Chapter 238

Denise entertainment headquarters.

As soon as Nancy Brill got off the plane, she was picked up by the driver and came to Amy Pascal's office. She happened to see Amy send three tall girls out of the office. The girls didn't know Nancy, but they all politely called her before they turned and left.

When the three women left, Nancy followed Amy into the office and asked, "are these the three Wonder Woman candidates chosen by the boss?"

Amy turned to her desk, nodded and said, "yes, the company has arranged some small roles for them. They have just participated in the audition."

Nancy sat down opposite Amy and commented, "I think the one in the black windbreaker is good. The other two, one with too weak temperament and the other with baby face, are not suitable

"Linda Carter is also a baby face," Amy said. After sitting down in the leather chair, she went straight to the subject. "Wayne hueizanga called this afternoon. He's going to be driven crazy by you."

After the acquisition of blockbuster by Wayne hueyzanga and others, the company's headquarters are currently set up in the small town of Sweden in the south of Denver, Colorado.

Nancy Brill flew to Sweden yesterday afternoon and planned to attend this morning's board meeting of blockbuster, which was originally a routine meeting with no important issues.

However, at the morning meeting, Nancy suddenly joined with several other directors of the board of directors of blockbuster to put pressure on the management, asking blockbuster to invest in updating the data management system and adding a special data analysis team.

In the process of taking a stake in blockbuster, danielis entertainment has promised not to interfere in blockbuster's management for three years. However, as the largest shareholder with a 35% stake, both danielis entertainment and blockbuster management know that this promise cannot be implemented 100%.

In fact, blockbuster has already accepted danielis Entertainment's proposal to increase the sales counter of peripheral products inside the chain store, which is also Nancy's earliest proposal.

Because of the rapid pace of expansion, blockbuster's capital has always been stretched.

After arriving in Sweden yesterday afternoon, Nancy privately discussed her new data processing plan with Wayne hueyzanga. But because of the budget size of the program as high as $20 million, Wayne hueizanga had no choice but to refuse.

And then it happened in the morning.

Denise Entertainment's board of directors in blockbuster was temporarily restricted, but other board members did not. Nancy found another way to persuade those people to support her plan.

Realizing Amy's intention of intercepting herself directly from the airport, Nancy took out a document from her satchel and handed it to her, explaining: "Amy, the number of blockbuster stores is really increasing rapidly, but can you imagine that what they are still using is basically the data management system developed by David Cook. This system can only provide very primitive videos With simple data like better sellers. If it's just dozens or hundreds of stores, David Cook's management system can still meet the needs. But if the number of chain stores increases to thousands, the system will be very primitive and inefficient. "

Amy listened to Nancy's explanation and opened the document she handed over. It turned out that it was a survey report on the operation of blockbuster chain stores in several major cities in California.

When Nancy finished, Amy looked up at her and said, "but Nancy, you should at least consult with us before you do this."

"I'm sorry, Amy, I just got this report before I left Los Angeles yesterday afternoon," Nancy explained, adding: "the threshold of video chain business is very low. If we just blindly expand the scale and ignore the synchronous improvement of business operation level, we can only get a fat man who can't even walk to 600 pounds, a little fat Healthy competitors can easily surpass this company on the track. "

Amy just nodded and stopped answering. She read Nancy's research report carefully.

In her report, Nancy explained the necessity of upgrading data management system and adding data analysis team to blockbuster through a series of data.

Wal Mart, Aldi and other large supermarket chains are successful because they are able to make profits to customers as much as possible. However, it's not a simple way to reduce the price. The short-term effect of price reduction and promotion is not too great. This strategy must be long-term.

So the problem comes, you only have enough profit space, can long-term profits to customers. To do this, a company's operating costs must be low enough.

Wal Mart, Aldi and other companies have successfully achieved this through a streamlined and efficient management system.

