1 Automation Of PR (GB Auto)

Information Technology Management Course

Project

Automation Of The Public Relations Department Using

“Mention”

GB Auto

By: Amr Tarek Mahmoud

ID: 600131185

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Contents Abstract: ..................................................................................................................................................................... 3

Background: ............................................................................................................................................................... 3

Chapter I- Objectives: ................................................................................................................................................ 5

Chapter II-Current Departmental Status: .................................................................................................................. 6

Chapter III-Negative Impacts: .................................................................................................................................... 8

Chapter IV-Recommended Solution: ......................................................................................................................... 9

Chapter V-Solution Implementation: ...................................................................................................................... 12

Chapter VI-Conclusion: ............................................................................................................................................ 15

References: ............................................................................................................................................................... 17

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Abstract: This paper explains the current and future procedures of the automation process inside the public relations section at GB Auto’s marketing department using Mention Application which is a mobile App and a web platform to track, analyze and report news in a customized automated way to react to the market changes in the fastest possible way and have a better exposure to the market and the corporate image. Also the Information technology management strategy is discussed according to the departmental business needs conforming to the overall corporate strategy.

Background: GB Auto:

The Ghabbour Group is an Egyptian manufacturer

of automobiles, buses, trucks and motorcycles located in Cairo.

The company was founded in 1960 by the brothers Kamal and Sadek Ghabbour because they

realized that the automotive sector is a growing market. In its first time the company was

named Ghabbour Brothers Today the Group is manufacturing vehicles for a lot of brands such

as: Bajaj Auto, Hyundai and Volvo. With an output of annual 150,000 units is the Ghabbour

Group currently the largest automobile manufacturer of Egypt.

Corporate Strategy:

Ghabbour Auto’s strategy is built on three core axes: Investing in Core Businesses, Leveraging Business Relationships, and Capturing on Expansion Opportunities.

Investing in core businesses, Ghabbour Auto is creating a one-stop shop for consumers by vertically integrating sales, finance and after-sales support functions under one roof. The company is investing in an unmatched nationwide distribution and after-sales network, as well as positioning its products as having the lowest ownership cost in the market, further cementing the company’s strong position across the widest range of products. Leveraging its domestic strength and regional footprint, Ghabbour Auto is strengthening its business relationships with existing partners while searching for the best brands with which to open new lines of business. Ghabbour Auto is the clear partner of choice in Egypt’s automotive sector, a position the company is actively seeking to replicate in other Middle Eastern and African markets. While maintaining and growing its strong position in the Egyptian and Iraqi markets, Ghabbour Auto is working on expansion opportunities in a number of countries starting with North Africa, in partnership with leading global brands and using a diversified portfolio of products.

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Marketing Department Structure:

Figure 1: Marketing Department Hierarchy

PR Department:

This section lies under the umbrella of the marketing department and is a supporting function

with the following scope:

o Corporate (GB Auto) Reputation Management via preserving good and efficient

communication

With different local and multinational customers, media channels including social media

and press.

o Competitors News Monitoring Vs. Corporate News Monitoring

o Based on the previous step, multiple media and news analysis techniques are

implemented

o The Results are reported monthly and on some exceptional occasions.

o Corporate Social Responsibility Activity planning and Implementation.

Marketing Director

CRM PRCommunication

TeamEvents

Digital Marketing

Marketing Vice Director

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Chapter I Project Scope and Objectives:

According to the explained structure and the functional scope of the PR section, the

automation project is implemented for maximizing the section efficiency and reaching the

optimum performance that benefits the whole marketing department and serving the

objectives of GB Auto’s corporate strategy. This can be specified through the following figure:

Figure 2: Scope of the Automation Process

The automation in the public relations department will focus on the internal daily processes that

includes ad hocks and will be mainly aiming at enhancing the news monitoring that includes GB

Auto’s news in different news wires, Competitors’ news in the passenger cars automotive market,

Automotive industry news and the latest governmental strategies affecting this industry.

That takes the process to the next phase which is the public relations reports that demonstrates the

gathered news about the previously stated topics in a customized way that benefits different

business stakeholders inside and outside the marketing department to reach strategic decisions

based on the market updates stated in those reports which are delivered on weekly, monthly and

annual basis. The automation process helps in the enhancement of the report digital content

preparation.

Also the enhancement in the reports delivery time management and automation of the news analysis

process and optimization of the combination between the content and the analysis to make the

reports in the most concise and efficient format.

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Chapter II Current Departmental Status:

Before reaching the automation phase implementation the business environment in the public

relations department faced some departmental difficulties in different aspects and needed

some adjustments to prepare the business environment in the department to utilize any IT tool

in the most beneficial way serving the needs of both the business unit and the corporate

strategies. The following table summarizes the departmental status before the automation

phase and the adjustments needed to prepare the way for any upcoming automation approach.

