Board Room


Business Process
Improvement









Background

This workstream integrates all business processes to reduce administrative cost and better align DAAR with new technologies and digital markets while incorporating a performance management System to measure employee productivity in line with the new Business Model. The workstream reviews the organisation’s process and documentation towards the implementation of ISO 9001 Quality Management System across the group while keeping track of the capital assets and facilities.

It incorporates innovation, digital media and technology to achieve key broadcast functions; devising a means to optimize DAAR Communications broadcast, IT and infrastructure; expansion, integration, strategic alliances and partnerships for increased revenue generation and building new media workflows suitable for cloud-based broadcast processing.

Business Process
It is estimated that the Nigeria Media industry will grow by about 4.2% in the next 5 years. That is by 2025 so it is important that DAAR Communications Business Processes positions the organization to maximize market opportunity and increase market share. The business process defines the series of steps performed by the group and all stakeholders to achieve the new DAAR Communications Vision. Each step in the business process denotes a task that is assigned to the SBUs and their teams (stakeholders) and it forms the fundamental building block for several related ideas such as business process management, process automation all aimed at achieving the business goal.



Exploring an Example of a Broadcast Media Production Process Flow Chart
As discussed, there are various sub-processes that make up the entirety of DAAR Communications broadcast media. To an extent, however, they all serve as functions for the overall process model in broadcast media, the production workflow. Generally, this workflow, or flow chart, features several stages, beginning with media/content creation and ending with a final product. The stages can overlap during certain parts of the process, but tend to follow the process model below:

  • Content Creation/Acquisition: Creation of media, whether from video or film cameras, music recording system, graphics system, etc.
  • Staging, Search, Logging: Acquired media is prepared for the editing process. Usually, staff will log raw media, searching for the best takes, quotes, riffs, etc. and make notes specifying which sections to keep.
  • Editing: Where the magic, and most of the work, happens. Logged raw media starts being put together into a final product. This is a repeating process, with rough cuts continuously going through an approval/rework process until a final version is approved.
  • Management: Assets are managed and archived, watermarked, assigned rights, and possibly sent to affiliates or production houses for use.
  • Delivery, Broadcast, Distribution: Product is made available for consumption. This can take multiple forms depending on the nature of the product, i.e. airing during newscast, posting online, broadcast through online video services, etc.

The need for and advantages of adopting the new business process is quite from all the issues discussed during the Board and Executive Management Retreat. The process forms the lifeline for the business and helps it streamline individual activities, making sure that resources are put to optimal use.
Adopting a new business process affects the Business Objectives of DAAR Communications in the following core areas:


  • Financial – increase cash flow, reduction in account receivables days, reduction in bad debts, revenue growth, new customers, operating income by division and return on investment
  • Customer – increase market share, customer acquisition and retention, customer satisfaction and customer profitability
  • Internal process – Innovation Process (creating products and services to profitably meet the demand of customers), Operating Process (producing and delivering the existing service to meet customer demands, After Sales Service (providing support to customer after sale of service)
  • Learning and Growth – increased spending on capacity building and employee training, reduced absenteeism of employees, reduced staff turnover, increased range of products and services for growing customer base, better reporting process, flexibility in information system, increase in information available on demand from the information system


Strategic Objectives, Business Process and Initiatives

Strategic Objectives Business Process and Initiatives
Cash Flow Market Segmentation, increase in cash sales and Market rate Pricing
Account Receivables Design of Revenue general Model, Automated COT, Billing and Credit Control, Direct Marketing and Sales with Clients
Bad Debt Pre-paid political commercials, Outsource debt collection, legally Enforceable Contracts
DAAR Audience Attract mote new and current affairs audience by eliminating associations with political bias and investing on more content quality
New Audience Attract new viewers by opening conversations relevant to diverse audiences in a context, format and on different platforms
Recovered Audiences Recover old viewers by complying with professional and international best practices, ethics and values

The business process we have adopted is aimed at delivering COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE through these major areas amongst others.


