Reserch Project on Advertising Firm

* Research project on a advertising agency in Sri Lanka

Value chain Analysis
Primary activities
Inbound logistics
The inbound logistics of the Sovereiigns Intergrated (pvt) Ltd involve relationships with the suppliers of raw materials such as iron, metal & flex printing materials. The firm purchase iron & metal from Union Metals (pvt) Ltd which is located in close proximity to the company’s workshop in Gonawala, kelaniya & the flex printing materials are imported from the Flex Engineering Limited Company Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
Operations
As the first step of the operations Sovereiigns Intergrated (pvt) Ltd applies for the available tenders or uses their contact networks to obtain the contracts from the clients. Then the firm conducts a research about the client organization in order to analyze & gather the requirements for the advertisement. Then they hand over the assessed requirements & criteria to the creative department to design an outline of the advertisement. Afterward the firm clarifies the design & gets the feedback from the clients. Finally they conduct a trail to verify the quality & standard of the advertisement and then give the order to the printing section to print the advertisement.

Internal Business Process
PRINT MEDIA
PRINT AD
ENGRAVING
TYPOGRAPHY
CLIENT APPROVAL
AD REACHES THE TARGET AUDIENCE
ENTERS THE AD AGENCY
LAYOUTS
CREATIVE BRIEF
COPY WRITING
CREATIVE PROCESS
CLIENT BRIEF
PRODUCTION STAGE
PRINT
CREATION STAGE
INTERNAL
EXTERNAL

Client Brief
Client Brief is prepared by the client including the requirements of the client, the characteristics of the product to be advertised, the target customers and hand over to the companies creative department.
Creative Brief
Creative Brief is a prepared by the head of the creative department and includes the marketing strategy, the aggressiveness or otherwise of the advertising campaign, the type of customers to be targeted, the cost constraints of the environment in which the client is functioning etc.
Outbound Logistics
The Sovereiigns Integrated (pvt) Ltd uses a few methods in storing & distributing their products to the customers. The firm uses a warehouse which is in close proximity to Kelaniya workshop to store products until they are delivered to the clients. The firm owns a few product distribution vehicles of various capacities in order to transport products securely such as two vans, a mini truck & a large truck.
Freelances
Sales & Marketing
Sovereiigns Company has used their website and online promotions as a sales and marketing method because it’s less costly & effective in attracting new clients. But at present the firm mostly depends on their vast contact networks such as media & the government related organizations to gain business opportunities.
Services
The firm provides its clients various customer services for instance the transportation of the finished products to the client’s premises, get the feedback of customer & redo the work errors for discounts, fixing the advertising billboards or hoardings in client’s requested locations.
(University of Cambridge 2009)
Secondary activities
Procurement
This function is responsible for the necessary materials& input purchases of the Sovereiigns Intergrated (pvt) Ltd. The company tries to procure high quality materials in an affordable price so they have choosen Quality & price effective suppliers such as Union Metals (pvt) Ltd, Kelaniya & Flex Engineering Limited Company, Mumbai, who supply & export iron, metal & flex printing materials in sequence.
Human resource management
Currently the company has 25 employees in the organization.
Managing Director, Manager (Finance), Accounts Client service, Media Director, Creative Director, Director Studio Print & Media Associate , Creative Production Controllers, Directors Group Account Manager , Creative Group Heads, Account Supervisor Media, Media Planners , Buyers Copywriters, Art Directors, Account Executives, in-house & freelance, multi-generational creative staff that includes full-time copy writers, designers and marketing specialists, HR Manager
