Public Relations in Wilson Garments-Free-Samples for Students

Question: Discuss about the Problems faced by Wilson Garments. Answer: Organization Background Wilson Garments is a textiles company that specializes in manufacturing of textiles and the company has more than 500 employees. Robert Wilson is the founder and the Owner of the company, which is located in Northern Territory Australia. The companys accounting management includes, financial accounting, management accounting, tax accounting. The method used for accounting is Cash accounting method. Issues with Public relations in Wilson Garments One of the main challenges in the public relations of the company is to access the media outlets. It means that the editors of the media outlets tend to publish or screen the public relation messages with accuracy and professionalism. In the present times when technology has so much advanced, there are too many messages, some true and some not. These messages spoil the reputation of the company. There was a time when television, radios and newspapers were the only channels through which the public could be reached, but now things have changed there are many channels apart from the three traditional channels of press releases, now emails and social media are in the trend. It becomes very difficult for the Pubic relation Agent to decide which of the following campaigns would be the most appropriate for delivering messages to the target audience. Social Media often seems like the most appropriate channel for delivering the messages, because it is economic to run the social media campaigns, but there were certain problems faced by the company when it ran a social media campaign on Facebook. It happened that the message was also delivered on other social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram, it was hence very difficult to measure the impact of the campaigns in the different platforms. Public relations is a two way process, now the audiences have the opportunity to see and respond to the messages immediately, therefore there is a requirement for hiring an employee who would monitor the responses on the social media platforms and alter the messages as per the feedback of the target audience. One of the major issues that the company is facing is related to the financial constraints, press releases and the public relations campaigns cost many financial resources, raising funds for conducting public relation activities is quite a challenge for the company. There was a scenario when the PR agent was not effective enough to conduct the campaigns and effectively sending the messages to the clients. Certain irrelevant messages were communicated to the audience and the company, which adversely affected the company. There were certain ethical issues related to the Public relations, the public relation agent leaked the confidential information of the company in the media, which was used by the competitor. Accounting related issues in Wilson Garments The company earlier practiced the Cash accounting, in cash accounting system entries are recorded only after the payment has been received, the company used to face problems. There were lot of discrepancies in the entries, the entries did not match the bills, at the end of the month when the entries and the invoices were matched, often it was found that the some of the bills were always not entered, hence it was difficult in the end to calculate the profits. Due to the errors caused by the cash accounting method the accountant always has to revise and redo the entries, hence the process consumed lot of time. Accounting management in an organization requires skilled and efficient professionals, Wilson has one such accountant who was not efficient and lacked adequate knowledge about the subject, he was not experienced, made many mistakes in the entries. It was very difficult for the company to follow the standards of the International standard of financing reporting, the companies around the world follow the IFRS. The company initially manually adjusted its entries, the record keeping technique was very difficult to maintain because the accountant needs to be very careful while entering the records, there are chances that error might occur in the process of doing the adjustments. When the company shifted to computerized system after it realized that the manual accounting is very risky process, it faced certain problems after introduction of the computerized system for accounting, the problems included the installation cost of the computerized system and the software up gradation requires a heavy costs. Training of the employees required a huge cost, there were certain unanticipated errors, computers unlike human do not have the ability to judge the errors, if a wrong entry is made then the result will also be based on the wrong entries, computer will only calculate the entries put by the accountant. One of the major issues related to the use of computerized accounting is that, there are chances of breach in the security, due to the virus attacks. In case of system failure and technical faults, there is disruption of work. GAAP compliance The biggest problems of management accounting technique are that most of the techniques are not compliant with the generally accepted accounting principles, GAAP. Management accounting techniques are dependent on the time variable, the timeliness of the information allows the business owners to take important decisions, when the company has to determine the sales of next year, and the company has to wait for the next year to come in order to get the most accurate figures. Management accounting information is usually very costly, most of the time the management accounting information requires time and money for design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, this sometimes requires the current employees to do accounting job in order to fulfill the work requirements, hiring more employees and external consultants. This technique prepares different costs estimates based on the uncertainty in prediction. Adapting the activity based costing system the company might want to see the cost saving from the additional information if the cost of implementation was 1, 5 or 10 percent more or less. An unexpected expense puts the project in risk. Ethical issues in professional Accounting Management Ethical issues are the main concerns in the Accounting Management, no company wants to face legal battles, or spoil its image because of the ethical issues, Companies to succeed often put undue stress on the accountants in creating the balance sheets and financial statements. It is very challenging for the accountant to main true reporting of the assets, liabilities and profits without giving in to the pressure created by the management. Un ethical accountants alter the figures and the financial records of the company in order to show false profits. This kind of false representation of companys financial statement might bring prosperity for short term but when the fraud would be caught, the company might face long-term problems, including legal battles and negative publicity of the company, which results in downfall of the company. Strategies used by Wilson Garments to address issues related to the Public relation. While planning the press releases of the company, the media outlets were already decided, and the messages to be communicated was not disclosed to any outsider, to ensure the privacy of the company. To make sure that the company does not have to face heavy costs for its public relations, the company mostly used emails and social media campaigns, running social media campaigns are