Ccp Publishers

Case #1 – CCP Publishers

Team G: Vassiliki Kapnissis, Supreet Cheema, Bilal Khalid, Khalid Mahmood Khan

ACCG22000D – Managerial Accounting

Bill Kerwin

10/01/2016

Introduction:

The book publishing business in Canada is a $1.9-billion-dollar industry, with nearly two-thirds of revenues generated in Ontario, alone (Ontario Media Development Corporation, 2015). As per Statistics Canada and Ontario Media Development Corporation, the Ontario Publishing ecosystem includes large foreign-owned publishing firms, and smaller Canadian-owned publishers with about half of them reporting revenues around under $1 million during the year 2011 (Ontario Media Development Corporation, 2015). Thus, it is imperative to review the publishing industry’s trends and issues in order to have additional supplementary information regarding the case on the CCP publishers:

• As per Ontario Media Development Corporation survey, most of Ontario publishers identified the greatest challenges as the access to affordable capital, changing and improving business models, and competition due to other media (Ontario Media Development Corporation, 2015).
• In order to remain competitive, publishers must put focus on both digital and print publishing as there is no doubt that currently, digital publishing is quite popular and is slightly more profitable, yet physical book sale is still vital.
• The compound annual growth rate for e-books is expected to remain the fastest-growing sector of the global publishing industry and according to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), e-books will generate 52% of consumer publishing revenues globally within the industry by the year 2018 (Ontario Media Development Corporation, 2015).
• As stated in the Book Net survey, 93% of Canadian publishers currently produce e-books as the trend for electronic books is increasing gradually (Ontario Media Development Corporation, 2015).

Traditional Publishing Process:

The traditional publishing process consists of four major steps as given here:

1. Origination: Involves preparing material, refereeing and approval (Scupola, 1999).
2. Processing: Involves text composition and keyboarding (Scupola, 1999).
3. Dissemination: Involves printing, reproduction, and distribution (Scupola, 1999).
4. Indexing: Involves process of abstracting, cataloging, and indexing for secondary publication (Scupola, 1999).

Major Issues and Problems:

Profitability is the major concern for Chris Paraskevopoulos, the CEO and Chief Editor of CCP publishers. Upon analyzing the situation of the CCP publishers, it can be evaluated that the company is not being run on a successful business model basis. The company business structure is as follows:

• 1 Chief Editor CEO
• 4 Editors in addition to the CEO
• 3 Editorial assistants
• 4 Marketing representatives
• 1 Warehouse Supervisor
• 1 Business Manager (the management case analyzer)
• Additionally, the CEO and all four editors are equal partners within the business as well

Problems:

Extra Staffing and Lack of Human Resource:

The company is overstaffed, however, it is especially over staffed with executives. It can be downsized easily as the editorial assistants can work with the authors instead of editors themselves. Rather than having all four editor’s equal business partners, their roles in the company can be minimized and distributed to areas of concern. Moreover, marketing personnel can also be downsized to two or three employees. Furthermore, supplementary efforts can be put on online for marketing and advertising.