The human resource management department of the firm has been facing some issues due to the lack of permanent employees as they mostly depend on freelance employees who work on the daily wage basis. The company still does not have a training & development system to improve the skills of the employees so this had leaded the firm to acquire expertise staffs with high salary rates.
Recruitment Process
The whole HR process of the organization is handled by the HR officer of the company. He prepares the HR plan assessing the company’s future employee (number of employees and what sort of people) needs in the light of company’s anticipated future contracts. After analyzing the qualification and the job duties of the vacant employees they simply advertise their vacancies through their website and through news papers like Sunday Observer etc.
Employee selection process of Sovereiigns Integrated (pvt) Ltd
Once an effective recruitment program has supplied enough job applicants via emails, organization faces the task of choosing the best ones for specific jobs in the organization. This selection process involves judging candidates on variety of dimensions, ranging them according to their experience and educational qualifications to the abstract and personal like creative thinking, personality, and communication skills etc. to do this organization relay on a number of selection devices, including applications forms, tests (for checking the creativity of inexperienced candidates) and interviews.
In the selection process of Sovereiings Company, various methods are deployed to discover significant information about an applicant, which can then be compared with the job specification. Though there is no standard procedure adapted to the organization, the following procedure is the most commonly used method in the organization.
Screening of applications and short listening –
After advertising on internet it is obvious that some of the applications received are not in line with the required or advertised qualifications. So the Sovereiigns Company eliminated those applications first, in order to minimize the time wastage. In this screening process company select only the applications which meet minimum entry criteria to the next step. When doing screening Sovereiings never consider about the religion or race of applicants. They only consider whether the applicant have minimum entry requirements or not. For an example they only select the candidates who have a media degree to the post of Media Director.
Initial interview
In this step company determines whether the applicant is in fact as impressive as the application submitted. Through this interview company makes the first personnel contact with the applicant. Some candidates get rejected in this stage. During this interview company explain some of their details about the company (about the products, process) as well as about the job (benefits, facilities) and they give the chance to ask questions from them and clarify the doubts they have. Sovereiigns conduct this interview in an informal way.
Selection tests
As Sovereiings is an advertising Company they want candidates with creative ideas and abilities. So through these tests they more focus on checking candidate’s achievements, abilities and their interests it has no formal procedure either it can be a presentation , group discussions or problem solving games, where the tests are vary according to the job. These tests are mainly conducted when selecting employees who haven’t prior experience. When they are recruiting candidates for higher level jobs or with experience in the same field they don’t use this tests.
Final interview
This is the final step of selecting process of the company and it is a structured interview. Panel of senior employees conduct this interview. Through this interview organization take the final decision whether to select the employee or not.
Reward Management
Generally the company’s work hours are 9.00 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. So employees are supposed to work on that period. No additional payment is given for overtime works.
Company does not follow any costly reward management system for the employee performance since it lacks initial capital.
The aim was to reduce process and improve the line of sight between employees’ contributions to the company's success and increases in compensation.