Process Element Present Future

Decision Making

Team Weekly Meeting for :

Discussion of weekly bottlenecks.

Manual data Analysis for projects

Time planning

Voting upon any team decision.

Discussing past Weekly activities

Team Weekly Skype meeting except For critical issues or ad hocks.

Automated data analysis and documented feedback using preset criteria.

Voting via polls except for issues that need extra details or discussion.

Weekly electronic submitted reports/documentation for the past week activities.

Decision Taking

Setting Time Plans on spot

White board/Sticky notes

Orally

Trial, error and testing on real material.

Using IT Tools to simulate different activities before Real implementation

Using Project Management Software or ERPs to generate What Supports future and current taken decisions.

Information Management

Diversified Types and sources of Information

One Digital Platform Where all the needed information can be easily shared according to tasks and authorities.

IT Tools Email,Internet,Intranet,Oracle Same Tools+SAP+News Monitoring

Online Application(i.e. Mention)

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Organizational Structure (Public Relations Team)

Partial Automation

No Automation

Manual News Scanning

Manual Data Entry

Manual News Content Rating

Manual Advertisements Campaign Rating.

Semi-Automated Analysis Microsoft Excel

Manual Data Visualization

No Organized Data Storage

Automated News Scanning

Automated Data transfer and Entry

Automated Neutral Content Rating

Automated Analysis Using the tools stated in IT Tools above

Automated Data Mining and Visualization.

Digital Data Storage Management Plan

Digital Archiving

Using Dedicated Servers.

Flow of Information

Info gathered from different sources.

Documented In Categorized Reports.

Reports are then sent to the Section Head

Concurrent Teams with shared info using enhanced Tools stated above.

Empowerment Limited delegation More delegation Objectives Without Using Scorecards Using Automated Scorecards

Results

No Proper documentation Using results reporting system where every team member documents every project results that go through validation Process.

Evaluation Subjective Using Opinions and paper forms

Objective Using IT tools and Analysis

Marketing Director

PR Section Head

Online PR and CSR Specialist

Content Specialist

Marketing Director

PR Section Head

Online PR and CSR Specialist

(Vice PR Section Head)

Content Specialist (Vice PR

Section Head)

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Chapter III Negative Impacts:

The current status of the Public Relations department without significant automated processes had various negative impacts on the departmental performance and the information management affecting the workflow and the task assignment inside the department. The main problems inside that department which formed multiple challenges against any automation systems decreased after the adjustments but did not completely disappear. Any automation solution will be expected to solve the problems in the empowerment of team members and organize the workflow between them in an efficient enabling way.

The automation approach should fix the flow of information inside the marketing department and also through other supporting functions in GB Auto and this will be via highly optimized digital reports to meet all information requirements form the internal customers dealing with the PR department. The digital archiving of the collected data all over the printed and digital documents will be one of the main challenges facing any automation project. The following table summarizes the challenges and the last phase in the adjustments made to make the working environment ready to receive any automation proposal:

Challenge Solution

Change Resistance

Testing the new IT Tools on a pilot minor project with minimal risks to prove the beneficial return on investment to be used in future projects and decrease resistance.

Lack Of Empowerment

Using the automated appraisal system

This allows the team members to set their own objectives that makes the situation a win-win situation for the members’ career path and the business unit.

By the end of any project the system can automatically track the implemented objectives and if not implemented what stood against that.

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After applying two phases of very (low cost-high impact) adjustments, the PR department working

environment and processes are ready enough to receive the automation proposal and adapt to it

using the minimum time resources.

This will flatten the team structure and increase the accountability of the team members and rise the sense of ownership for each and every task.

Web Peer Assessment System

Flow Of Information

Using Google Shared Spreadsheets

Using Google Docs

Using Common Digital Portal to Access all newly added Information categorized by topic.

Archiving

Investing in Servers for adding virtualized Storage to save much more digital data and multimedia.

Data Organization Plan

Digitizing Hard Copied data

Using Data Cycle to get rid of redundant and out dated archives.

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Chapter IV Recommended Solution: Based on the previous chapters, the most obvious business need in the PR department was an

IT tool that could handle the news automated monitoring and analysis to meet the early

engagement according to the market changes that are continuous, non-stop and massive. Also

the tool should be user friendly and comprehensive to all the digital platforms all over the web

that are strong candidates for the corporate and competitor news regular appearance. Last but

not least the tool should be tested using the most minimum cost.

The market research that followed setting those criteria; proposed Mention as the strongest

candidate to be the IT tool used for automation of the PR department.

Figure 3: Mention Home Page UI

o News Monitoring and Analysis Using “Mention” : Solution Definition:

Mention is a mobile App and a web platform to track, analyze and report news in a

customized automated way to react to them in the fastest possible way and have a better

exposure to the market and the corporate image.

