussion and EXPRESS FORUM will held debate in some universities. It will also promote the news paper.

Advertising Plan& Budget

We have advertising plan. Initially we have our promotional strategies. Now we will look at how we can plan advertising strategies and allocate their budget. Advertising plan is given below:

Our advertising campaign is for 2 months. We want to divide our advertising in three segments:

– 1st month intensive advertising with Aggressive approach

– 2nd month advertising with little less effort

After completing the campaign the result will be measured through research and if the campaign is successful then the advertising horizon can be expanded further.

Advertising budget for the 1st month

Electronic Media (Television)

Channel Time Per Day advertising duration Advertising

cost (for 1 week)Cost

1st monthN TVWeekdays (on Sunday-Wednesday between 10-30 to 11-00 and Thursday between 7-30 –to 8-00 news)

Weekends (on Friday, and Saturday from 7-30 to 8-00 news)

Mid breaks in 9 o clock programs on weekends (on Friday, and Saturday)Weekdays

30 seconds just before news and in the 1st break in News

Weekends

Do for the news and 30 seconds

In mid break of programFor news,

Weekdays

(22500X5)+(24000X4)

= 232500

Weekends

(22500X2)+(24000X2)

= 93000

For program,

12000 X 2

= 2400013,98,000

Channel I Weekdays (on Sunday-Wednesday between10-30 to 11 news)

Weekends (on Friday, and Saturday from 7-30 to 8-00 news)

Mid breaks in 9 o clock programs on weekends (on Friday, and Saturday)Do

DoFor news,

Weekdays

(22500X5)+(24000X5)

= 232500

Weekends

(22500X2)+(24000X2)

= 93000

For program,

12000 X 2

= 2400013,98,000R TV

ATN BanglaWeekdays (on Sunday-Wednesday between10-30 to 11 news)

Weekends (on Friday, and Saturday from 7-30 to 8-00 news)

Mid breaks in 9 o clock programs on weekends (on Friday, and Saturday)

Weekdays (on Sunday-Wednesday between 10-00 to 11-00 and Thursday between 7-00 –to 7-45 news) Weekends (on Friday, and Saturday from 7- to 7-45 news)

Mid breaks in 9 o clock programs on weekends (on Friday, and Saturday)Do

DoFor news,

Weekdays

(13500X5)+(18000X5)

= 157500

Weekends

(13500X2)+(18000X2)

= 63000

For program,

9000 X 2

= 18000

For news,

Weekdays

(22500X5)+(24000X4)

= 232500

Weekends

(22500X2)+(24000X2)

= 93000

For program,

12000 X 2

= 240009,54,000

13,98,000Bangla VisionWeekdays

(on Sunday-Thursday

between10-30 to 11 news)

Weekends (on Friday, and Saturday from 7-30 to 8-00 news)

Mid breaks in 9 o clock programs on weekends (on Friday, and Saturday)DoFor news,

Weekdays

(13500X5)+(22500X5)

= 180000

Weekends

(13500X2)+(22500X2)

= 72000

For program,

9000 X 2

= 1800010,80,000

Total advertising budget for 1st month in television

For news and programs = 62, 28, 000 BDT.

There are 10 channels in Bangladesh. We will telecast 4 times our advertisement in a channel per day. So we will telecast 40 times the advertisement in all channels and it will cost=40 x 12,000= 480000 BDT in a day and

monthly cost= 480000 x 30= 1, 44, 00, 000 BDT

Total Cost of 1st month= 14400000+6228000= 2, 06, 28, 000 BDT

2nd Month advertising budget

Channel Time Per Day advertising duration Advertising

cost (for 1 week)Cost

2nd monthN TVWeekends (on Friday, and Saturday from 7-30 to 8-00 news)

Mid breaks in 9 0 clock programs on weekends (on Friday, and Saturday)Weekends

30 seconds just before news and in the 1st mid in News

and 30 seconds

In mid break of programFor news,

Weekends

(22500X2)+(24000X2)

= 93000

For program,

12000 X 2

= 24000468000Channel IWeekends (on Friday, and Saturday from 7-30 to 8-00 news)

Mid breaks in 9 o clock programs on weekends (on Friday, and Saturday)Do

DoFor news,

Weekends

(22500X2)+(24000X2)

