Some Weaknesses:
Similarly, while the business generated from the education sector rose by 2 million pounds in the last 12 months (largely as a result of the acquisition of Incentive Plus), there were other acquisition opportunities that were squandered due to indecision by the top management. So, a reassessment of the Board of Directors may be warranted during the annual general meeting, so that the growth potential of the company will not go to waste.
The acquisition of Teaching Expertise was another landmark event in the history of Electric Word. According to its Board of Directors, the deal has had a synergistic effect on the business as a whole. This is so because there was much overlap between the customer bases of Teaching Expertise and the newsletter subscribers of Electric Word. The subsequent move to offer these services online further improved the integration of these related but different services.
Future Prospects:
With prospects for the education business looking brighter than ever, the following rationale extracted from their recent annual report displays much foresight and understanding: “The foundation of strongly-renewing subscription products is now enhanced by a series of inter-connecting products in well-defined niches. The addition of Incentive Plus enables the business to monetize access to its customer base in a way that is more appropriate and more effective for this market than through advertising revenues alone, and the development of online channels will both complement and support that development”.(annual report for the year ended December 2006).
References:
Chiariglione, L., 1998, Impact of multimedia standards on multimedia industry, Proceedings of the IEEE, 1998.
Drew, M.S. & Li, Z.N., 2004, Fundamentals of Multimedia, School of Computer Science Publication, Canada, 2004
Electric Word Corporate Website, [online], available at:, accessed on 16th October, 2007
Multimedia Induatry, Annual reports from 2001–2006. [Online].
Available at:, accessed on 16th October 2007.