Harrison KeyesEssay Preview: Harrison KeyesReport this essayRunning head: PROBLEM SOLUTION: HARRISON-KEYES INC.Problem Solution: Harrison-Keyes Inc.Your Name Goes HereUniversity of PhoenixProblem Solution: Harrison-Keyes Inc.Problem-solving and decision-making are basic components of daily business interactions. When delving into the process of decision-making today, major decision makers within a firm must possess a sound decision-making methodology. Over time, top managers have discovered that traditional decision-making processes may lack vital elements of critical thinking for effective and timely decision-making. Therefore, effective business leaders have adopted increasingly thorough and aggressive approaches to outlining alternatives, evaluating those defined alternatives, defining solutions, and assessing risk associated with the defined solutions.
Harrison-Keyes, Inc. is a century-old company that specializes in publishing scientific, technical and business books and journals, professional and consumer books, textbooks, and other educational materials for all levels of study. During that century, Harrison-Keyes has shifted its focus from publishing the works of well-established authors to publishing business, scientific, and technical materials. In the process, Harrison-Keyes has established itself as prominent company in the publishing industry; however, recently increased competition has caused profits to decrease, a new CEO to be hired, and the adoption of a new strategic approach. This new, wide-ranging strategy focused on e-publishing, promises to impact many groups associated with the organization. The effects may not be all positive, but the ultimate goal of the strategy is to improve the organization. Senior leaderships new strategy also has its ethical implications as well. This paper describes Harrison-Keyes current challenges, putting them through the 9-step problem solving model outlining alternatives, evaluating those defined alternatives, defining solutions, and assessing risks associated with the defined solutions with the ultimate goal of implementing a solution plan that will guide the company through this challenging phase toward market leadership and improved profitability.
Describe the SituationOver the course of a century, Harrison-Keyes claimed a substantial share of the publishing market by responding to customer demands as evidenced by its shift to publishing scholarly and business information in the mid-1950s. In recent years, however, the entire industry has begun facing difficulties. Low-cost retail superstores are competing at higher levels than ever before, distribution channels are consolidating, and discounters are cutting into profits. In response to these challenges, Harrison-Keyes Board of Directors has hired a new CEO, Meg P. McGill, who has developed a new strategy for the company centered on e-book publishing. Her strategy entails producing digital versions of printed books and other works of the companys current authors.
Despite the best efforts of the entire organization to implement McGills e-publishing strategy, initial results have been less than stellar. Quite a few issues have arisen that indicate that Harrison-Keyes was not adequately prepared for its venture into e-publishing. In response, the Harrison-Keyes Board of Directors elected to fire CEO Meg McGill and hire William Guardo as her replacement. Mr. Guardo is in favor of more traditional publishing methods and is not a huge proponent of e-publishing; however, he is willing to give e-publishing a chance if the company can deal with certain issues that concern him.
Issue and Opportunity IdentificationHarrison-Keys long history of success is in jeopardy as the company risks losing not only its reputation but also its market share to other publishing companies. The newly appointed CEO, William Guardo, does not like the idea of the online store begun by the previous CEO. In fact, he has given the leadership team 30 days to accomplish the implementation plan or he will relocate funds and resources into other projects. Guardo has over 30 years of experience in the publication business; however, he has very little experience in the high-tech arena putting the new store out of his comfort zone and knowledge base. However, Guardo does bring Harrison-Keyes the opportunity to use his extensive expertise and vast list of contacts to effectively apply to the e-store project.
Jan Peters, Senior Vice President is eager to be promoted and this is the perfect opportunity for her to do so by helping the new CEO learn all the aspects and planning of the online store and by helping achieve a successful implementation that meets all the companys stated goals. This is a serious challenge as she faces a very rigid timeframe; only 30 days to accomplish this and she must keep the same budget that was originally planned. It appears that everything is against the successful implementation of this project but the possibility to overcome the challenges and succeed presents Jan and the rest of the implementation team with the opportunity to earn respect and recognition in the company. More importantly, however, a successful implementation plan will afford the company the chance to it needs to become known in the industry as the team that was able to fix a project that everyone else thought was a lost cause and propel the company toward market leadership and improved profitability. Despite the fact that during the major book campaign launch a great number of resources were used and a poor marketing strategy was employed, therefore causing a slow start for the store, sales grew to 3 million dollars, thus proving that this project could indeed be profitable as only a third of the projected budget of 2.4 million dollars has been used and already is throwing positive results.
To achieve successful implementation, the project team will need to find a new company to which it can outsource the task to digitalize the books that will be sold in the online store. Working with the previously chosen vendor for this task, Asia Digital Publishing has been a challenge for the implementation team since the beginning. The time zone difference and the differences in the work cultures between the two compnaies have already negatively impacted the completion of tasks related to the online publishing project and many deadlines have not been met. The dropped deadlines are a serious issue as they have damaged the companys reputation in some industry publications and upset potential investors
The Digitalization of Books
To work with a publisher, the team must create a novel book format that would provide a unique and accessible look and feel of the content. For every book it would require a more refined, polished and more detailed digital format to offer the most value at reasonable prices. After that, there will be an update to the product that will have all of the necessary changes and enhancements applied to it on a more consistent basis to support it’s unique and unique brand content as a publisher’s content should be available on an increasingly consistent and comprehensive scale by the end of 2018. This process takes time, and the team will need more time to find the right place for it in the market; however, this is expected to continue in the future to the extent and level of difficulty the company can face.
Digitalization is one of the most significant, time-consuming processes and the process begins with the discovery of a new book technology and the initial evaluation where a publisher’s digital image and experience sets one, or more, steps towards the ultimate recognition. The new technology then includes the development of the digital library of the books being considered, making sure that any new book, novel or other content is not missing on the publishers vision; this is an important step toward realizing an online publishing platform that provides a competitive and meaningful distribution for authors and publishers.
If the Digitalization of Books project team is to come up with and implement a plan to create a new digital imprint that is unique content that fits the current and existing publisher’s style, each publisher will need to have a full understanding of the publisher and the publisher’s strategy in order to have a chance to reach the publishers that they wish to reach.
Why are Books and Reviews Important in the Digital Revolution?
The Digitalisation of Books campaign has become a huge campaign and it has been supported by many publishers that have taken some of the early steps to create digital imprints. A great variety of digital content can be created online and can receive a lot of attention: The Kindle e-books, Amazon Kindle eBooks, New Paperback books and so forth; books created by publishers online; book deals and other marketing materials; and more. For example, the first book published in 2013, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, has received an average of 20,000 downloads a month by only 8,000 individuals worldwide. A blog post by Edible Press writer Mike Bickett shows the number of downloads per month. The other interesting factor is the volume of books created. For a publisher who wants to do digital distribution, there is still a lot more to it than one digital book publisher can actually deliver. Therefore, there is an opportunity in publishing that will allow publishers to build on previous success with digital content.
In this post we will compare the strengths and weaknesses of Digitalization of Books to the other digital imprint