Daenerys Entertainment Headquarters.
As soon as Nancy Brill got off the plane, she was picked up by the driver and came outside Amy Pascal's office. She happened to see Amy sending three tall girls out of the office. The girls didn't know Nancy, but they all greeted her politely before turning and leaving.
After the three women left, Nancy followed Amy into the office and asked, "Are these the three Wonder Woman candidates selected by the boss?"
Amy turned to the desk and nodded: "Yes, the company has arranged several small roles for them, and they have just participated in the audition."
Nancy sat down opposite Amy and commented: "I think the one in the black trench coat is good. The other two, one is too weak and the other is baby-faced, are not suitable."
"Linda Carter also has a baby face," Amy said, and after sitting down on the leather chair, she got straight to the point and said: "Wayne Huizenga called this afternoon, and he was going to be driven crazy by you. "
After Blockbuster was acquired by Wayne Huizenga and others, the company's headquarters is currently located in the small town of Sweden, south of Denver, the capital of Colorado.
Nancy Brill flew to Sweden yesterday afternoon and planned to attend Blockbuster's board meeting this morning. It was originally just a routine meeting with no important topics.
However, at the morning meeting, Nancy suddenly joined several other directors on Blockbuster's board of directors to put pressure on management, requiring Blockbuster to invest money to update the data management system and add a dedicated data analysis team.
In the process of investing in Blockbuster, Daenerys Entertainment had promised not to interfere in Blockbuster's management for three years. However, as the largest shareholder holding 35% of the shares, both Daenerys Entertainment and Blockbuster management know that this promise cannot be implemented 100%.
In fact, Blockbuster has previously accepted Daenerys Entertainment’s suggestion to add peripheral product sales counters within the chain store. This plan was also first proposed by Nancy.
Due to the rapid pace of expansion, Blockbuster's funds have always been stretched thin.
After Nancy arrived in Sweden yesterday afternoon, she privately discussed her new data processing plan with Wayne Huizenga. But because the budget of this plan was as high as US$20 million, Wayne Huizenga had no choice but to refuse.
Then what happened in the morning.
Daenerys Entertainment's directorship at Blockbuster was temporarily restricted, but other board members were not, and Nancy found another way to convince those people to support her plan.
Understanding Amy's intention to intercept her directly from the airport, Nancy took out a document from her bag and handed it to her, while explaining: "Amy, the number of Blockbuster stores is indeed increasing very quickly, but you can Imagine, what they are still using is basically the data management system developed by David Cook. This system can only provide very primitive simple data such as which video tapes are more popular. If there are only dozens or hundreds of For stores, David Cook's management system can still meet the needs. But if the number of chain stores increases to thousands, this system will become very primitive and inefficient."
Amy listened to Nancy's explanation and opened the document she handed over. It turned out to be a research report on the operating conditions of Blockbuster chain stores in several major cities in California.
After Nancy finished speaking, Amy looked up at her and said, "But, Nancy, before you do this, you should at least discuss it with everyone first."
"I'm sorry, Amy, I just got this report before leaving Los Angeles yesterday afternoon," Nancy explained, and then said: "The threshold for the video chain business is very low. If you just blindly expand the scale and ignore business operations, With the simultaneous improvement of standards, we will end up with a fat man who has been stuffed and fatted to 600 pounds and can't even walk. Competitors who are slightly healthier can easily surpass this company on the track."
Amy just nodded slightly, stopped answering, and read Nancy's research report carefully.
In the report, Nancy used a series of data to illustrate the need for Blockbuster to upgrade its data management system and increase its data analysis team.
A big reason why large supermarket chains such as Wal-Mart and Aldi are successful is that they can pass on as much profit to customers as possible. However, profit sharing is not a matter of simply lowering prices. Short-term price reduction promotions will not have much effect. This strategy must be long-term.
So the question arises. Only if you have enough profit margin can you pass on profits to customers in the long term. To do this, a company's operating costs must be low enough.
Companies such as Walmart and Aldi have successfully accomplished this through streamlined and efficient management systems.
It is also a chain retail business. Blockbuster's market share in the video chain field is only about 5%. However, if it wants to grow bigger and continue to maintain its advantages in the industry, it must imitate the business strategies of companies such as Wal-Mart.