The same is the chain retail business. Blockbuster's market share in the video chain field is only about 5%. However, if you want to become bigger and continue to maintain its advantages in the industry, you must follow the business strategy of Wal Mart and other companies.

For video chain companies, the efficient data management system can make the operation team more accurately judge the terminal sales data of the enterprise, and timely adjust the purchasing, warehousing, logistics and other aspects. With the increase of efficiency, the cost will naturally decrease, and the number of employees the company needs to employ will also decrease.The number of Wal Mart employees in its peak period is more than 2 million, which shows how high the labor cost of retail chain business is. Blockbuster's recent number of video chain stores has just reached 500, and the number of employees has exceeded 3000.

After reading the research report in hand, Amy also understands why other directors of blockbuster are on the side of Nancy.

As long as people have a little foresight, they will probably not refuse such measures that are very conducive to the development of the company.

The complaint calls from Wayne hueyzanga also confirmed Nancy's suggestion. He just hoped that the matter could be delayed, because blockbuster's cash flow was too tight.

Danielis Entertainment's $120 million stake in blockbuster is only half of what it has spent in paying off its debts and accounts payable in the past month. The remaining US $60 million, including the revenue continuously contributed by blockbuster's chain stores, can only support the company for half a year at most.

The management of blockbuster has started to consider the financing problem in the second half of the year.

Closing the report, Amy said, "OK, Nancy, I'll send this report to Simon. This time it's OK, but you can't make such a surprise attack next time."

Amy wanted to expose it, but Nancy didn't finish. She said, "Amy, Huey zanga only agreed to use 10 million dollars to upgrade the data management system. The plan of setting up a data analysis team and establishing a movie database failed. I wonder if the company can pay for it? It's not just blockbuster. Building such a team and database is also good for Denise entertainment. "

Nancy's report also suggests that blockbuster set up a special data analysis team based on the previous research results, and even further establish a perfect film information database.

In short, the proposal is inspired by the recent turmoil in Japan's financial markets.

A few days ago, the news that Simon joined the Japanese financial market came to light, which led many ordinary people to pay attention to financial current events and further affected people's entertainment and leisure life.

The research team employed by Nancy found that many customers of blockbuster chain stores began to ask employees to recommend some commercial and financial movies. However, either the employees didn't know the types of movies that customers needed, or there were not many movies with similar themes in the store.

As a result, it can be imagined that the chain stores unknowingly missed a lot of sales opportunities.

Most of the employees who are willing to work in video chain stores are just for supporting their families, and most of them are part-time. The company can't expect all of them to have rich film knowledge that can serve customers.

At the same time, because the chain store data management system is relatively primitive, customers' needs can not be timely fed back to the management and quickly arrange the film and television resource allocation.

These reasons will cause the inefficiency of blockbuster's operation.

Nancy believes that her data analysis team and film database solution can not only effectively solve the above problems, but also actively create business opportunities.

For example, this time, if a data analysis team can receive and process the sales information feedback of terminal chain stores in time, and confirm that consumers are interested in commercial and financial movies, the supply team can quickly consult the corresponding content resources from the movie database and make adjustments.

If the data can be more refined, it can even judge the content demand of different regions in advance, so as to avoid wasting resources in procurement, warehousing and logistics and save costs as much as possible.

Moreover, with the support of the company's behind the scenes data, even the clerks who don't know much about the film materials can skillfully provide customers with appropriate suggestions at the right time: "Oh, you are interested in this type of film. Maybe you can see Oliver Stone's Wall Street."