The Major Benefits Of The New Business Process

  • Manage all workflows, actions and tasks
  • Content, product and services are fully customizable by the user
  • Remove operational and process bottle-necks
  • Maximum profitability from every process

Performance Management System

The design of a Performance Management System is a major step at managing and monitoring the performance of the employees of DAAR Communications. Based on the overlapping activities with Workstream 1, the PM activities relies on the findings and data reviews and investigation carried out from Organizational Structure & Human Resources Management Workstream. It focuses on embedding a performance management, culture and aligning vision to business objectives and outcomes across all strategic business units

Leading on from the newly agreed vison, mission and strategic pillars, we will consult with key players in stabilising the appropriate performance management framework for the group. Strategic priorities, business objectives, targets and outcomes will be set for all strategic business units and cascaded down to departments, units and JDs across the group. These will be monitored monthly




Performance Management Infrastructure for DAAR Communications
The PM infrastructure incorporates the following key aspects:

  • Training – The organized process of acquiring knowledge or a set of skills required for particular roles and responsibilities as described in the new JD
  • Placement – For example: placement in internships; matching skills with employee JDs
  • Employment – Condition of having legal, paid, regular work for full and contract staff
  • Wages/Income – Wages are a fixed regular payment made to staff for their contribution to overall organizational
  • Satisfaction – Worker’s level of contentment with services provided and/or current employment situation
  • Return on investment – The profitability ratio comparing program expense with program output.
  • Market Facilitation – Linkages between producers/content creators/services and lead consumers

Performance Management Planning and Documentation
The objectives of this phase were to:

Key Activities

Deliverables

High-level Culture Change Programme Framework/Approach
The objective of this phase was to:

Key Activities


Evaluation of the Performance Management System and Monitoring
The objective of this phase was to:


Key Activities

Deliverables


DAAR Communications Culture Change

To achieve its vision “to rapidly promote Integration of Africa with the World” (to "really make a difference in the broadcasting and communications industry in Africa") DAAR Communications will be providing the right content to her target audience leveraging on her pool of the right people, the right information, and at the speed that meets the need of her consumers.
The Board and Executive Management of DAAR Communications recognized that attending to social and organizational issues is at least of equal importance to addressing strictly technical concerns in the organization. Consequently, a Culture Change Programme was implemented to assist in the management of change and transformation in DAAR Communications, and in particular to facilitate a visionary DAAR with a changed configuration of business that is driven by strategy to succeed, thrive and prosper.

Focus Areas



Approach



The New Culture and Change Management Template


The new DAAR Communications Culture is based on the following:

  1. Clear vision of the new direction for DAAR Communications and promulgating the new vision rapidly through DAAR Communications leadership at all levels
  2. Identifying the core stakeholders of the new vision and driving the organization to be continuously and systematically responsive to those stakeholders
  3. Defining the role of managers as enablers of self-organizing teams and drawing on the full capabilities of the talented staff
  4. Developing new systems and processes that support and reinforce the change of change for the future, drawing on the practices of dynamic linking
  5. Introducing and consistently reinforcing the DAAR values for radical transparency and continuous improvement
  6. Communicating horizontally in conversations and not through top-down commands
  7. Organizing the management roles and systems that will reinforce the vision, change and culture
  8. Collaborating with existing managers and drawing on employees with the shared vision to drive the change and the new DAAR Communications culture


Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Measuring the performance of DAAR Communications employees is an essential part of this Transformation Project and a metric at assessing the business’ financial health and strength in achieving set business objectives. Since the people are the biggest asset, there is a need to ensure that management’s investment in them is paying off.
We put together some of the best universal business KPIs businesses to quickly check high-level employee productivity and effectiveness. Performance appraisals and KPIs were dependent on a broad application of qualitative and quantitative feedback which did not only focus on profit but on overall employee profitability.


Job Outcomes

The results or goals to be achieved by employees was tied to the DAAR Communications corporate strategy and business goals. Each employee’s development need was considered in the goal setting process. Development goals were targeted at either to improving current job performance or preparing for career advancement.
Example job outcomes for an employee developed is described below:


Quality Management System (ISO 9001:2015)

The implementation of a Quality Management System is a strategic decision for DAAR Communications to improve the overall performance and provide a strong basis for sustainable development initiatives in line with Strategic Priorities and the new DAAR Vision. The standard will help to plan processes, interactions and have a risk-based thinking.

