SFN report: Profitability, streamlining & technology investments important for cost savings

Posted by Erina Lin on January 26, 2010 at 4:31 PM

The first annual World Newspaper Future & Change Study is a global research study about newspaper publishers' business strategies moving forward for the next five years, with the key objective to inspire newspaper executives to invest and innovate their business units and business practices, the latest SFN's report, Charting the Course for Newspapers, reported.

The purpose of the study is to pinpoint the business and strategic challenges of the world's newspapers, and then to identify the publishers' strategies moving forward to turn the challenges into opportunities.

When asked to list potential areas to produce greater efficiencies and cost savings, by far, profitability was the survey's No. 1 response, rating almost two whole points higher than the next highest category on a 10-point scale.

This suggests good, old-fashioned revenue making as the way media companies can remain successful businesses. Profitability was followed by streamlining workflow and processes for cost savings, and investing in technologies to improve productivity as the next most important ways to achieve greater efficiencies and cost savings in the next year.

Streamlining and increasing productivity might include installing robot-powered plate loading devices onto presses; digitising prepress operations to be computer-to-plate; adding a multimedia content management system; upgrading accounting systems; consolidating the number of printing plants or editing operations; or creating a converged newsroom or advertising department.

Following the profitability and efficiency strategies include cooperating on content syndication, which would include redistribution of content beyond the borders of the media company to companies such as New York Times Syndicate or Tribune Media Services, LexisNexis and the like. Following content syndication, cost savings strategies were the next most popular among newspaper executives, including consolidating internal operations and units, and sharing resources with outside companies for cost savings, according to the study.

The report, released by SFN and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, details the results of the Future & Change Study, completed in partnership with the Norwegian School of Management and the University of Central Lancashire in the United Kingdom, which shows a majority of the 653 respondents around the world are looking to businesses outside the printed newspaper in order to grow revenues and revamp structures along the value chain that are no longer functioning at full throttle.