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
2 Automation Of PR (GB Auto)
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