Specifically, the ISO 9001:2015 QMS standard will give DAAR Communications international recognition to implement a rigorous and effective quality management system. As well as understanding and meeting our customer expectations, the ISO 9001 standard also focuses on staff development and improvement.
By implementing ISO 9001, DAAR Communications has adopted a continuous improvement practice that provides it the essential techniques to ameliorate working processes. As a result of increased efficiency, all the processes within the organization will be accordingly aligned and understood; productivity will increase, and the costs will decrease.
Critical Issues in DAAR Communications QMS System

Initial Analysis of QMS Framework


Broadcast Technology

Media is changing across the world and DAAR Communications need to keep pace with technologically changes. Media today is driven by technology here individuals and organizations can create and publish content, however, DAAR Communications must build the media platforms and technologies that offer content creators and service providers unique opportunities to connect with and monetise their services on the organization’s different broadcast and signal distribution platforms.

DAAR Communications must leverage on technology to achieve key broadcast functions, devise a means to optimize DAAR Communications broadcast, IT and infrastructure and identify new media workflows, leveraging on the speed and seamless benefit of the internet and digital network infrastructures. Among the key intervention areas the new Business Process Technology and Innovation Transformation workstream will improve on are:

Major Activities and achievements of the Broadcast Technology and New Media for DAAR Communications Leveraging on the speed and seamless benefit of the internet, DAAR Communications built platforms that integrate the needs of broadcasters, advertisers and the target audiences. The new DAAR Communications structure creates opportunity to build content production hubs and offer a platform for creative services and digital platforms to serve interest niches such as websites, mobile applications and games.

Over-the-Top (OTT)

Internet television involves the delivery of video content from video service providers to end users over the public Internet. OTT services can then be accessed by anyone who has a suitable high-speed connection to the Internet.

OTT platform provides all necessary features for OTT operators and completely covers the OTT distribution from a video source to a subscriber. This includes:



Opportunities for DAAR Communications in Technology Driven Broadcasting and Digital media

This statistic presents information on the over-the-top (OTT) TV and video revenue in Africa in 2018 and provides a forecast for 2024, by country. The source projected that the revenue in Nigeria would grow from 43 million U.S. dollars in 2018 to 223 million U.S. dollars by 2024. Being the giant in broadcasting network in Africa, DAAR Communications is better positioned to take a large share of the market base based on the new infrastructure.


INNOVATION AND DIGITAL MEDIA (A Strategy for survival in a changing Media Environment)

The Aims and Goals.


Background and history

The media landscape has changed dramatically over the past forty years. A few broadcasters saw this change coming and adapted in time. Others were protected until recently by barriers against entry for the competition. Some have made slow or partial changes and are now realizing that they must change dramatically or disappear, being buried by the twin forces of pay television and Internet delivered programming.

When this revolution really got going, in the nineties and two thousands, the big players were non-commercial national broadcasters funded by licence fees, direct government funding or versions of the two and/or national commercial broadcasters funded by advertising and, in some cases, topped up with sponsorship.
In many countries there was only one national broadcaster, back in the eighties, while in others there were two or three commercial broadcasters and one or two non-commercial broadcasters. By the late eighties, cable and satellite television was starting to offer additional channels and by the late nineties some countries were faced with over one hundred different channels offering entertainment, news, sports, movies, children’s programmes, etc.

But in most parts of the world, the full economic effects of this were not felt until after 2000. Surprisingly, what few broadcasters allowed for was two inevitable pressures that were created by this incredibly fast expansion of visual broadcast media.

  1. As more and more competitors entered the field, they started to demand a level playing field for competition. Why should they fight each other for advertising revenue, sponsorship or other funding, while governments underwrote broadcasters, who in many caseS were offering their publics the same or similar output.
  2. Many people are not fully aware that advertising expenditure is directly related to GDP. Just because you go from three TV channels to 10, or 100, plus hundreds of ways of reaching markets through Internet programming, does not mean that more money will be spent on advertising. There may be a marginal uplift, but companies that are selling X number of cars, or packets of soap, are not going to move large amounts of money from research or manufacturing, just because there are more places to advertise. Companies just tell their advertising agencies to spread the same budgets more thinly. The pot is the same size. This, of course, meant that advertising income for large commercial broadcasters fell dramatically.
The result of all this change is that those broadcasters and broadcasting groups who have not yet undergone dramatic change must now do so fast, or they will be swamped and go under.


