While the media played a crucial role in information dissemination during the COVID-19 pandemic, the industry wasn’t spared from the effects of the crisis. According to reports, live events were halted, advertisement spending was reduced, and the print media couldn’t distribute its physical materials due to the readers’ concerns about virus transmission.
But for the Emirati state-owned Abu Dhabi Media (ADM), the challenges still paved the way for breakthroughs and opportunities. The ADM rolled out a renovation plan that focuses on digitization. It allowed the media institution to minimize the damages of the crisis and take advantage of emerging opportunities.
Three ADM outlets (Al-Ittihad newspaper, Abu Dhabi TV channel and Abu Dhabi radio station) were established back in 1969, and they were joined by more media platforms and attached to different entities until the ADM–as it exists today–was established in 2007.
Under Law 13 for that year, the company was established as a joint-stock company with 100m AED in capital worth, initially including nine various platforms. Today, the company has at least 22 traditional and online brands to its name.
In February 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic started to weigh on the country, ADM announced its transition to digital content. While this may seem like a result of the pandemic, the renovation plan has its roots in the company’s 2007 establishing law, which recognizes digital content as an important domain for ADM to pursue. This reflects on digital-first content being one of the value pillars that the company is holding to. Furthermore, the plan was driven by one the organization’s first strategic priority: to maintain financial stability through “efficient finance and resource management and diversified revenue streams.”
Digital transformation has been inevitable for ADM, and the pandemic accelerated it. This is generally true due to the advancement of media technologies and also true in a country that has the highest internet penetration percentage globally. Ninety nine percent of UAE’s population use the internet while only 22% read offline newspapers, according to Northwestern University in Qatar’s Media Use in the Middle East 2019 survey.
Rebranding to digital: ADM introduced rebranding methods to all of its affiliated channels, stations, newspaper and magazines, to recalibrate their orientation towards the digital horizon.
Enhancing digital presence: A part of the rebranding was to remodel all of the affiliated outlet websites to be more dynamic, mainly through taking care of user experience (UX) and user interface (UI).
Boosting digital content: This enhancement allowed expansion in digital-first content. The veteran Al-Ittihad newspaper started offering audio-visual content, including live streams on social media. The women’s Zahrat Al-Khaleeg magazine started introducing interactive content with extra men-engaging conversations. Meanwhile, Maged’s children magazine had its whole parallel virtual universe established. The digital-based platform Muhtawa also released more than 1,000 videos over the following months.
Expanding Video on Demand (VoD): Video content was also available to be watched on demand over the internet. This was offered through the enhanced websites as well as through the bunch of mobile applications that ADM continued to develop. It made sure the applications are available on all mobile operating systems, mainly Android and iOS.
Taking advantage of SVoD: ADM took advantage of audience readiness to pay subscriptions for content through some of its mobile applications (like UFC Arabia). It also widened its partnership with STARZPLAY, one of the most famous SVoD platforms in the GCC, to premiere its original productions.
Extending through OTT technologies: ADM made sure that more of its content is compatible to consume through technologies like Press Reader and Amazon Alexa as well as fostering its presence on Apple TV and Android TV platforms.
Growing library: To meet the accumulating demand due to the increasing audience consumption, ADM added 60 different titles across its platforms.
Meeting the growing interest in news: A considerable portion of the new titles was news and information in nature to help the audience make sense of what is going on in the COVID-induced reality.
Reducing the cost of print: The company turned its magazines Zahrat Al-Khaleeg and Maged to monthly periodicals. This led to reduced costs and more digital offerings and extensive content.
Towering results
The real test for ADM’s plan came in Ramadan in April and May 2020. The Islamic holy month is when media outlets across the MENA region, especially TV channels, get surging consumption. This is a pattern that peaks during the curfewed Ramadan.
For that month, ADM reported a 20% increase in Abu Dhabi TV’s viewership rates across the UAE and 90% across the neighboring Saudi Arabia, compared to Ramadan 2019. The company described the figures as “exceptional” percentages. The recently enhanced OTT channels gathered 7.25m views, with 190,000 new downloads for the channel’s mobile application.
Other published results for the longer period following the plan’s launch included a 500% year on year hike in the number of views for Muhtawa digital platform during the first three quarters of the pandemic year and 1,500% increase in the number of its followers.
Key business lessons
Here are the principles that made ADM’s digital transformation journey possible and could be adopted by businesses in any industry.
An open-look strategy: ADM could have struggled more if it didn’t consider digital transformation in its strategic priorities. Anticipating what the future may hold when formulating a business strategy better prepares companies for any event.
