Industry overview

INTRODUCTION:
Flare, is one the leading telecommunication sector magazine, established
in 2004. It played a very important role to make link between user and
vender, carriers and reseller of telecommunication sector. It started with
just 16 pages in first edition but now it has 102 color pages. Its
circulation is around 12000 copies per month, that’s shows, its
popularity among general public.
Mr zubair ahmed kasuri is the editor chief of flair magazine. Flair has
the official website (www.flare.pk), that provide breaking news,
archives, research report and many other latest information about
telecommunication. This site has more than 300,000 monthly unique
users world wide. This site also offers online advertisement on very
competitive rate.

Some Famous Publications:

 BEST SELLING BOOK: Flare has the honor of launching the

country bestselling book “Paradise Lost”. It was published on
October,8 2005 highlighting the earthquake disaster.
 MY HEART ARCHES: Published book “My Heart Arches” that
talks about the cry of Muslims on blasphemous cartoon published
in Danish news papers on sep 30 2005.
 PAKISTAN KHAPPAY: Flare has honor to publish another book
on President of Pakistan; Asif Ali Zafar titled *Pakistan**
Khappay. Flair has also published a pictorial review of legendary
personality in Pakistan politics Shaheed Banazir Bhutto’s life after
her assassination on December, 27 2007
Flair team is also working as research analyst in telecom sector for
providing variety of specialist report through the year. The main object
of flair magazine (mission statement) is to show the both side of the
picture to the reader. Flair do positive criticism on any move which it
thing is beneficiary for telecom and highly praised the good steps taken
by payers in the field

CRITICAL BUSINESS ISSUES and company strategies:

• Financing issues

Flair‘s profit is decreasing because there sales is declining and due

to large cost of outsource printing causes increase the price of
magazine hence profit margin decline. According to flair
correspondent, major reason of decrease in sale is high price of
magazine as compare to our competitors (spider, IT@ internet etc).
To see competitor magazine in figure 1-1.

Strategy:

company layoffs employees to reduce its operating expenditures in long

run.

• Affiliation

According to Flare magazine correspondent Mr. Rashid Hussain

Mugal “Networking is very important for business’s success, but
we still could not find any suitable renowned media organization in
the industry”. Other famous magazine like spider gains market
share and success because they affiliated with dawn group.

Strategy:

Flare owner and chief editor Mr. Zubair Ahmed Ksuri wants to
maintain its separate identity. The main purpose of maintaing
 seprate identity is to introduce flare on electronice media like they
recently started Flare FM 99 Kasur. In near future they are
planning to start TV channel.

• Law and order situation

Many organization like IT, internet and telecom multinational

companies’ windup their business form Pakistan due to law and
order situation. Flare got many ads from these companies after
windup these business they loss huge advertisement revenue.

Strategy: Diversified their marketing campaign and start

publishing other industries ads in magazine like Bank Alfalha,
PIA, Samsung Electronics and Sony Pakistan etc.

Instaone, paktel, dancom, gerry’s net,

Working capital cycle/ cash conversion cycle

• Advertisement is main source of income for magazine. Flare

generates 70% of the revenue from ads and 30% from sales.
However Flare’s account receivable turnover in days is more than
its account payable turnover in days so that’s why company facing
a liquidity problem because they get late advertisement payment
from customers.

Strategy: introduce discounted tariff plans for advance

advertisement payment.

• Decision making

Company head office is situated in Lahore, with branches in

Karachi and Islamabad. Both branched send their progress and
issues report on weekly basis for their solution. This centralized
decision making creates hurdles for branches to make decision on
times.
 Strategy: still adopt centralized decision making.
Proposed STRATEGIES;
Financial issues
Start hiring competitive workforce having social networking skills, and
layoff employees who fail to achieve assigned targets of advertisements.

Affiliation

It’s good to maintain separate identity but in recent competitive business

environment if they affiliate their business with any leading media group
so they can easily generate sales and achieve advertisement targets
through renowned business group.

Law and order situation

In today uncertain law and order situation in Pakistan they adopt strategy
to diversify their marketing campaign is appropriate.

Working capital cycle/ cash conversion cycle

Provide extra services to their client like free broadcast advertisement on

Flare FM 99 and on flare website to attract customers.

Decision making

They should implement to some extent decentralized decision making

approach (like branch related problems) to resolve day to day business
issues.

Workforce

branches 2004 2006 2010

Head office Lahore 38 25 20
Karachi 15 12 6
Islamabad 20 15 8