Ways to adapt fast

Do not be selfish.
First step is to avoid the ‘selfish trap’. To be successful in downsizing, a broadcaster must be willing to assist competitors and embrace competitors: First, the most obvious way to adapt quickly is to move one’s programming ‘out of house’ and give it to independent producers. This has been done in whole and in part by various broadcasters around the world. It has not always been successful. Why?
To make the change quickly, one needs to have a growing or thriving independent production sector. That sector must be experienced in producing broadcast quality programming. Generally, it is necessary to retain news and current affairs output in-house to ensure editorial independence and impartiality. Outside of those strands of programming, there is often some expertise in drama in the independent sector, who may have been making feature films or drama for international sale. But finding sufficient numbers of suitable independent producers of documentaries, light entertainment, sport, children's’ programming, etc, is often much more difficult.

The solution is quite simple and can be enacted quickly. In house staff, rather than being made redundant, can be ‘helped’ into independent status by the broadcaster who commissions enough programming to allow them to take the leap out of comfortable ‘in house’ jobs into the independent sector.
Some broadcasters have done this poorly. They have tried to retain the efforts of these new independents on an exclusive basis. This is a disastrous mistake. The independents will be more successful and the load on the broadcaster that is shedding the staff will be reduced, if the new independents work for all the competition, too. After providing the initially agreed amount of programming they must be freed up to serve all comers.
I once outsourced a complete drama department. (Not a popular move) and set it up, with key staff, as a separate company working for all outlets. It became highly successful working for competitors and yet made as much drama for us as the team had done previously. I did the same with a Natural History and Wildlife Unit. It was ultimately sold to the Murdoch empire but kept providing great programming for the company I was running.

Ways to consolidate the changes.
Be brave

It is no good moving programming ‘out of house’ and expecting the new independents to exclusively use ‘in house’ facilities to make their productions. They will not feel independent and will not be independent, so competitors will be reluctant to use the independents. Of course, there may not be enough capacity in the ‘country’ to replicate your facilities.

The answer is to do exactly what you do with programming: move facilities outside and share them with competitors. ( Alternatively, where it is economically better to do so, move one’s own administration and management out to new premises and turn your facilities into an independent company and invite competitors into sharing the ownership of the facilities and the use of the facilities ).
Ideally, where there is more than one traditional broadcaster in the country, one would work with the others to persuade them to make similar changes. ‘Ah’, say those who have always fought with competitors, ‘why should I help them, why would they talk to me or share with me’. The answer is very simple: Facilities (studios, editing suites, sound equipment, outside broadcast equipment, cameras, the staff to work all these facilities ) are enormously expensive and need constant updating now that we have endless changes to broadcast quality and transmission systems. Changes are invented and perfected at a pace unknown in the first 50 years of television and radio. Staying up to date is highly draining of capital.

Sharing facilities makes total economic sense. If broadcasters share their facilities and market them to the new arrivals, it is a win, win for everyone. But if each broadcaster hangs on to its facilities and tries to keep such facilities for their own production, as their revenue base is fragmented, they will not survive and, worse, Nigeria will have too many facilities for the programme producers and those facilities will be un-cost effective


What can be outsourced.

  1. Transmitters and transmission systems.
    In some countries several broadcasters each have their own towers, their own monitoring systems, their own engineers to staff them. Towers are valuable in many countries for phone companies, for cable and satellite broadcasters who want to set up microwave systems between bases. They can be shared. When I was Group CEO and Director General of TVNZ (the national broadcaster of New Zealand), in the early nineties, we set up Broadcast Communications Ltd, placing all their transmission services in the new company and opening it to working for all comers. We then did a deal with Bell Canada and MCI America to start a mobile telephone company, taking a quarter of the shares in the new company and allowing them to use our transmitters for their distribution network. A few years later, Broadcast Communications was working for a wide variety of clients, including the Fire Service of an Australian state.

  2. Outside Broadcast systems and staff
    At TVNZ we also outsourced our outside broadcast capacity and shared it with TV3 and others. We did a deal with an emerging satellite pay TV service, Sky New Zealand and took a significant part of their shares, with the aim of sharing out coverage of sports among other things.