Flexibility: Recalibrating one’s systems towards the digital world required a considerable level of flexibility from ADM. This helps businesses build resilience and capability of working around challenges and taking advantage of opportunities.
Agility: ADM took the courageous leap in the early stage of the pandemic when the whole world was still trying to make sense of the disaster. This quick decision making and implementation saves the business a chain of losses and opens breakthroughs for possible gains.
Courage for pioneership: Both flexibility and agility require courage, but ADM also proved a courage for pioneership as they jumped into unfamiliar territories. They created a parallel virtual universe for a magazine that has lived on paper for decades and betted on SVoD services, which remain rare in the MENA region. This kind of courage is about accepting that hard questions cannot be met with easy answers.
For more lessons on developing new strategies for your business, check out the Strategy and Business Planning Professional Certification course offered by The KPI Institute.
Telenor Group is a telecommunication provider in 14 countries across Europe and Asia. They depend on reliable, cost-effective operational expenses and faith in delivering results when they choose their partners.
Aamir Ibrahim, the chief strategy officer, vice president cooperative fairs in Telenor Pakistan, explained their main principles in choosing their partners in the Pakistani market.
He believes that customer experience is very important to stay in the market. He said that customer experience is controlled mainly with network availability, which should show strong and continuous coverage all the time.
However, such availability brings more costs to the company in terms of power consumption and power infrastructure availability. This led them to look for other solutions to reduce operational expenses while providing the best services for their customers.
Atiq Ahmad, the chief technical officer, noted that finding a partner who can provide the right solutions for their problems while keeping the expenses within the budget has been one of the company’s main concerns.
All of these factors fit Nokia Siemens Network, showing Telenor-Pakistan that they can depend on them to provide robust products that can ensure the results they agreed on and consider the quality and reduction in operational expenses.
Nokia Siemens Network proved that they deserve to have a long-term partnership by providing efficient and cost-effective solutions for Telenor-Pakistan’s problems. These solutions are also within Nokia’s specialization.
Nokia Siemens Network accomplished this by doing continuous research on the telecommunication sector in terms of needs and the future developments that can be done to keep telecom providers competitive in the market. This way, they ensure the availability of solutions for problems that telecom providers face.
One of those problems is the end-to-end energy issues that telecom companies like Telenor-Pakistan face in terms of high operational expenses. Another is the environmental effects caused by the power networks that operate their sites. However, Nokia Siemens Network strived to provide different solutions to reduce operational expenses, provide trustful networks, and reduce environmental risks.
High experience in the market and good knowledge of customer needs and society’s expectations from a telecom provider are the factors why Nokia Siemens Network was chosen as the service partner for EMBARQ, a leading provider of broadband, entertainment, and voice services in the United States.
Jim Hansen, the senior manager of EMBARQ, said that to stay competitive, they should focus on what they are good at and find the right partner who can manage the sectors in which they are not specialized so they can get the best customer and meet employee satisfaction.
Tom Oothoudt, the manager of strategic planning and network operations focused on that Nokia Siemens Network, said that they are willing to improve their capabilities as well as their resources and solutions shared with EMBARQ to ensure reduction in operational expenses, customer satisfaction, and trusted solutions that will give advantages to the company in terms of results and high quality of services.
Maziad Al Harbi, the general manager of network services solutions at Saudi Telecom Company, a telecom provider in Saudi Arabia, said that the main reason for choosing Nokia Siemens Network to be their partner in delivering advanced services and the required platforms for their implementation is that they are experts in the Saudi market. Moreover, Nokia Siemens Network is said to have advanced knowledge of the market’s needs and what is required to satisfy the customers in addition to their worldwide experience.
He added that they are always active and doing their best to deliver the best solutions as the telecom company offers advanced services to the market faster than other competitors.
All of these reasons are accompanied by the teamwork that Nokia Siemens Network promotes. They believe that working closely with their partners strengthens the relationship, provides better solutions, and ensures a long-term relationship.
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Corporate gifting has become a $125 billion business in the US market alone. Corporate gifting is the practice of valuing and motivating employees through gifts, such as gift cards, branded items, edible treats, and non-physical favors like an eGift card or an experience. But what do employees generally think when they receive such gifts from the company they work for?
The 2019-2020 Knack Business Gifting Strategy Report reveals that 77% of gift recipients feel more appreciated by the gesture. Sixty-seven percent believe that the giver values their relationship, and 59% think they did a great job. Forty percent report increased loyalty and a desire to work with the company longer.
