IDENTIFY WAYS TO IMPROVE QUALITY AND SERVICE while significantly reducing labor costs in a multi-location weekly newspaper
Project Focus
Assessment of workflows, staffing, scheduling, skills and systems related to pagination, ad order entry and editorial.
Financial Benefits
Identified opportunities to achieve:
- 8% annualized labor cost reductions in editorial and production
- 50% reduction in page handling during the pagination process
- 16% reduction in credit adjustments and makegoods
- 20% reduction in operating cost
Recommended Key Changes and Operational Benefits
- Delivered a design to centralize the organization into functional groups versus individual companies
- Recommended reduction of direct reports to GM from 11 to 5
- Completed skills evaluation of all editorial, production, sales and management staff
- Documented 2 detailed workflows; 1 for the pagination process with 3 distinctive processes/flows and 1 for ad order entry process from sales inception with 4 distinctive processes/flows
- Identified 9 “Quick Hits” improvements for immediate implementation related to process and workflow, and systems, technology and reporting
- Developed new models for editorial and ad order entry-each model included:
- Functional organization structure
- Standards of performance
- Roles/responsibilities
- Staffing models
- Workflows
- Outline of critical skill requirements
- Outline of procedure requirements