cheaper than using televisions and radios. The company also used newspapers for the communication of the messages, because newspapers are also cheaper methods for press releases. The company hired a very efficient and trustworthy Public relations agent. Word of mouth, press coverage and endorsements, have been relying upon one marketing tactic the third-party credibility. No matter who the target market is, the most appropriate way to is to make people communicate and influence others why they chose the product or service of any particular organization and the company for effective PR strategy. There has been a rise of self-publishing platforms and social-media networks, brands can collaborate with the individuals whose published content attract and influence the target audience. The company also collaborated with the self publishing platforms for its Public relation campaigns. Apart from press releases and prized interview slots, influencers were engaged in Public relations activities, with impactful images on Instagram, wel l thought-out prose on Twitter or a series of compelling videos on YouTube. In present times where due to advance technologies, the smart consumer inspects brands. Consumers watch reviews and videos that show inadequate customer service to Twitter comments that defame brands for not satisfying the customers the companies cannot hide the defects. This has acted as a challenge as well as an opportunity for the company to make and implement core values that influence the customers to change their focus from negative attributes to the positive attributes of the company, so that it can relate to the audience. For this the company is indulging in CSR activities, the owner of Wilson Garments is sponsoring unprivileged children for their education, this had helped the company a lot in building good image among audiences. The company decided to choose more and more social media campaigns, the company has a facebook page that it uses for communicating to its audiences. The page is mostly used to conduct contest for its customers, these contests are designed to attract the customers towards the products of the company, the winning contestants are offered discount coupons. This particular strategy was for both promotion and building strong PR. Facebook blueprint helps to analyze the response of the customers towards particular campaigns. So the company decided to use Facebook campaigns. The company has directed its PR agents not to disclose any matter apart from what has been planned to communicate, the press releases are scrutinized by the company first then it is released so that no unnecessary matters are communicated in the media. The company has also made strong ties with many local media agencies, this ties play a very important role in the PR activities. The company made sure the candidates selected as the PR agent is efficient enough to handle the media and the audiences, this requires the PR agent to be experienced in the field. The company after facing problem from the inefficiency of previous PR implemented this strategy. The company planned few public events in the popular places of the city, this events were based on certain social issues, the idea behind this strategy was to connect to the audience. This is where the likes ofGoogle alertscome into use. Monitoring any new product in the domestic market will soon let the company know of any reaction to it, positive or negative. With the most influential bloggers having the power to instantly make or break a product or story, the company has also used the technique, to be ready to build on positive news or counter negative news. Consumer created content is the fastest growing medium on the web today so the company decided to implement this strategy and gain advantage from it There is no better PR strategy than local awareness. Consumers especially are more inclined towards buying into a product or idea that gives back to the community. The company uses environmental friendly techniques, the fabrics used for manufacturing of the textiles are skin friendly, keeping in mind that some people are allergic to certain fabrics, it can be said the companys strategy is to focus on quality and this particular attribute of the company is communicated every time. The company also creates awareness among the customers, in all its public events, the kind of clothing they should wear and what kind of fabrics are to be avoided. Strategies taken by Wilson Garments to solve the problems related to accounting. The cost accounting method that the company used before was the reason for many problems that the company faced, like mismatch of the invoices and the entries, so the company started using the Accrual method of accounting. Accrual method of accounting is that method of accounting in which the entries are recorded when the transactions take place, irrespective of the fact that the payment is made or not, this method helps in combining the current cash inflows and outflows with future expected cash inflows and outflows, thus it gives the accurate picture of companys current position. Implementation of this method helped the company to save time because there were very fewer discrepancies after the adoption of the accrual accounting method by the company. After facing problem due to inefficiency of the accountant who lacked accurate accounting knowledge relevant the company made changes in the methods of hiring employees, Wilson Garments now hires employees only after checking the knowledge and experience of the candidates. Wilson now conducts aptitude tests and tests for checking the knowledge of candidates in accounts, this has helped the company now to hire efficient accountants. Due to the problems faced in following the IFRS now Wilson Garments adopted a strategy to follow both GAAP and the IFRS guidelines. Globalization, economic and the financial meltdown has affected many countries, in order to eliminate the difference between the GAAP and IFRS have been introduced in the international accounting system. In order to cope with the problem faced by the manual adjustments of financial data, manually calculating often caused errors. The company switched to the computerized accounting systems, but they made sure there is not too much dependency on the computerized system because at times when there is some technical faults with the system there are chances of losing of the important financial data. The made sure that all the systems are installed with anti-viruses to avoid the virus attacks. The company used to have one accountant before, but for the efficiency of accounting information, Company had setup finance and accounts department. In the new department which few staffs were appointed for the manually checking the records and collection of invoices and few staffs handled the computerized accounting operations like the online invoices, this way the company made sure that its information are not lost. The company also used cloud-computing methods for better accounting management. The company also had setup an IT department for the maintenance of the systems, so that the information is not lost. The company instead of training the old employees for updating them to new technology after it shifted to the computerized system, it hired new employees who were efficient in using the computer aided accounting systems. To solve the ethical issues related to accounting, the company strictly communicated to its employees to be ethical in the practices of management accounting, be careful while making the entries and recording the financial statements. 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