However, the feeling of connectedness to the company increases by 50% if the gift received is “memorable.” So, what are the business gifting expectation gaps, and what does the strategy for memorable gift-giving look like?
The Business Gifting Expectation Gap
According to the 2019-2020 Knack Business Gifting Strategy Report, the most important factor that drives employee opinions as far as the corporate gifts they receive are concerned is the thought that went into the gift. Employees believe that it is important that the gifts received are selected for them, especially that the gift includes a personal message and has the employee’s name or initials on it.
As for the satisfaction levels with the gift received, the most satisfied employees seemingly receive gift cards. The most dissatisfied employees are those who received company-branded items, significantly less, for that matter, than employees who received gifts of any other nature. Employees also agree that company-branded items are the least memorable gift a company can offer its employees.
The Strategy of Memorable Gift Giving
To make the best impact with its gifting initiative, any company should apparently focus on the uniqueness of its gifts, gifts with distinctive value attributes, and items that give back in some way. Another important factor to consider is that aside from gift cards, employees can only estimate the value of a corporate gift. That is why it is important that companies focus more on quality rather than quantity while making the most out of the manner in which the gift is presented to the employee in question.
The quality of the gift unwrapping experience can positively add to the value of the items within. The 2019-2020 Knack Business Gifting Strategy Report reveals that in most circumstances, employees do not expect to receive gifts that cost more than $150, while the average spending amount per gift revolves between $50 and $150.
How to Do Corporate Gifting Right
Planning and developing an effective corporate giving strategy turns out to be a little more complex than one thinks. The following best practices can be applied in terms of making the corporate gifting initiative easier for the HR and administrative staff while also creating a memorable experience for company employees:
Establish a gifting initiative plan and budget: Outline the objectives of the initiative and set specific parameters for completion. For example, consider shipping fees for remote employees and packaging options for on-location recipients.
Consider corporate etiquette for the gifting strategy: When giving personalized gifts, companies must ensure that gifts are maintained within the same monetary value and abide by the corporate guidelines.
Practice outstanding personalization: Put the necessary time and effort in to make employees feel like the gifts were specially selected for each of them. While satisfaction with any gift may be part of the equation, memorability drives the loyalty and connectedness that create the ROI.
Corporate Gifting Trends in 2021
Gift cards are the gifting solution that always fits. They continue to be the safest and the most universally satisfying option for corporate gifts in 2021. Gift cards can be easily personalized while giving employees exactly what they want. E-gift cards seem to be the latest trend in card gifting in the corporate world, and millennials especially prefer them.
The corporate gifting business is booming. Gifting to employees is expected to grow even more in 2022, fueled by C-Suite Executives, 40% of whom plan to budget more for gift-giving strategies in the following year.
The desire to incorporate unique brand values into corporate gifts has reached its climax. Memorable gifting experiences humanize businesses while bonding and strengthening the relationship between an organization and its employees.
Company-branded gifts have taken a major downturn. “Cheap” things with company logos on them are ranked first in the “Worst gifts ever received by a company employee.” Moreover, company-branded items drive the least satisfaction and are least appreciated by the millennial population segment.
An essential part of assessing a company’s overall situation is determining the relative worth of its competitive assets, which are made of various resources and capabilities. This can gauge a company’s competitive power in the marketplace and detect whether it is impressively strong or disappointingly weak.
Analyzing resources and capabilities helps managers define the competitive advantage of the company. It also helps them determine if they can provide the foundation needed to sustain that advantage. The process involves two steps.
Identifying the company’s resources and capabilities
A firm’s resources and capabilities are the core components of its competitive strategy. This is why it is essential that managers have a clear understanding of these terms.
A resource refers to a type of competitive asset that a firm can control or acquire. It can be a variety of things, such as production capacity, raw materials, and competitive advantage. Some firms have the advantage of being able to acquire higher-quality resources than their rivals.
A company’s brand is a resource, but some of its products are well known and have enduring value, while others are not. Similarly, Some R&D teams are more productive and innovative than others due to their talents and chemistry.
A capability is the ability of a firm to perform some tasks and services that are supported by its resources. Like resources, capabilities vary in form, complexity, and competitive importance.Most companies have recognized the capabilities of their organizations through the deployment of their resources. Some examples include Apple — for its product innovation capabilities, PepsiCo — for its marketing and brand management capabilities, and Nordstrom — for its superior incentive management capabilities.
In identifying resources, a company’s resources can be divided into two categories: intangible and tangible.