KPIS, PRODUCTIVITY,

EFFICIENCY, INEFFICIENCY, BUSINESS PROCESS STUDY

Service Level Agreement
Cost, Training Cost, Competitors Opportunity Cost Compare The
Contract Basis 6 Months Well Experienced Cost, -------- Intern’s Routines Are Defined

Technological Development
In the process of transforming inputs into outputs the firm uses several technological equipments such as grills, leaser cutters, Rolland flex printing machine, FY-3278N flex printing machine & Turbojet 8500 printing Machine.
Infrastructure
The infrastructure of the firm consists of functions & departments such as operations department, creative department, Human resource management, legal and finance department, quality assurance function & planning function.
(Small business 2009)
FUNCTIONS
The Sovereiigns advertising firm performs all the managerial functions. Some of these are planning, creation and execution, co-ordination, accounting, media, research and internal control. Planning-
The advertising agency plans the advertising campaign. The management delegates the responsibility of advertising planning and execution to the agency. The agency must have a fair knowledge of the firm’s products, its history, the present market conditions, distribution methods, price level and other conditions. A successful advertising programme is built on the basis of these data.
Creation and Execution-
Specific advertisements are created. The advertising copy is written; the layout is prepared; illustrations are drawn; photographs are finalized; and a correct mechanical form for running it in the selected media is produced. The advertising agency prepares a suitable advertising copy for insertion in all the media.
Co-Ordination: The advertising agency co-ordinates several activities. It often works with the client’s sales force and distribution network to ensure the long-run success of the advertising programme. The combined efforts of sales persons, distributors and retailers ensure maximum sales. Ideas, media, copy and decisions are co-ordinate properly to project and implement the advertising programme.
Accounting: The advertising agency maintains proper accounts in co- operation with the client. The account executives see to it that the agency keeps to the stated plan. The accountant is in charge of the administration of the advertising programme on the agency side.
Misunderstanding arising between the agency and the client is eliminated by the accountant. The amount of fees received from the client and the payment of taxes, bills and other charges are accounted for by the accountant. Media: The advertising agency selects the media or a set of suitable media for the client to reach the right type of audience which is an important factor in media selection. The rates, circulation, population, audience, income and other important information are collected for the purpose. It has to see to that the media plan is carried out properly which is devised to implement the campaign’s communication objectives. The media experts know all about the media and their coverage. They prepare the schedule of advertising, publication, data on printing and the time available from television and radio. Research: Research is a key function in an advertising campaign. The decisions on creativity and media selection are taken on the findings uncovered for research. Research makes every decision systematic and logical, based as it is on facts and figures. Internal Control: The advertising agency manages its employees, finances and other resources effectively and economically. It conducts the business behind the scenes and exercises proper control over activities and funds. Public relations, sales promotion functions and client contacts are maintained by the management for the effective operations of the advertising agency.
BCG Matrix
Sovereigns Company is currently operating in the introduction stage of its industry life cycle. Therefore Sovereigns is using a focus strategy at this stage to stress the uniqueness of the new products to a small group of customers that is the government sector.
Sovereiigns mainly focus on creating a brand name for their product’s quality in the advertising field. But the organization has to go through a severe problem according to the managing director of the organization as they are lacking well experienced permanent persons in the organization. Due to this matter their products and services quality is being reduced severely. So in order to overcome this issue the organization has decided to give training for their untrained and semi trained employees.
Sovereigns is in a high growth market but has low market share in the advertising market according to the BCG matrix position as they currently pay more attention on the government sector advertising such as Dayata Kirula, Rupavahini cooperation, etc. It therefore represents a great opportunity to increase their operations in the private sector as well.
So in order to become a star Sovereigns has to spend a relatively high amount of money on the development of their firms operations otherwise they will have to divest from the industry due to the terrible competition from the dominant advertising firms. Therefore finding the required capital investments to grow the business has become a crucial problem for the firm.
Hence enter in to a new market segment which is the advertising of the private sector firms rather than only depending on the government sector tenders will increase the cash inflow of the organization ensuing the organization to be strength full with their quality based differentiated products. (Wikipedia 2010)

Stakeholder Analysis
Inner circle
The company’s inner circle comprises of employees (permanent, freelances, temporary) of the company, main vendors of the company (Union Metals (pvt) Ltd, Flex Engineering Limited Company ), customers of the company ( BOC , Rupavahini, Deyata kirula, Sri Lanka Insurance, Nomini, Ewsect S, Arpico, Nileka Jewellery, Swisstek, Lanka tiles, etc. ), managers and the shareholders of the company. Sovereiigns company has great relation with government and there’s a straight impact to the company to get lot of government contracts like Deyata Kirula, Rupawahini event handling, etc. So the inner circle also comprise of the government. (Sovereiigns integrated (pvt) Ltd 2010)
Outer circle
The outer circle comprise of competitors like Chillies, A.C. Neilsons, Colombo media group international, Creative factory, Fly ads, Try ads, Grey Colombo etc. and local community, media, pressure groups. Pressure groups of the company include those who interrupt getting government tenders through personal contacts.

Media ,Competitors, Warehouse owner | Government, Shareholders, Customers, Vendors, Managers, Employees | Pressure groups, Local community | Family members of the employees, small advertising firms, |
Stakeholder power
Stakeholder Interest
Low
High

Low
High

Keep satisfied
The sovereiigns company should keep satisfied the competitors of the company, warehouse owner and the media since their power is considerably high so can highly impact the company.
Competitors’ power is high because most domain companies like A.C.Neilson, Try ads, Chillies etc. have a good brand image, industry experience etc. so they are stable in the industry. Since sovereigns is a medium scale company and also a newly established one so the impact from it to the domain companies is very low so their interest is lower.
(Manufacturing terms 2009)
Key Stakeholders
Customers, vendors, employees, managers, shareholders, government, have high power to influence its strategy as well as high interest over the company.
Sovereiigns Company has great relation with government and there’s a straight impact to the company to get lot of government contracts also it is a main customer of the sovereigns.
Keep Informed
The company should keep informed family members of the employees small advertising firms because they have high interest.
Minimum Effort
Sovereiiegns (pvt) Ltd should give out a minimum effort for pressure groups & local community hence they have low power as well as low interest regarding the business.
(Manufacturing terms 2009)

Own in-house & freelance, multi-generational creative staff that includes full-time copy writers, designers and marketing specialists.