Smart Media fills important vacuum:

The Annual Report Company

How important is an annual report to a company? The answer is that an annual report is a comprehensive report on a company's activities throughout the preceding year.

Annual reports are intended to give shareholders and other interested people information about the company's activities and financial performance.

Companies listed in a stock exchange are also required to report at more frequent intervals.

Earlier in Sri Lanka producing an annual report was just presenting the company's financial status. But today, companies have keen interest in producing innovative annual reports to communicate with stakeholders as a powerful communication tool of the company.

Today we see many award ceremonies in the world and in the country to recognize these innovations in financial reporting taking in new dimensions.

In the past most of the advertising companies which provide different services to the client undertook producing their annual report too. There was no single company dedicated for annual reports only.

Identifying this niche market opportunity over 15 years ago Dr Vijith Kannangara found Smart Media- The Annual Report Company.

Today Smart Media is one of the very few companies in the world who are focused exclusively on Annual Reports and become South Asia's leader in producing Annual Reports.

During a period of over 15 years, the company has produced 1,361 reports for both foreign and local clients in different industries such as Banking, Aviation, Automobile and many more.

Smart Media Creative Director Ananda Jagoda said during first six years they didn't have any clear target. "However we tried to provide an innovative and high standard product for our clients and due to this we were able to win the trust of our clients," he said. In 2000 we had a new vision for our company to become the world's best annual report company in 2010. We had this vision statement everywhere in our office and we use to remind our vision statement before any client meeting. Our challenge was to compete with major annual report companies in Europe and US. However this challenge helped us lot in achieving our targets," he said.

An Annual Report with creations only will not be a comprehensive one. It should consist of accurate and clear information of the company that tallies with the current economic changes and need to communicate to all the stakeholders of the company.

The company Annual Report can be used as powerful marketing tool of the company.

As Smart Media we had a clear understanding of our clients' need which is conveying clients ideas correct and clear information to stakeholders on time. We need to satisfy both these parties and we were able to gain a good response from both parties. We have also brought practicality into the innovation and the way we think," Jagoda said.

With their practical and innovative approach the company became world champions by clinching the coveted Platinum Award at the 24th International ARC Awards in New York recently.

This was achieving their visionary statement to become the world's best annual report company in 2010 surpassing all other major UK, US and Europe annual report companies.

The ARCs popularly dubbed the Oscars of Annual Reports and most significant thing is that Smart Media was the first company outside the USA, UK and Continental Europe to achieve global champion status.

Not only Smart Media its clients from Sri Lanka won 41 awards that night which was a highest honour for the country at the award ceremony.

This is the latest achievement by Smart Media and company has won several other awards for its creativity and innovation in the industry. Winning 13 awards at the LACP Awards in 2010, Winning one of the most sought after design awards worldwide: the red hot in Germany two times, Winning four international awards are some of their achievements.

Smart Media clients too excel in different award ceremonies SAFA Best of Best award and ICASL Best of Best awards are some of them.

"We could not achieve all this alone our clients and our Smart Media team are the secret of our success. Our clients are always with us encouraging us to provide an innovative value added product to the industry. Their trust on us leads to these types of major achievements," he said.

The Smart Media team is the strength of the company. Though our team is divided into several sections we work according to the "Family concept." We have created the environment where our team could develop their own skills and talents taking the company forward," he said.

"Our strategic vision focuses on ten countries-Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kenya, Tanzania, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. While that's for starters, our evolving technological platform will transcend geographical constraints very soon," Jagoda said.

(AS)