Tangible resources are those that are easily touched or quantified. They include various physical commodities such as mineral resources and manufacturing facilities, and they also include various financial and technological resources of a company.
Intangible resources are often among the most valuable assets of a company. They include various intangible assets such as intellectual capital, human resources, and brands. Some of these assets are also known as intangible assets of the company.
When identifying capabilities, itis important to note that an organizational capability is complex. It is built up through the use of various resources. Most of it is knowledge-based, and its structures and processes are designed to support this process.
For example, the video game design capabilities for which Electronic Arts is known to derive from its highly talented game developers’ creative talents and technological expertise, the company’s culture of creativity, and a compensation system that generously rewards talented developers for creating best-selling video games.
Due to the complexity of the capabilities, it is harder to identify them properly. There are two approaches to uncover and identify a firm’s capabilities.
The firstmethod starts by listing the resource as a starting point for assessing a firm’s capabilities. Since resources are built from them as they are utilized, they can provide clues about the type of capabilities that the firm has. For instance, a firm that has established specialized capabilities in logistics may be able to benefit from the latest RFID tracking technology.
The secondmethod of identifying a firm’s capabilities takes a functional approach. Many capabilities relate to fairly specific functions; these draw on limited resources and typically involve a single department or organizational unit. Capabilities in direct selling, promotional pricing, or database marketing all connect to the sales and marketing functions. Meanwhile, capabilities in basic research, strategic innovation, or new product development link to a company’s R&D function. This approach requires managers to survey the various functions a firm performs to find the different capabilities associated with each function.
Examining the company’s resources and capabilities to decide which are the most competitively important and whether they can support a sustainable competitive advantage over rival firms.
The second step in assessing a company’s competitive power is to determine which assets are competitive and which can support a firm’s strategy and competitive advantage. This step is designed to evaluate its ability to sustain its competitive advantage.
The four tests that measure a resource’s competitive power are the VRIN tests. VRIN is a shorthand reminder standing for Valuable, Rare, Inimitable, and Nonsubstitutable.
The first two tests determine whether a resource or capability can support a competitive advantage. The last twotests determine whether the competitive advantage can be sustained.
VRIN tests for sustainable competitive advantage ask whether a resource is Valuable, Rare, Inimitable, and Nonsubstitutable.
Is the resource or capability competitively Valuable?
To be competitive, a resource or capability must be relevant to its strategy and make it more effective. The resource or capability must also contribute to its overall business model and improve its customer value proposition.
Is the resource or capability Rare? Is it something rivals lack?
Resources and capabilities common among firms and widely available cannot be a source of competitive advantage.
Is the resource or capability Inimitable? Is it hard to copy?
The more difficult and costly it is for competitors to copy a company’s resource or capabilities, the more likely they will provide a competitive advantage. This is usually because doing so will require the company to spend a large portion of its resources implementing a strategy and operations that are not easily imitated.
Is the resource or capability Nonsubstitutable? Is it invulnerable to the threat of substitution from different types of resources and capabilities?
Even competitively valuable, rare, and costly resources to imitate may lose much of their ability to offer a competitive advantage if rivals possess equivalent substitute resources.
Most firms do not have the capabilities or resources to consistently pass the four tests. This is because many of them have a mixed bag of resources and capabilities – one or two quite valuable, many very good, some satisfactory to mediocre, and so forth.
Passing both of the first two tests requires more—it requires resources and capabilities that are valuable and rare. This is a much higher hurdle that can be cleared only by resources and capabilities that are competitively superior. Resources and competitively superior capabilities are the company’s true strategic assets. They provide the company with a competitive advantage over its competitors, if only in short.
A resource must maintain its competitive advantage and competitive superiority in the face of increasing competition. It must also resist the efforts of its competitors to find equal or inferior substitutes.
Only a few companies can truly pass the four tests. Some of these companies have the capabilities to endure and grow beyond the expectations of their peers. One example is Walmart, which can manage its logistics and supply chain operations that have surpassed its competitors for over 40 years.
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For an organization to achieve and sustain outstanding results that meet or exceed the expectations of its stakeholders, it is necessary to define an inspiring purpose, create an aspirational vision, develop a strategy centered on creating sustainable value, and build a winning culture.
Direction setting prepares the way forward for the organization, but it needs to execute its strategy effectively and efficiently. The organization must
know who the stakeholders are in its ecosystem and engage fully with those that are key to its success;
create sustainable value;
drive the levels of performance necessary for success today and, at the same time, drive the necessary improvement and transformation once it becomes successful in the future.
