IMPROVED OFFICE PRACTICES FOR THE BROADCASTER
Like many station owners, we have often been stunned at the end of the month to learn what a large percentage of our overhead is the result of laborious, repetitive work. Such efforts, usually expended on paperwork necessary to expedite orders, consume a great deal of time and have little direct impact upon sales volume. In 1961, shortly after acquiring our station, we decided to do something about it.
The Problem
At WOHI, we were concerned
with staff productivity in several
areas. Our traffic girl spent at
least four hours a day typing logs.
My secretary, who doubles as
bookkeeper, was constantly behind
schedule (through no fault of her
own). In addition, errors occurred
(one of them cost us several
hundred dollars in lost sales), and
we were determined to eliminate
them. As a manager, I found it
difficult to trace mistakes; so
many different staff members
handled paperwork in various
stages it was impossible to tell
who had added the erroneous information. Personnel, especially
salesmen, often passed the buck for order preparation to other
staff members. We were not always fully aware of all details,
since many pieces of paper had to
be assembled for complete information. Communications were
weak. And we are in the communications business!
The Solution
To begin doing something about
the situation, we outlined the
major problems and responsibilities in sales, traffic, logging, and
accounting.
Then we proceeded to develop
procedures which would be selfliquidating and easy for our personnel to understand. The procedures we evolved were the result
of three years of improvement
and a great deal of research. They
break down into two interrelated
areas: (1) Ordering-schedulingaccounting-billing-reporting; and
(2) Scheduling-logging.
Systematized Ordering-SchedulingBookkeeping-Billing
In our station, as in most, there
are usually ten items of record or
activity amociated with these four
operations: (1) Contracts; (2)
Sponsor start orders; (3) Confirmations to sponsors; (4) Posting information to daily op crating
schedule from start orders; (5)
Preparation of supporting materials, such as copy, tapes. etc.;
(6) Pcsting data from daily program log, indicating performance,
to accounts receivable ledger; (7)
End of month invoice preparation
from accounts receivable ledger;
(8) Preparation of EOM affidavits of performance, if required;
(9) Preparation of extra copies
of items 7 and 8, if required;
(10) EOM assembly of data for
invoicing and mailing to customers in addressed envelope.
Certainly, there are numerous
cases where two or even three of
these steps can be skipped, but in
any station there are also customers who require all ten. Our
system allows for all.
How It's Done
The heart of our paperwork
system is a 3-part form of the
snap-out variety (Fig. 1), prepared for us by a nearby printer
who specializes in multiple forms.
Cost is about 100 per set in quantities of two thousand. Part 1 is
labelled "Invoice." Parts 2 and 3,
instead of the 31-column grid on
the right, serve as part of the
Agreement, which is printed on
the reverse side of Part 3 (the
standard American Association of
Advertising Agencies contract).
Part 3 is the client's "ContractConfirmation" copy, and Part 2 is
the "Station File" copy kept by
the traffic department.
What These 9 Steps Accomplish
Notice that basic information
is never retyped or copied, except
on a copier. Therefore, the chance
for human error is reduced considerably. In addition, all printed
forms, except the order form, are
eliminated. If an error is made
along the way, it can be immediately traced. Since the salesman's
data must be right for his order
to be executed, he stops taking
short cuts. Another advantage of
the system is the trustworthiness
it instills in our clients, who receive bills that look just like the
original order.
The greatest difficulty we had in
installing the system was with the
salesmen; they opposed having to
fill out the order in full. Once they
became used to the procedure,
however, they stopped complaining, especially when they found it
eliminated errors in the execution of their orders and provided
them with a fast, complete, ready
reference for future sales.
As for the economics of the
system, the costs of the 3-part
forms and the Xerox copies are
less than for our old forms. This
saving is modest. BUT—and this
is the key to our love for the
arrangement—we now make virtually no errors.
The Copying Machine
Our copying machine is a Xerox 914, which costs ¢ per copy, including supplies, wi:h a 2,000 copy minimum. To offset the expense, we offer a copying service, advertised on our station three times a day. We charge 150 each for the first ten copies, 100 each for the next ten copies, and 70 each for all copies over twenty. For three months in a row, we earned over $100 on this service. In other words, we got our copier for nothing. We use it for copies of FCC forms, profit and loss reports, proof-ofperformance forms, continuity duplication, the billing system, and the logging system. One month we studied how we were using it. Customers bought 550 copies; the log took about 400 copies; billing and office work 750; continuity and co-op copies 300. That was when we were using about 2,000. Now we use about 2,400 a month, with customers taking up the slack.
The Results
The system is a great timesaver. It accomplishes everything e have B-18 thru B-31 in our
live copy book, plus a 10-minute
cartridge of ten spots rotating,
and a 1-minute cartridge which
is used for special local public
service messages we wish to saturate. We can use any of the
three through the use of our
dummy cartridges, even though
the log carries all three numbers.
We keep a little notebook of
changes with entries like "12/
10/64—changed B-24 to Xmas
Seals." Then whenever B-24 comes
up, it is a Christmas Seal spot.
To saturate, we can put duplicate
messages in as many of the copy a good system could, fully meeting
all the requirements. Training
personnel is far less laborious
than before, since the log is prepared by use of a simple check-list
rather than by having to outline
each customer's individual requirement. The system saves over
$1000 a year in traffic-clerk time
alone, which we have yielded by
cutting the job to half-days, still
giving her time to do other jobs.
To sum up, then, our total-system analysis and application has
been as worthwhile as any management endeavor we have undertaken and we recommend it to
others.