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Mention is characterized by essential key features that enables the PR department to meet the

essential objectives expected from the automation process:

News Analysis and Monthly Comparisons:

Through customized search filters to capture the mentioned news all over the internet

channels of the corporate related topics, competitor’s news and the industry updates,

Mention can generate analysis and comparisons between monthly results in addition to

capturing the news.

Figure 4: Mention News Analytics

Mention Rates:

Mention displays the daily rates of the mentioned news related to the content of the

customized search filters. Also it generates reports and statistics about the tone and the

language of the mentioned posts.

Figure 5: Mention Daily Corporate Mention Rates

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Chapter V Solution Implementation: o System Investigation:

Investigation Of The Business Needs:

Efficient massive tracking to all coverage to the GB Auto’s corporate news

Efficient massive tracking to all media (social, digital, press…etc.) coverage to GB

Auto’s local and global market competitors.

Efficient massive media tracking to all media coverage considering automotive

industry in Egypt and North Africa.

Professional and significant analysis to all the news mentioned above to build

insights about different market and media strategies in the corporate future to

continue being a market leader.

The above objectives are conforming to the corporate strategy :

o System Analysis:

Analysis Of The Solution Added Value:

Image Source: https://en.mention.com/

Environmental Scanning:

The market scanning results showed that:

The solution is the most reasonable considering features vs. cost.

The solution serves both business unit needs and corporate general objectives.

The solution is unique among similar competitor tools.

The solution is user friendly and will not cost a huge time resources for

implementation and deployment.

The solution offers 1 month of free full testing which is a very suitable testing

time interval to explore all the tool capabilities and drawbacks.

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o System Design:

After the analysis of the tool capabilities and features the selected system design was:

o System Implementation:

Implementation:

The IT strategy overview for this project mainly consisted of:

Figure 6: Mention Implementation Phases

The IT team responsible for the new system management will be in-sourced team

That will decide the most suitable pricing plan according to the system design and will be

The bridge between the internal users and the support team of mention locally or off shore.

Creating Fliters with

the keywords of interest

Generating News

Generating Analytics

and Reports

Exporting Reports To different

Forms

Communicating with other

systems using those reports

Test Mention on a pilot project

Using the free 1 month

the 1st 2 weeks

Reporting testing results

2nd 2 weeks for discussion with different

stake holders

Replacing

ordinary tools with mention

Selecting the most needed features of the

tool

Purchasing with the most suitable

customized pricing plan

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Figure 7: Mention Pricing/Feature Plans

o System Maintenance:

The project owner in this case is the online PR specialist who will receive concerns about

the IT tool performance and prepare a regular performance report for the PR team

leader. Also the online PR specialist will handle any technical problems occurring in the

system and will communicate directly with the feedback and support team of Mention

and will prepare a crisis management plan that makes the system strong and stable

against any type of crises.

Figure 8: Feedback Page

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Chapter VI Conclusion: o Automation using Mention Expected ROI:

Automation of the public relations department under the umbrella of the marketing

department at GB Ghabbour Auto will increase the early engagement rate with the

market changes, also will guide the marketing decision makers to better forecasting for

the future market conditions and that will give GB Auto digital engagement leadership

Of which benefits are explained below:

Source: http://www.marketingcharts.com/online/digital-marketing-evolution-how-

enterprise-leaders-differ-from-followers-45377/attachment/epsiloneconsultancy-

digital-evolution-leaders-followers-aug2014/

o Automation using Mention Intangible Expected Impacts:

Service Enhancement:

Tracking customer’s feedback through news and social media will make the business

owners create a better user experience with GB Auto products and reach better service.

Team Empowerment:

Better information management and automated reports will empower any step taken

by the team members as a trusted and significant backbone for their decisions proven

by analytics and statistics.

Information Consistency:

All the PR team will work using a common digital and automated platform that will keep

all the team aligned with the same market updates and news.

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Figure 9: Info graphic Importance of Digital PR

Image Source: http://www.business2community.com/infographics/3-important-benefits-of-

digital-public-relations-infographic-0331535#!bQmmai

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References: 1. http://wn.com/ghabbour_group

2. http://www.ghabbourauto.com/Strategy.aspx

3. https://en.mention.com/

4. http://www.ghabbourauto.com/GB_Company_Profile.pdf

5. AUC Post Graduate Diploma in EM -ITM Course Slides , Dr.Mohsen ElShamaa.

6. http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/50-top-tools-social-media-monitoring-analytics-

and-management

7. https://www.google.ca/alerts

8. http://www.business2community.com/infographics/3-important-benefits-of-digital-public-

relations-infographic-0331535#!bQmmai