  3. Set Design and Construction
    Why does a broadcaster need to make its own sets, props and other studio furnishings? We set up a special unit and allowed it to work for any entity, from other programme makers to people staging events, agricultural shows, boat shows. Anything.

  4. Studios
    TVNZ shared some of its studios from around that time, marketing them to competitors, advertising agencies and anyone making visual media. The BBC, two decades later, did the same thing with their studios. Thames Television, when it lost its franchise, in 1992, turned its studios into a facilities company and quickly had a wide range of programme makers using what they had to offer. The company was subsequently bought by Pearsons and continued serving the ITV network, among others.

Initial stages

What is important in the first instance is to set up an accounting system that can take advantage of the new independent systems and cope with competitive pricing. It is no good launching studios as independent and open to all and then charging more than competitors. One must charge the same and sometimes less. For a time, there will have to be an internal market and how that is arranged can be critical to making the system work.

It is easy to over-value a studio. It may sit in the books at a value that is based on historical data, from a time when there was no competition or less competition. This must be written down and a sensible charge for usage be set for remaining in-house producers. The best way to get to that point is to allow remaining in-house producers and commissioning editors to also go outside with their business. (In essence, apart from making news current affairs and maybe documentaries in-house, you will be a publisher). If the accountants set the price too high for in-house producers, then they will go elsewhere and so will the independents whom you have created. You do not want them to do that. You want them to use your facilities and shared facilities, so prices must be highly competitive.

Everything must be done in this way. It cannot be the case that a small OB was bought for five million dollars and there is a desire to recoup that money quickly by making it charge higher than competitive prices. The return should come by retaining a substantial, but minority share in the new businesses and being willing to sell down as those businesses prosper. TVNZ made very considerable amounts of capital by selling off all its shares in Sky NZ ( selling completely was possibly not a good move) several years after I left to run satellite broadcaster Star TV, which now covers from Turkey to India under the ownership of the Murdoch empire.


Management of the Process
Communication. Communication. Communication.

I would suggest that, as a start, meetings are held with all staff in small groups. They are to be asked “What would I do to make this company successful in an increasingly competitive environment”. A brief presentation/explanation of the problems and issues should be given. The participants should then be talked through various options and allowed to give their ideas. You need them to OWN the changes.

It is essential that everyone in the staff is kept in touch with all the moves. Done carefully and cleverly, it would be possible for a national broadcaster to downsize by 50% or more using the system I have outlined above. Over a planned period of five years, it should be possible to make most of these changes.

Losing half the staff in redundancies could be intensely painful for everyone, be resisted by unions and management alike. But under the system I am outlining, most of the people who are moved out of ‘in house’ will stay in the business of making programmes and will work in television. They will be independent producers, camera people, editors, set designers, set constructors, transmitting staff, etc. In many instances they will become business owners, with the ideal start in business. In the early days, through the shareholdings you will retain in the entities you set up, they will have support. This can be cast off as the new businesses are built and you withdraw or sell your shareholdings to allow them to fly alone.

Once a week while I was making the changes I made in various companies, I held a divisional heads of department meeting. Each executive, after the meeting, was required on the same day to report the decisions made at our meetings to their immediate reports and each ‘report’ was required to have a meeting to inform their staff and so on down to the lowest rung so that everyone knew what was going on. It was not universally liked. But it worked.

By making the staff “own” the change and involving them at every stage, the change will be achieved more smoothly.



Entering new Markets
Deals are there to be done

A major media company like DAAR Communications can be a great partner for most of the new entrants into media in Nigeria. I presume DAAR currently see competitors as a threat. In my view they should see all competitors as an opportunity.

The very top level, Chair and CEO of the company should, I would suggest, start ( or if such talks have started ) accelerate discussions with existing competitors, new entrants, those who aspire to be new entrants and overseas companies who might not have thought about Nigeria as a territory, but might consider joining with DAAR to create new media entities within the State.

DAAR Communications, by offering size, local expertise, local knowledge and a new innovative vision will be highly desirable to some international players. We understand that staff already talk programming at the international markets, such as MIP, and so staff will have a host of contacts who can introduce Chair, CEO and other execs to key players who might make a good fit.

