Managing The Future
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How are you responding to the current difficult trading conditions? On a scale of 1 to 10, what do see as the critical action areas for your company over the next year or so?
| |||
| Business Streamlining | Cutting headcount | 4.4 | 5.0 |
| Cutting other costs and overheads | 6.9 | ||
| Renegotiating supplier contracts | 6.7 | ||
| Restructuring debt/finance arrangements | 4.2 | ||
| Selling off non-core operations | 2.9 | ||
| Developing Existing Products | Altering the positioning of our existing print products | 5.0 | 5.4 |
| Altering the positioning of our existing online products | 5.9 | ||
| Altering what we charge readers for our existing print products | 5.0 | ||
| Altering what we charge users for our online content | 4.0 | ||
| Developing more creative advertising packages across a range of products/media | 6.8 | ||
| Developing overseas opportunities | 5.5 | ||
| Developing New Products | Launching new print products | 3.6 | 4.5 |
| Launching new online products | 6.4 | ||
| Acquiring new products or other companies | 3.6 | ||
“Business streamlining” is the most obvious area of action with an overall “importance score” of 5.0 out of 10. Yet cutting headcount is not the prime response, as the impression is that most of this has already taken place. Instead, looking at other costs & overheads and renegotiating supplier contracts are the key areas of focus. The recession has been the prompt for many companies to review their internal structures and the way they do business – clearly long overdue in some cases!
“Developing existing products” has a higher importance score (5.4) than Business Streamlining. It is a massive and complex area which covers a wide range of issues, but central to it all is developing more creative, multi-platform packages for advertisers. Integrating online and print, both in terms of content and of pricing, is another key theme.
“Developing new products” (a lower importance score of 4.5) is very much centred on growing a bigger online presence. New print launches currently have a much lower priority.
The individual action areas are ranked by their importance scores in the table below......
Critical action areas (ranked by importance score)
| |
| Cutting other costs and overheads | 6.9 |
| Developing more creative advertising packages across a range of products/media | 6.8 |
| Renegotiating supplier contracts | 6.7 |
| Launching new online products | 6.4 |
| Altering the positioning of our existing online products | 5.9 |
| Developing overseas opportunities | 5.5 |
| Altering the positioning of our existing print products | 5.0 |
| Altering what we charge readers for our existing print products | 5.0 |
| Cutting headcount | 4.4 |
| Restructuring debt/finance arrangements | 4.2 |
| Altering what we charge users for our online content | 4.0 |
| Launching new print products | 3.6 |
| Acquiring new products or other companies | 3.6 |
| Selling off non-core operations | 2.9 |
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