Zee presses revamp button...yet again!!!!

(Posted on 16 December 4: 00 pm)

The Zee Group, in a major restructuring bid as advised by AT Kearney, has brought all of its diverse activities and businesses under four broad categories - content, corporate, access and education. The company's three lead businesses of content, access and education will have separate heads while support functions like strategy, human resources, finance, legal, corporate communications and marketing research will be handled by the head of corporate services.

At a lengthy open house meeting in Mumbai yesterday, company chairman Subhash Chandra and heads of businesses along with AT Kearney, elucidated the entire structure and strategy of the company, which they claimed, was to ensure a vision for a common pursuit, purpose and goal. In the new dispensation, Alok Dutta, Chief Operating Officer, will be coordinating the content businesses. He will oversee broadcasting, including the businesses of all the Zee Network channels, portals, music, news and sports. Dutta will report directly to Chandra.

R.K. Singh, who was the Chief Executive Officer and earlier responsible for all broadcasting has been designated Group Head of Corporate Services. He will additionally be overseeing international businesses that have been clubbed under the access environment.

Dev Naganand will head the access business which comprises all the distribution driven businesses, including the businesses of cable networking now renamed Home Networking (HN), Direct-to-Operators (DTO), Direct-to-Home (DTH), Internet ISP through cable and numerous other Internet and ISP driven businesses.

The fourth division, the company's education business will continue to be headed by Uma Ganesh. Zee, the management points out, sees a distinct convergence potential in the education business so will be developing it accordingly.

A pro-active team for functions of finance and accounts, personnel, legal, planning and operations at the operative level will also support each Group Head.

Besides the restructuring of the organisation, AT Kearney has also recommended that Zee should focus on building some new core competencies into the organisation, with special emphasis on collaboration with outsiders, more external focus on learning from customers, competitors and partners, greater focus on employment development, more systematic resource-based management and greater transparency in dealing with shareholders, employees, etc.

The restructure also highlights the company's new vision of 'network selling' as opposed to 'single channel' selling. While in the past, Zee emphasised on selling channels as individual single channels, today, in its new structure synchronised with this strategy, more emphasis will be on 'network selling'. The Zee Group, says it, will reorganise according to the AT Kearney structure immediately.

The management says that it is confident that the spotlight on the new structure will bring increased focus in the company's approach to content creation, on the one hand and distribution, on the other, even as corporate services seeks to foster alliances with new partners and collaboration with business constituents with greater zeal and gusto.

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