Page 3 - CIMA SCS Workbook August 2018 - Day 2 Suggested Solutions

CIMA AUGUST 2018 – STRATEGIC CASE STUDY

Finally, there has been no detail provided on how revenue will be earned on the sale of digital
titles? Does the company intend to introduce paywalls for all of its titles? What is the alternative
for FNG to monetise its digital content?

Conclusion

Digital platforms are undoubtedly the future for our industry and, if FNG is to survive as a media
company, it will undoubtedly need to make strategic moves to invest in such areas. However,
moving all titles to digital in one move and ending the physical news copy is high risk; if it does not
succeed, the company is likely to struggle to survive.

A better proposal might be to see the switch to digital as a gradual process, starting with perhaps
1 title as a pilot scheme and seeing how that succeeds. Any lessons that need to be learnt can
then be applied to other titles in due course.

Resistance to change

When the announcement is made about the switch to digital, there will inevitably be a reaction
from those affected. These notes will examine why resistance will occur and then suggest how to
manage it.

Causes of resistance

There are a number of reasons why those who will be impacted by the change. Within FNG, this
means the employees, but externally there may be some criticism of the company’s plans,
particularly from those readers who still prefer to read a printed newspaper. The latter will simply
need to be shown that digital is a valuable product, and good marketing of the benefits of digital
versus print should gradually reduce such resistance ( instant updates on news, better for the
environment, accessible anywhere etc.). Accordingly, these notes will address the internal
resistance.

The following factors lead to resistance:

Fears over job security

The general workforce will recognise that our industry is in a state of change in general, and they
will have read stories of other media companies announcing redundancies (for example, TJ
Publishing’s recent announcement). It will therefore be natural to fear the worst, that if such a
change occurs at FNG that they may also lose their jobs. This inevitably leads staff to try to resist
the change as much as possible, and they will undoubtedly be encouraged to do so by their
unions.

Inability to cope

In many change circumstances staff are asked to develop new skills. This leads to resistance to
that change on the grounds that they don’t know if they will be able to cope (the old saying, ‘you
can’t teach an old dog new tricks’).

62 KAPLAN PUBLISHING