For video tape chain companies, an efficient data management system allows the operations team to more accurately judge the company's terminal sales data and make timely adjustments in procurement, warehousing, logistics, etc. As efficiency increases, costs naturally fall, and the number of employees the company needs to hire will also decrease.
Wal-Mart's employee count of more than 2 million at its peak shows how high the labor cost of the retail chain business is. Blockbuster's recent video chain has just reached 500 stores and has more than 3,000 employees.
After reading the research report in her hand, Amy also understood why the other directors of Blockbuster sided with Nancy.
Anyone with a little foresight would probably not reject this measure that is very beneficial to the development of the company.
Wayne Huizenga's complaint call also confirmed Nancy's suggestion. He just hoped that the matter could be postponed because Blockbuster's cash flow was indeed too tight.
Daenerys Entertainment spent half of the US$120 million it invested in Blockbuster in just over a month on repaying maturing debts and accounts payable. The remaining US$60 million, including the continued revenue contribution from Blockbuster's chain stores, can only sustain the company for half a year at most.
Blockbuster management has now begun to consider financing issues in the second half of the year.
Closing the report, Amy said: "Okay, Nancy, I will pass this report to Simon. Forget it this time, but you must not do such a surprise attack next time."
Amy wanted to reveal it, but Nancy was not finished yet, saying: "Amy, Huey Zanga still only agreed to $10 million to upgrade the data management system. There is no plan to set up a data analysis team and build a movie information database. Passed. I was wondering, can companies pay for this? Not just Blockbuster, but building such a team and database would also be of great benefit to Daenerys Entertainment."
Nancy's report also recommended that Blockbuster establish a dedicated data analysis team based on previous research results, and even further establish a complete movie information database.
Speaking of which, this proposal was inspired by the recent turmoil in Japan’s financial market.
The news of Simon's entry into the Japanese financial market was exposed a few days ago, which caused many ordinary people to start paying attention to financial current affairs, and further affected people's entertainment and leisure life.
The research team hired by Nancy found that many customers of Blockbuster chain stores began to ask store clerks to recommend some movies about business and finance. However, either the store clerks did not understand the types of films that customers wanted, or there were not many films with similar themes in the store. .
As you can imagine, the chain store unknowingly missed a lot of sales opportunities.
Employees who are willing to work in video chain stores are basically just to support their families, and most of them are part-time. The company cannot expect all of these people to have rich film knowledge that can serve customers.
At the same time, because the chain store's data management system is relatively primitive, customer needs cannot be fed back to the management in a timely manner and the allocation of film and television resources cannot be quickly arranged.
These reasons will lead to inefficiency in Blockbuster's operations.
Nancy believes that the data analysis team and film data database solution she proposed can not only effectively solve the above problems, but can even proactively create business opportunities.
For example, this time, if there is a data analysis team that can receive and process sales information feedback from terminal chain stores in a timely manner and confirm that consumers are interested in business war and financial movies, the supply team can quickly check the corresponding content resources from the movie information database and conduct Blending.
If the data can be more refined, it can even be used to determine the content demand in different regions in advance, so as to avoid wasting resources in procurement, warehousing, logistics and other aspects, and save costs as much as possible.
Moreover, with the company’s behind-the-scenes data support, even store clerks who don’t know much about movie materials can skillfully provide customers with appropriate suggestions at the right time: “Oh, you are interested in this type of film, maybe you can watch it. Oliver Stone’s ‘Wall Street’.”
Across the desk, Amy listened to Nancy's introduction and had the urge to rub her forehead: "Nancy, such a team and database may be of great help to Blockbuster, but it is difficult to generate direct revenue. And profits. If we invest, not only will we not make money, but we will also need long-term and sustained investment. It is impossible for the company to do such a thing."
"I have already negotiated with Huey Zanga, Amy. Daenerys Entertainment can set up a subsidiary specifically for this purpose, and then sign a cooperation agreement with Blockbuster. It will operate for a few years, and when Blockbuster is strong enough, it can If we pay to acquire this company, we will be able to recoup our investment by then. Even if this company's role for Blockbuster is obvious enough, we can request to acquire more shares from Blockbuster through a stock exchange merger."