= 93000

For program,

12000 X 2

= 24000468000R TVWeekends (on Friday, and Saturday from 7-30 to 8-00 news)

Mid breaks in 9 o clock programs on weekends (on Friday, and Saturday)DoFor news,

Weekends

(13500X2)+(18000X2)

= 63000

For program,

9000 X 2

= 18000324000Bangla VisionWeekends (on Friday, and Saturday from 7-30 to 8-00 news)

Mid breaks in 9 o clock programs on weekends (on Friday, and Saturday)DoFor news,

Weekends

(13500X2)+(22500X2)

= 72000

For program,

9000 X 2

= 18000360000

Total budget for 2nd month = 1620000 BDT

There are 10 channels in Bangladesh. We will telecast 2 times our advertisement in a channel per day. So we will telecast 40 times the advertisement in all channels and it will cost=20 x 12,000= 240000 BDT in a day and

Monthly cost= 240000 x 30= 72, 00, 000 BDT

Total Cost of 2nd month= 7200000+1620000= 88, 20, 000 BDT

Total Advertising Budget for TV = 2, 06, 28, 000+88, 20, 000=2, 94, 48, 000 BDT.

Print MEDIA

1st month advertising cost

Newspaper Position Number of times ad inserts Rate Cost for 1st month
The Daily Star 1st Page, 8 Col 8 Inch ,4 color 4 days in a month On Sunday

Consecutive 3 days before launchTk.6000 per inch per column

So Tk.384000 per day & Tk. 1536000 in month.

TK. 115200026, 88, 000The daily Star weekend magazineBack CoverOn Friday 4 days in a month30000 per issue120000The daily Prothom AloFirst Page, 8 inch 8 columnOn Thursdays 4 days in a month

Consecutive 3 days before launchTk.6500 per inch per column

So 6500 X 64

= Tk.416000 per day & Tk. 1664000 in month

TK. 124800029, 12, 000

Total cost for 1st month = 57, 20, 000 BDT.

2nd month advertising cost

Newspaper Position Number of times ad inserts Rate Cost for 1st month
The Daily Star 3rd Page, 8 Col 8 Inch ,4 color 4 days in a month On Sunday Tk.4000 per inch per column

So Tk.256000 per day10, 24, 000The daily Star weekend magazineBack CoverOn Friday 4 days in a month30000 per issue1, 20, 000The daily Prothom AloFirst Page, 8 inch 8 columnOn Thursdays 4 days in a monthTk.6500 per inch per column

So 6500 X 64

= Tk.416000 per day16, 64, 000

Total cost for 2nd month = 28, 08, 000 BDT.

Total cost of Print media advertising= (5720000+2808000) BDT = 85, 28, 000 BDT.

Billboards

On the divisional districts only and for the whole 2 months campaign. The three billboards will be on Gulshan circle-2, Motijheel, Mirpur (sector 10) and on Mohakhali.

Number of Billboards Size of the Billboards Rate per month Cost for the campaigns
4 in Dhaka

and 5 in other divisions30 by 20 feet for Dhaka and other divisions30000 for Dhaka and 10000 for Other Divisions240000 for Dhaka and

10000 for other districts

Total cost for billboards = 3, 40, 000 BDT.

Other advertising cost = 5, 00, 000 BDT

Total Advertising Cost,

(TV+Print+Billboard+Other)= 29448000+8528000+340000+500000

= 3, 88, 16, 000 BDT.

8.3 Distributions

After printing the news paper become ready to sell out and news papers will be distributed through distribution system. The distribution process is given below:

There are many distributing agent who collect papers from the company and then take it to distribution agencies. There will be 3 distribution agency for our news paper and 300 agencies outside Dhaka city. The distributors then distribute the papers to news paper selling shops. There are 200 news paper selling shops and from there news paper goes to hawkers who are 15,000 in number.

9. Human resource strategy and planning

Human capital is increasingly being seen as an issue of strategic significance in the industry today. It is this aspect of competition that provides most decisive elements of business advantage for a company by way of market responsiveness, process and technology innovation or enhancing customer experience. Our newspaper company can maximize the benefits from its human assets, when it is able to align and achieve similarity between individual and organizational goals. The challenge for HR experts in the organization lies in bringing about high degree of alignment so that the contribution of people in each and every activity along the value chain becomes a key differentiator in the industry.