When stakeholders that are the most important to the organization, such as key stakeholders, and are independent of the specific groups have been identified, it is likely that there is a degree of similarity in applying the following principles when engaging key stakeholders.
An outstanding organization:
identifies the specific types and categories within each of its key stakeholder groups;
uses its understanding of the key stakeholders’ needs and expectations to achieve continuous engagement;
involves key stakeholders in deploying its strategy and creating sustainable value;
recognizes the contributions the key stakeholders make;
builds, maintains, and further develops the relationship with key stakeholders based on transparency, accountability, ethical behavior, and trust;
works with its key stakeholders to develop a common understanding and focus on how, through co-development, it can contribute to and draw inspiration from the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and Global Compact ambitions; and
actively gathers the perceptions of its key stakeholders rather than wait for them to make contact.
Build Relationships and Ensure Support for Creating Sustainable Value
Partners and suppliers are the external parties that the organization chooses to work with to fulfill its purpose, achieve the vision, deliver the strategy, and reach shared objectives that benefit both parties.
In practice, we find that an outstanding organization:
understands the stakeholder model for its key partners and suppliers, with a clear segmentation based on the organization’s purpose, vision, and strategy;
ensures its partners and suppliers act in line with the organization’s strategy and that mutual transparency, integrity, and accountability in the relationship is established and maintained;
builds a trusting relationship with its key partners and suppliers to support the creation of sustainable value;
works proactively with its key partners and suppliers to leverage the culture, expertise, and know-how of both parties and achieve mutual benefit.
Partners are considered operant resources that should also act on operand resources to co-produce value with customers and the firm to ensure the best results are delivered to customers.
It’s a matter of value creation, which considers partners part of the core competencies. We should focus on choosing them and how they interact on the value chain to help improve the results in customer satisfaction and customer involvement.
Choosing the Right Partner
It’s a matter of interest. This is how Benoit Hanssen, the chief technical officer of Hutchison CP Telecommunication Indonesia, described one of the ways of choosing the right partner.
He said that as long as business goals match the partner’s business goals, everyone can ensure that they have chosen the right partner for a long-term relationship with a win-win strategy.
Moreover, choosing the right partner adds another competitive advantage to businesses. This occurs by depending on them to be part of the business and learn how to deal with customers and by increasing their participation in the value co-creation.
Open relationships in terms of communication and exchange of data is another factor in choosing the right partner.
They have to ensure a smooth exchange of information with the firm for a long-term relationship that will bring benefits to both entities. This is accompanied by removing the boundaries between firms and their partners. Vargo and lusch stated that partners should agree on having an open relationship from the beginning while firms have to ensure fair treatment for all their partners. They also added that firms’ partners should understand the environment they will work in, the cultural boundaries, and the cultural development; all of these are considered important factors that partners should contribute to understanding them and acting with the firm according to them.
Attractive costs and full attention to the risk of offers delivered to the market are other factors when choosing the right partner. Partners should work closely with the firm to convey their solutions to the firm within the budget offered and make sure that the solutions offered can effectively add value to the firm and help improve their business. This is done by having partners who focus on developing their businesses research and study the market and the business they are partnering with. This way, they can develop solutions that can continuously help their partner (the firm) solve their problems, improve their presence in the market, and develop benefits among other competitors.
Improving the existence in the market and increasing the resources available to have additional knowledge about the market needs and perform strongly among other competitors are reasons for choosing the right partner. This directs us to more factors that play a major role in choosing business partners: a partner that has good knowledge about the market and customer needs and can add value to the firm through resources and capabilities.
Moreover, when firms try to offer more services or products to the market that are considered new for the firm in terms of capabilities and resources available, it may not be enough to proceed with such an option. Even when firms enter new markets, there are reasons to dig deeper in other firms’ strategies and potentials. It is important to look for partnerships with advanced capabilities and resources that are not just focused on the present time but are ready for technological developments and to produce outstanding output.
On the other hand, a partner’s reputation in the market is crucial. It gives the firm an advantage before its competitors because customers, suppliers, and even other partners will consider competitiveness as a reason to consider the firm.
In addition to reputation, previous achievements that are related to the quality of solutions offered by firms are also important. It will reduce the amount of pressure when monitoring partners’ outputs, especially when they offer services that are difficult to monitor.
Moreover, managerial capabilities should be taken into consideration when choosing a partner since it can play a major role in helping the firm learn more from this partner and facilitate the exchange of skills and experience.