Across the desk, Amy listened to Nancy's introduction and felt an impulse 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 profit. If we invest, not only can we not make money, but we also need long-term and sustained investment. It is impossible for the company to do such a thing. "

"I've already talked to Huey zanga, Amy. Denise entertainment can set up a subsidiary for this purpose, and then sign a cooperation agreement with blockbuster. After a few years of operation, when blockbuster is strong enough to pay for the company, we can recover the investment. Even if the company's role in blockbuster is obvious enough, we can ask for more shares from Blockbuster through stock exchange and merger. "

Amy wanted to retort again, hesitated, and said, "I'll send this report to Simon, Nancy. If he agrees, I'll provide you with the budget. However, you just set up Blizzard studio recently, and you have to be responsible for the consumer goods department. If you add this company, are you sure you can keep busy? "

"Sure, no problem," Nancy nodded. Seeing that it was done, she got up and said, "if there's nothing else, Amy, I'll leave first."

Amy Saw Nancy to the door and said, "are you coming to the Rain Man party tomorrow night?"

"Rain Man" successfully broke through the 100 million yuan mark in three days from February 10 to February 12. After the full ninth week of release, the film received another 6.63 million US dollars in seven days, with a cumulative box office of 106.32 million US dollars.Denise entertainment announced on Monday that it would hold a celebration party on Saturday night after the data came out, which is also a public relations campaign for the film's Oscar sprint.

Nancy didn't have any plans for tomorrow night, but she refused, "I won't be there."

Amy didn't force her to remind her, "in that case, you can choose a gift or write a greeting card tomorrow and send it to Jennie."

Nancy was a little puzzled: "hmm?"

Amy explained, "next Wednesday is Simon's birthday. Maybe Jenny will fly to Melbourne the day after tomorrow."

Nancy stood and looked at Amy. After a moment, she smiled and said, "I thought you wouldn't remind me of this kind of thing."

Amy is just 30 years old this year. Although Nancy is a little short and looks younger, she is actually several years older than Amy and has more career experience than Amy. Therefore, she is very clear about Amy's defensive attitude towards herself during this period of time.

Although Simon's 20th birthday party last year was a lot of noise, if it wasn't for Amy's reminder, Nancy didn't remember it. On her boss's birthday, if everyone sent cards, gifts or other greetings, it's hard for her to think about Simon's bad feelings.

"I really hope you can forget about it," Amy said with a shrug as she helped Nancy open the door of her office

Nancy saw Amy open the door for herself, but she was no longer in a hurry to leave. She said, "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 bit surprised: "is it too shabby?"

"I've got them brought back from Germany, and do you think there's anything else we can send to surprise Simon? Even if there is, you and I probably can't afford it. "

"It's true," Nancy said, thinking of Simon's constantly expanding terrorist wealth and considering what gift to choose. "I can't afford it. That's for sure. You don't have to."

Amy's salary plan is no secret. 5% of the annual net profit share and the same value of long-term equity award, according to the net profit scale of Denise entertainment last year, this is a huge sum of more than $20 million.

In contrast, the agreements signed by Robert REM and Robert egger with danielis entertainment have a maximum annual bonus of only $3 million in addition to the basic salary. Nancy's own three-year salary package is only $150000 a year plus a bonus of up to $1 million.

Remy, egger and Nancy's pay packages are in fact comparable to those of executives in the same positions at the seven major studios.

As we all know, Amy gave up the position of vice president of fox to work as a fledgling "little boy". If she failed, she might become a laughing stock. This kind of rich salary is also the reward for her taking the risk.

Strictly speaking, Amy is the other founder of danielis entertainment.

Therefore, Nancy did not feel anything wrong with herself, and she did not care about whether other people would have any ideas.

Amy started in March 1987, and her annual bonus will not be settled until next month. Because after the new year, the box office share of "Rain Man", "death Poetry Society" and other films gradually arrived, the cash reward she could get was actually higher than 5% of last year's net profit of $238.73 million.

However, Amy also knew that some people in the company would feel unbalanced, so she didn't take Nancy's topic. She just said with a smile, "the company's financial report of last year was just finished in the morning, and everyone meant to keep it as secret as possible. So, if you want to see it, come to my office next week, and this data can't be taken out or transmitted. "

Nancy nodded understandably: "I understand."