Amy wanted to retort a few more words, but after a moment of hesitation, she said: "I will pass this report to Simon and Nancy, and if he agrees, I will provide you with a budget. However, you have just established Blizzard recently. The studio is also responsible for the consumer products department. If this company is added to the mix, are you sure you can handle it?"
"Of course it's no problem," Nancy nodded. After seeing that the matter was settled, she stood up and said goodbye: "If there is nothing else, Amy, I will leave first."
Amy escorted Nancy to the door and said, "Will you come to the 'Rain Man' celebration party tomorrow night?"
"Rain Man" successfully broke through the 100 million yuan mark in the three days of the previous weekend from February 10 to February 12. After the complete ninth week of release, the film collected another 6.63 million US dollars in seven days, and the cumulative box office reached 100 million. Zero $6.32 million.
Daenerys Entertainment announced after the data was released on Monday that it would hold a celebration party on Saturday night, which is also a public relations exercise for the film's Oscar run.
Nancy didn't have any plans for tomorrow night, but she still refused: "I won't go there."
Amy did not force it and reminded: "In this case, you can choose a gift tomorrow, or write a greeting card and have it delivered to Jenny."
Nancy was a little confused: "Huh?"
Amy explained: "Next Wednesday is Simon's birthday, and Jenny will fly to Melbourne probably the day after tomorrow."
Nancy stood there and looked at Amy. After a moment, she smiled and said, "I thought you wouldn't remind me about this kind of thing."
Amy is just thirty years old this year. Although Nancy is a bit shorter and looks younger, she is actually several years older than Amy and has more career experience than Amy. Therefore, she was actually very aware of Amy's subtle wariness towards her during this period.
Although there was a lot of noise at Simon's 20th birthday party last year, Nancy would not have remembered it if Amy hadn't reminded her. On his boss's birthday, if everyone sent greeting cards, gifts or other greetings, but she was the only one who didn't pay attention, it's hard to imagine whether Simon would have any grudges over this.
"I actually hope you can forget about this," Amy helped Nancy open the office door and shrugged, "But, no matter what..."
When Nancy saw Amy opening the door for her, she was no longer in a hurry to leave and said, "Speaking of which, I'm not very good at this kind of thing. What gift are you going to give our little boss?"
Amy said: "A box of pencils."
Nancy was a little surprised: "Isn't it too shabby?"
"I specially asked people to bring it back from Germany. Besides, do you think we can give anything else that can surprise Simon? Even if there is, you and I probably can't afford it."
"That's true." Nancy thought of Simon's horrifying net worth that had been constantly expanding. She was thinking about what gift to choose, but she said, "I'm sure I can't afford it, but you can't be sure."
Amy's salary package is no secret. It is 5% of the annual net profit share and forward equity awards of the same value. According to the scale of Daenerys Entertainment's net profit last year, this is a huge sum of more than 20 million US dollars.
In comparison, the agreement signed by Robert Rem and Robert Egger with Daenerys Entertainment has a maximum annual bonus of only US$3 million in addition to basic salary. Nancy's own three-year compensation package is only $150,000 in annual salary plus a bonus of up to $1 million.
Rem, Iger and Nancy's compensation package is actually comparable to that of executives in similar positions at the seven major studios.
Everyone also knows that Amy gave up her position as vice president of Fox to work for a fledgling 'boy'. If she failed, she might become a laughing stock. Such a generous salary was also the reward for the risk she took.
Strictly speaking, Amy is another founder of Daenerys Entertainment.
Therefore, Nancy herself didn't feel anything wrong. As for what other people might think, she didn't care.
Amy joined the company in March 1987, and her annual bonus will not be settled until next month. Because the box office share of films such as "Rain Man" and "Dead Poets Society" will be received after the New Year, the cash reward she can receive is actually higher than the 5% of last year's net profit of US$238.73 million.
However, Amy also knew that some people in the company would feel unbalanced, so she did not pick up Nancy's topic. She just smiled and said: "The company's last year's financial report was just completed in the morning, and everyone wanted to keep it as confidential as possible. So. , if you want to see it, come to my office next week, this data cannot be taken away or shared outside."
Nancy nodded understandingly: "I understand."