Background
Telegraph Media Group publishes The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and The Weekly Telegraph. Their recent move to a state-of-the-art office in the middle of London has placed them at the center for business, commerce and politics. The broadsheet Daily Telegraph is the leader in the quality newspaper market, with sales of around 900,000 copies a day.
In November 1994, telegraph.co.uk was created establishing the Telegraph as the first online daily UK newspaper in the UK. In addition to content from the print editions, covering everything from news to lifestyle features, telegraph.co.uk enables readers to take advantage of online offers covering a wide range of products and services as well as interactive content.
Problem
Nothing short of a revolution has taken place in media publishing in the last 5 years. Telegraph Media Group delivered the infrastructure that earned telegraph.co.uk a commendation by The 2004 Newspaper Awards in the 'Most Innovative Technology of the Year' category. Recognition was reinforced further when The 2005 Newspaper Awards saw telegraph.co.uk highly commended in the Best Daily Newspaper on the World Wide Web category.
Getting the technology right for moving into the multi-platform media age is only part of the story. Not only is there more to report but it has to be reported faster. Behind every news item is a team, investigating, validating and writing. Good journalism is needed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The Management team realized that re-alignment of traditional working practices was essential if they were to meet faster moving deadlines, in addition to safeguarding profitability.
Facilitating journalist talent between editorial desks increased flexibility of response and reduced the need for casual overtime staff. However this made tracking of resources more difficult and it was important for journalists to see planned and published schedules at least two months in advance. Future management of schedules had to move beyond paper and pencil.
Solution
During the course of their review of the business requirement the
Management Team were able to download and evaluate Schedule24 Professional. No specialist IT support was required, and they could work directly with the software after a single day of training. Schedule24 Professional was initially used to help define the business requirement, in particular the staffing levels in relation to different grades and shift patterns during the working week. Additional support involved Intellicate staff from time to time to assist in
development of alternative schedules in light of changing requirements, as department heads were consulted and discrete business areas reviewed.
A strategy evolved as a mutual understanding of the business requirement became clearer. Alternative schedules were developed. Above all the schedules were presented in an operational format clearly showing needs in terms of working hours and days-off (including weekends) throughout the course of a whole year.
A cost projection of the actual schedules could be mapped against management goals including staff compensation and overtime reduction.
Once the business requirement was established, then a scheduling strategy was designed to meet it. Schedule24 Professional continued to be deployed to manage the agreed workforce scheduling and deployment plans for journalists on a day-to-day basis. The immediate benefits included having a system that delivered a common standard for workforce scheduling and the means for measuring and evaluating staff deployment.
About Telegraph Media Group
Telegraph Media Group Limited is a newspaper publisher which publishes The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph, telegraph.co.uk and The Weekly Telegraph.
111 Buckingham Palace Road
London
SW1W 0DT
United Kingdom |
Phone: + 44 (0) 207 931 2173
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7931 2932
Web site: http://www.telegraph.co.uk |
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