9.1 key Issues:

Ü Employee recruitment and selection:

To hire the human resource in this newspaper firm we undergo a specific process. The process follows some steps:

Step 1: Give Advertisement in both print media and broadcasted media: In order to recruit new candidates they 1st go for advertising in the other newspapers. They also collect candidate’s applications from their website.

Step 2: Short listing: At the short listing stage, the recruiting manager will review each application form against the job description and person specification. If a candidate is qualified he/she will be invited to interview in a letter containing details of the date, time, and location. In this step the recruiter also want the document of the candidate. The documents include – ID documents (photo driving license/passport), Proof of the right to work (passport/National Insurance card/Birth certificate), Completed occupational health form, Declaration form (details of convictions/cautions/warnings, etc) and Qualification certificates. If a candidate do not heard anything within 4 weeks of the closing date, then he/she need to assume that, unfortunately, he/she has not been successful on this occasion.

Stage 3: Interview: Then the candidate is asked a series of questions to review the skills and experience against the job description and person specification. If he/she is successful he/she will be notified by the recruiting manager and then sent an offer letter; unsuccessful candidates will normally be notified by telephone.

Stage 4: Job Offer: If the applicant’s application is successful he/she will receive an offer letter.

Stage: 6 Inductions: After the candidate has successfully covered the entire step then in this stage, the candidates get introduced with the company codes of conduct, mission, and vision etc.For some of the vacant employee referral will be considered. Our recruitment process will ensure that hired people are consistent with our organizational culture & strategic priorities.

Ü Employee training plan:

We will have highly trained & skilled staffs. The employees will be provided both in house training and on the job training. We organize 1year internship for the student in the related field. We will also send our employees outside to get their training in particular fields. For instance some reporters’ desire training on political criteria we will send them outside organization to take this training. Many organizations are arranging these small programs. PIB [press institute Bangladesh], World Bank, Transparency organize training programs for the journalist, reporters. We will send our employees in those organizations also.

Ü Remuneration strategy:

This is a critical issue for any business organization because here the senior managers have to determine the compensation strategy. This covers salaries, bonuses, vacation pay, sick leave pay, Workers’ Compensation, and insurance policies such as medical etc. the compensation package for different employee is different. We will strictly follow the wage board that is provided by the government. The employee gets the compensation that is mentioned in the wage. All employees will be paid a basic salary according to wage board. We also employ performance based pay. In this system we set a target for an individual employee. if she/he can meet the target she/he gets the performance bonus. If she/he become a below performer for three periods we provide him/her a counseling session with the HR manager. If he/she exceeds his/her target that will be added as increments with his/her salary. This performance bonus will be provided to the employee in a monthly basis. Experience is also another major criterion that we set to determine the compensation. When an employee is hired, the firm’s HR manager meets with employees one-on-one and explains their benefits package. This requires an employee to provide his/her signature for processing purposes.

Ü Employee Benefits:

This firm will provides certain types of benefit to their employees. This benefit plans includes health, short term leave, health insurance. We will also provide perks [car] to grade 1 employees. We will have an arrangement to provide motorcycle for the reporters so that they don’t have to use public transports. This firm will strictly follows the Family and Medical Leave Act and sick leave acts and gives their employees leaves according to their code of conduct.

Ü Performance appraisal:

The employees will be provided performance appraisal on the basis of their performance. The HR manager will monitor their performance.

Ü Motivational approach:

Journalism is a challenging work. In addition its boring too. The employees have to stay late night in the office. So motivation is a must. We will provide friendly and healthy working environment to the employees. The decentralized communication will be encouraged. Employees will be provided both intrinsic reward and extrinsic reward that will motivate them to do their work more appropriately.

Ü Management counseling:

Management counseling is a important issue to keep track on the results of the business. We will also develop management counseling. Every day from 10: 11AM we will sit together. All the departmental heads will be there. Its important because we are dealing with a product which is highly disposable. In this council we will analyze whether our sales of yesterday had been met to our target or not, then we plan how to make it much more attractive to the customers and make it make it more valuable to the vision. Then we will organize the activities that we have planned to reach the goal. Then we finish our meeting after selecting the responsibilities of each department. We will set high accountability for the related duties.

