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 GS100: 2011 Global Services Compendium
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Publishing outsourcing- The pressures that publishers faced in the wake of economic recession stimulated the e-book market. In the US alone, trade wholesale electronic book sales amounted to $167 million according to the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). The e-book segment is growing and has witnessed serious attempts by publishers to make it a strong revenue source.

Outsourcing is being looked upon, besides to tackle cost pressures, to deal with the challenges of adapting to new technology, lack of in-house capability and addressing new geographies.

According to a 2010 ValueNotes survey of publishing service buyers, India was followed by the US in popular publishing outsourcing destinations, while the Philippines was the second most preferred offshore destination after India. ValueNotes estimates the Indian publishing outsourcing industry to grow to a $1.2 billion annual market by 2012 from $660 million in 2008. This growth is expected to come from the rise in the number of publishing firms that will outsource their work.

Indian players are shifting focus from the matured academic segment to the more lucrative segments in the publishing market- educational, magazines, corporate, B2B, trade and e-books will be attractive segments over the next three-four years, and Indian service providers can extend their current capabilities to service these upcoming opportunities.

The industry still suffers from a serious piracy problem, caused largely by the high price of books, especially foreign books published under license, where currency exchange rates push up the prices. Besides, diversifying into new areas of business and providing value-addition within current offerings are areas where outsourcing is yet to be viewed as a complete solution, the ValueNotes survey revealed.

Media outsourcing- The global media and entertainment industry revenue is likely to increase by leaps and bounds due to the proliferation of content in multiple formats across media platforms. The media process outsourcing opportunity is huge since most of the existing contents worldwide are in the analogue form and need to be digitized for new platforms.

As advertising declines, the pace of onshore and offshore outsourcing in the media industry appears to be picking up. The Everest Group reported an increase in media-related outsourcing deals in the last year. Mergers among media companies are driving some of those deals, but most of the push to outsourcing is due to pressures in the ad market. Publishers see labor arbitrage and offshoring as one of the easiest things they can do to cut costs.

Many companies today understand the importance of maintaining a good profile on the internet. Hence, they seek social media services like SMO (SM optimization) for their websites from third party vendors to boost their online business marketing while they focus full time on their core business developments.

 GS100: 2011 Global Services Compendium
View Digital Magazine    Download PDF

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