Outside of radio and television, introductions with telecom players, social media founders and Internet entrepreneurs can be introduced by your advisers. I would recommend that those conversations are opened at the highest level as final planning for the change process is undertaken. Partnering with Nigeria’s existing competitors, aspiring competitors and with international business may change the shape of what I have outlined, so those talks must be initiated as soon as possible.

The starting point for such conversations is very strict NDAs ( and my experience is that will be welcomed ) and a presentation to explain the ambition, the structural changes outlined above and an honest outlining of what DAAR offers, which is not finance in such a deal, but a platform.


Selecting Key Change Managers
Be bold

Identify people who make things happen. It will be necessary to have a team of people who cut through the paperwork and the bureaucracy. In the west there is a saying that one cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs. Executives will have to break a few eggs to get this done in the five-year time frame that I am suggesting. Identify those who do not mind making waves (apologies for mixing metaphors).

Some of the people you will want to have in the management of the project will be currently working at junior rank. I once wanted to build a new HQ and news studio complex for one of my networks, to get rid of eight buildings that were chewing up resources. The people who looked after our properties were not right for building new. I took a deputy news editor out of the newsroom and told him he was in charge of building a multi-million-dollar new HQ and News studios, on budget and on time. He had impressed me as someone who did not tolerate bureaucracy. I gave him the experts to assist him and let him have his head. The result was everything I and the Board had hoped for. On budget, on time.

This will mean breaking those few eggs as some of the bureaucrats in your system (there are always some) will resent such change. If they obstruct, remove them. Mostly, however, you can find an outpost where they can do useful work but not interfere in the radical change.


Politics

None of this can be achieved if a broadcaster cannot take politicians with them. Unquestionably, DAAR will have close relationships with politicians in your country. It is necessary to get them on side by explaining that change in this way will be good for ALL media interests in the country. It is necessary for politicians of all persuasions to understand that by doing it this way, there will be minimum pain to the staff. That doing it this way retains and fosters talent. That these are politically neutral changes and no threat to any other interest. The whole concept is to embrace all others in the media sector and the new media sectors.

Therefore, the change must be carefully explained to all politicians ahead of approaches to potential partners. It will be necessary that none of the politicians ‘own’ the strategy, but all understand it and as many as possible support it.


Actions (in this order)

  1. Prepare politicians and gain general support for change.
  2. Identify potential partners at home and abroad (Issue NDAs and start discussions).
  3. Identify and appoint change drivers. Set up Change Management Board.
  4. Talk to entire staff in small groups to encourage ownership of strategy.
  5. Identify entities to be outsourced and discuss with potential staff and partners.
  6. Decide on parts of organization to be retained. Plan eventual structure.
  7. Detailed financial planning for changes.
  8. Action. (Stages of action to be decided once 1-7 completed)


In summary.
DAAR Communications has an opportunity to relatively quickly achieve all the aims and goals set out at the top of this paper. To achieve those goals, they must NOT get bogged down in complex analysis and endless debate. The Chair and Directors having decided on a strategy (this or any other they have to consider) should simply adopt it. Implementation after that is entirely managerial.

The story is simple: It is not just about DAAR Communications. It is about leading Nigeria’s progress into the whole new world of modern media, in all its forms. DAAR Communications will achieve that by using its weight, reputation and position in Nigeria to craft new alliances, form partnerships with potential and existing competitors and further expand its relationships with international players.

By making these changes it can remain the major force in programme software ware publishing, for all outlets, radio, TV, pay TV, Internet visual and sound programming. It can also set a standard for the rest of Africa and many countries that do not have the resources of Nigeria. It can grow beyond even its current importance and influence.


CAPITAL ASSET AND FACILITY MANAGEMENT
DAAR Communications must keep track of all assets (at different locations of operations), such as vehicles, equipment, and investments. Keeping tabs on the assets helps streamline operations, especially in relation to their sale or disposal. The process was designed to minimizes the chance of recording ghost assets since all the available assets are well accounted for.

Highlights of the DAAR Communications Asset Management Status


GROUP EXPANSION, ALLIANCES AND PARTNERSHIPS

In order to achieve the new DAAR Communications Vision (‘to rapidly integrate Africa with the World’), there is need for business growth and development through group expansion process, forming new alliances and partnerships. This is achieved by creating contents & platforms that fulfil Africa’s unmet media consumption needs. The initial analysis showed the following: