Introduction: Cinescape Overview

Cinescape is owned by Kuwait National Cinema Company that was founded on October 5th, 1954. Cinescape is the sole exhibitor and major entertainer company in the country since 1950's. It is a pioneer in the introduction, distribution and exhibition of Arabic, English, and Indian movies not in Kuwait solely, but also in the Middle East region, which makes it leading entertainment provider for more than a half century. The initial capital of the company estimated of 7 million Rupee (old Kuwaiti currency, which equals to 52,5000 KD). Initially it started its business with topless cinema called Al-Cinema Al-Sharquya that can be occupied by 1000 seats in city of Sharque (capital of Kuwait) with three class settings (First class costs 5 Rupee, Second class costs 3 Rupee, and Third class costs 2 Rupee). Following Al-Cinema Al-Sharquya, Cinescape introduced series of other entertainment showrooms: cinema Hawali Alsayfi, AL-Fuhaihil Alsayfi, AL-Hamra, AL-Fardous, AL-Andaluse, AL- Salmiya, and finally AL-Jahra.

Beginning from last decade KNCC started to change its strategy and competition in the market through establishing high resolution and modern screens and surrounding systems combined with luxurious seating and entertainment atmosphere in line with innovations in the field of worldwide entertainment. Thus, new branches were opened in shopping malls all around State of Kuwait since 1996 and beyond. In total, Cinescape currently operates 13 theaters in Kuwait (other reports say only 11 working theaters1) which are: Alsharqiya, Marina, Granada, The Avenues, Plaza, Metro, Almuhalab, Ajiyal, 360 Mall, laila Gallery, Alkout, Albiraq, and Alfanar, and one more branch will be opened soon.

One advantage of the Cinescape is that it has no competitors in local market. Cinescape has a wide variety of business partners such as Warner Bros, Paramount, Universal Pictures, Disney, Buena Vista, and many other Independent Studios.

Since entertainment market is enormously diverse and all ages are entertained through this market, Cinescape targets all entertainment market segments and whole population.

Cinema Technology

The entertainment industry worldwide is continuously growing. A report fromtechdirect.comemphasizes the point that the entertainment sector is growing exponentially and showing tremendous opportunity. This does not mean inhouse movies only but also includes videos, books, music, and video games, all sectors show growing at outstanding rates. Customer percentage incremental rate increased 15% from 2008 to 2012, employment grew in this sector 20% from 1998 to 2010, and overall entertainment industry grew 66% from 1998 to20102. Earnest and Young consultation firm exclude the years of 2008 and 2009 from performing well, other than those two global financial years, Media & Entertainment companies performed well in general. Accordingly, Cinescape performed well during its five decades of performance. It is important to note the visions and mission of the company. The company's vision is "providing integrated, exciting, and attractive entertainment with a real connection between life and fantasy". Furthermore, Cinescape's mission is "customer satisfaction by performance upgrading, service improving, and searching for all the new ways to achieve our goals". Consequently, Cinescape continuously keeps improving its services by offering the latest advanced technologies in the entertainment sector. Currently, all Cinescape cinemas are either digital or 3D screens.

Continuous Customer Satisfaction

To gain customer satisfaction, Cinescape developed a special task force into the KNCC call center that enthusiastically helps with questions and requests of its customers. The call center established and began its work actively beginning of 2004. Its main goal helping customers

when a claim for their money is made, following-up e-booking procedures, and further e-commerce claims.

Old System

Although Cinescape performs excellent in providing its customers with latest technologies in the entertainment field, it lacks to be in competitive status at other levels. The company invested huge amount of money developing and inventing inside its theaters but not following the latest technologies for ticketing and after-sale services. The ticketing business process followed old types where customers are obliged to attend personally at site to buy the ticket before attending the movie. This process was not attractive since customers are forced to come too early, sometimes an hour before the show to be in the live waiting in the queue to buy tickets. This process promoted negative feedback towards the company's reputation in the field of entertainment and media industry. The inconvenience becomes even worse during weekends where lots of people target to movie theaters and lines of queues become everyone's nightmare. According to many customers, they hate to be in the queue for more than an hour until they reach the person who apologizes that the movie is fully booked and no more seats are available. Because company's management was afraid of losing its market share to other media options (Internet, video rentals), its operational manager raised the question what to do and how to solve this issue?

New System: Online Booking

IT manager, the department that responsible of developing business process into IT environment, triggered and raised the ticketing problem issue. After studying the problem and promoting potential solutions based upon implementing e-solution, the top management assigned the department to develop and implement the solution with open budget. The top management saw ticketing as a strategic issue and should implement the solution toovercome those problems within short period of time.

Team of IT department composed of project management leader Brijesh Mathew (Head of Information System), Eapan Thomas (Sr. System Analyst), and Jonethan Steven (Designer). The three were assigned to finish the job. In 2001 the project was up and running and known as the Cinescape e-ticketing system. At that time, Cinescape became the first in Middle East region to introduce online bookings with the option of choosing their desired seats prior to film.

Online booking, which was launched in 2001, was considered a revolutionary way of helping customers booking their seats online, where customer not only buy the ticket but he/she can also see and choose between available places, book the ticket, and in cases where cannot attend or changed his/her mind, he/she can even cancel reservations without major overcomes. The team project developed the website using popular general-purpose scripting language the PHP language3, open source database PostgreSQL4, open source server Linux5, and the application server is Apache6. It is obvious that team's strategy in building their project is to depend over open source multi-purpose multi-platforms software.

Further developments went on to offer a variety of capabilities to their customer based. At the initial stages, the system was able to show movie times, and then it was developed into enabling the customer to order smart card through special page on the website where the card will be delivered to the customer. Smart card option (introduced in 2003) that is used into special machines enabled customers to register and book their tickets online. On the following years, developments continued where additional services were added, such as special service for NBK customers whom can use their ATM debit cards and credit card to book the tickets. Later on, additional services added that empowered company's e-ticketing system where K-net7 (Kuwaiti shared electronic banking system services) that is accepted and used by all banks in Kuwait. In line with its vision and mission (stated previously), Cinescape improved its ticketing system farther than and beyond e-ticketing hoping to catch the revolutionary trend in communications and mobile-commerce and offered M-net services. In

M-net services, Cinescape hoped to catch the new moves in technology industry through offering all options through personal gadgets (mobile). In general, new developments and investments in technology, Cinescape were able to provide its audience following services:

1.Smart Card

2.Automated Ticketing Machines

3.3- E-Ticketing options

4.Premier Show

5.Showtimes Enquiry

6.School booking

7.Group booking

After major developments on its ticketing system, Cinescape gained many advantages. First, its customers were relieved from waiting in lines wasting their times to book and check for availability, customers was able to search for desired movies, group buy tickets, school offers, seasonal offers, weekly offers. Furthermore, customers were able to make complains, feedbacks, return their tickets, and ask for vouchers in a more speedy way than before. The company, after its online and e-ticketing system developments and as a result of investments in IT, gained more market share and an annual increased growth rate.

New System Problems

The new system, however, was not problem-free development. Major obstacle in the face of the new system was related to Internet connection, which was out of company's hands and was unable to control it. Many customers complained of service discontinuation while making transactions. At many occasions, customers complain that their transaction went off during payment timings for example. This issue raised new challenges to the company where the accounting department is pressured to do extra work to find out whether such lost amounts of money are been deposited into the company's account and whether the booking actually went through or still needs to be done. This process costs the company extra costs because of checking and contacting customers regarding the updates.

Another challenging issue related to persons who are new to the Internet and cannot use the system individually and need help from customer support, especially 10 years ago where online service systems were still new and not frequently used among normal people

pls the following question related to the above study case.

1. Analyze briefly the case study in terms of organization, management and technology
2. Explain how Porter's 5-force Competitive model applies to Apple.
3. Explain how the Value Chain applies to Apple
4. Give 3 examples on (each) structured, semi and non-structured Apple can, could, has taken. How can BI help answer those?

thx