Ü Sales training:

We can train the salesperson on the skills and systems to help them close more business. Attendees will learn techniques in building better customer rapport, uncovering customer needs, identifying new prospects, closing more effectively, and establishing time management skills. In the method of sales training our strategies will be:

  • Prospecting: We have a unified policy for the organization. Through this sales training we will try to exert the vision through the sales force. This training will be more like Response Oriented Selling System training. Unlike most outside training programs, this one is extremely relevant to the newspaper industry and will worked very well with our current training agenda.
  • Probe to close: When selling a highly product to a customer, it is very important to find out as much as possible information about the customer and their needs before proceeding with sale. This is the basic theme over which the sales force will be trained.
  • Negotiation science: Negotiation is the process by which we search for terms to obtain what we want from somebody who wants something from us. in sales training the Negotiation science will focus on being able to know what we want and what we are prepared to give to get it.
  • Motivational technique: Motivation is important to reinforce the sales team to perform well. Motivational and inspirational quotes, poems, posters, motivational speakers and stories, team building games and activities, all develop employee motivation for sales and business staff in all kinds of organizations. Motivational and inspirational experiences improve employees’ attitudes, confidence and performance. The basic motivational techniques we will use like:

Ø Inspirational quotes and poems

Ø team building games and activities, as ice-breakers,

Ø warm-ups and exercises for conferences,

Ø workshops, meetings and events

Staff requirement:

Staff position Salary/month Quantity Subtotal
Security Guard[shift] 4,000 7 28000
Journalist 16000 20 160000
Labor 4000 10 40000
Receptionist 8000 2 16000
News editor 80000 1 80000
Senior reporter 26000 20 520000
Reporter 31000 300 9300000
Sub editor 28000 50 1400000
Journalist 16000 70 1120000
Computer operator 10000 4 40000
Chief editor 300000 1 300000
Editors 150000 3 450000
Total 498 24728000

Structure

Our newspaper firm will follows a flexible organization structure in which various departments will enjoy sufficient freedom. The overall activities will be directly controlled by the editor who will work as a newspaper of the newspaper. All the news and advertisings will be published according to his decision. As the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), he will play the coordinating role between the Board of Directors and the management of the newspaper. He will lead the team from the front in developing and executing different policies and strategies in light of the expectation of Board to achieve the ultimate objective of the organization. The organograme of our newspaper is:

Expectation:

The newspaper industry deals with truth and justice of the people. It brings the news around the world and tries to make it available to the general people. We expect the similar kind of honesty and integrity of the staffs. We expect that our employees will work according to their job description. They will also be rewarded for good performance. These rewards will be a portfolio of financial reward to promotion in organizational hierarchy. On the other hand if for any misconduct, underneath performance the guilty employee will face demotion or financial penalty.

Risk analysis

The Foreseeable Barriers

· Lower demand: The demand for the English newspaper is not developed in Bangladesh yet. People tend to prefer Bengali newspaper than English newspaper. Increasing the demand may be difficult in this situation.

· Operating Experience Barrier: Most of the competitors has established a long time ago before our newspaper firm. As a result they are capable to recruit much efficient and highly experienced staffs, reporters and editors at high compensation. This may drive us to recruit our employee at high compensation. As a result our operating expenses may get higher.

· Imposed Rule & Regulation: There is always higher political pressure on the existing newspaper firm. Government imposed rules and regulation to maintain standard environment. So it will create constraint in the way to make profit.

· Distribution constraints: There is no sound distribution network in the rural area of Bangladesh, which decreases the overall market coverage of its product.

· Inflation: The prices of every product are growing up day by day. So it will be difficult for us to manage the entire operation at a stable cost.

The Unforeseeable Barriers

· Increased competitors: Since 2000 the emergence of the newspaper firms are on rise. Prothom Alo, Daily Star, Daily observer, Indian times are some of the leading newspapers in Bangladesh. These competitors are currently holding a major portion of the market. Addition to this there are many foreign companies are willing to inter in this sector. This may create an intensive competition and erode the profit.

· Unstable Political circumstance: Bangladeshi’s political condition considered as the most instable so every business has suffer for this instability and as well as the newspaper business.

· Worker’s clout: The most unpredictable barriers arise due to dissatisfactions in compensation level. This barrier can shut the newspaper operation temporarily or as well as permanently.

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