How Invenio implemented the Broadcast Management Solution for The Standard Group
The Standard Media Group are one of the oldest and most established media companies in Kenya. Founded in 1902, the highly diversified group is heavily involved in digital and print newspaper publication, the publication and distribution of magazines, hosts radio and television programs and even runs an internet portal for outdoor services. The Standard Media Group has won countless local and international awards for journalism and continues to grow their portfolio of media services across the country.
Business Challenges
Because all of their operations and processes were manually driven, The Standard Media Group were facing significant challenges in both efficiency and accuracy. For example, all schedules and playlists for the broadcast domain were being created manually using excel spreadsheets, while sales contracts and orders all had to be created in hard copy rather than digitally. This inefficient and time-intensive manual process leads to a lot of inventory-based challenges as well, such as revenue leakage, overselling of inventory, lack of operational transparency and lack of general managerial control.
The Standard Media Group were also struggling with:
- Critical approvals on processes such as sales orders being done manually, meaning that any discount rates could not be tracked
- Inefficient monitoring of the sales team’s performance against their targets
- No way to track sponsorship consumption rates
- No control over the manual insertion of spots
- Inability to quickly and easily create dashboard reports. This again was a manual process that required collecting data from multiple sources and consolidating it
In general, manual processes were starting to cause each area of the business significant problems not only in terms of time wasted but also revenue lost. They recognised that in order to continue expanding as they were, they needed to invest in a solution to all of this manual labour.
Invenio's Solution
Invenio was selected as the SAP implementation partner of choice for The Standard Media Group, and was charged with replacing the legacy manual operations processes used within the print, television, radio and outdoor elements of the business with a scalable SAP IS-Media solution. This solution had to handle all existing operations from a single platform and deliver tangible benefits for the business.
On examining the current systems in place within The Standard Media Group, Invenio’s experts discovered that:
- 3 of the 4 primary business groups (print, online, outdoor) could all be handled easily by the IS-Media solution, which was already freely available in SAP
- The broadcast domain fell into a gap that did not have a ready IS-Media solution available. In order to create a single unified management platform, Invenio custom built a Broadcast Management Solution, which could then be seamlessly integrated into the existing IS-Media modules and operate as a singular ecosystem.
- During this custom build process, Invenio created a solution that could handle the end-to-end broadcasting cycle completely, including programming, promotion, ad sales, planning and scheduling advertising sponsorship, creating a completely unified approach.
- As part of the build, this solution was designed to be web-based, allowing users to access it from any location at any time. It was also created with in-built workflows, which ensured better control and the reduction of manual errors in many areas of the business.
The Results
Once this solution had been put into place, The Standard Media Group started seeing the benefits almost instantly. Users were able to have much more control over operations thanks to streamlined processes and automated workflows, and a significant improvement in the visibility of the overall business. They are also able to create their own hierarchy based approval workflow for sales contracts within the system, which lead to increased understanding of discounting trends. As part of the integration process, the system was linked with an Intellectual Property Rights Management solution (also custom designed by Invenio), which guaranteed that the required checks were in place to ensure no violation of intellectual rights took place.
Streamlined processes
Streamlined business processes over all areas and better control over general business operations
Improved approval process
A structured approval process within each critical area of the business
Unlimited scalability
Unlimited scalability thanks to the web-based nature of the solution
Performance monitoring
The ability to regularly monitor the performance of teams within the business, which was particularly useful for the sales team
Systematic authorisation process
A systematic authorisation process that restricts the accessibility of confidential data
Intelligent business reporting
Intelligent business reporting, which in turn lead to better decision making
With Invenio’s help, The Standard Media Group were able to quickly regain control over their business processes and operations. With the ability to see reports, status updates and processes in real time, management could start to tackle underlying process issues and work in a more efficient manner. Revenue leakage dropped significantly thanks to the ability to control inventory more effectively and broadcast could be brought into the fold and managed as part of a unified platform.