The State of Sourcing

U.S. Internet users spent more time on Facebook than Yahoo and Google combined this past year (Nielsen, 2011). Following users, companies are also on track to spend 13.7 percent of their marketing budget on social media advertising (Borrell Inc. , 2012). Traditionally, small businesses advertised in local papers to drum up sales for their businesses. In the current scenario, Facebook and Twitter accounts threaten to usurp the place that newspapers had in selling the business to its readers.

Continue reading ‘Newspapers need to effectively monetize social media if they want to sustain their business’ »

There has been quite a brouhaha over the impact of tablets and e-book readers in our lives over the past couple of years. With the iPad series being the clear front-runners, the other game-changers are Amazon’s Kindle series and the Nook by Barnes & Noble. All the potential talk over how these will have a massive influence on media, marketing and publishing is explained by the fact that Amazon and Barnes & Noble have each decided to put another 4-5 million tablets each into the market in 2012.

This holiday season, consumers are looking at buying and gifting another transformational format for the media and entertainment industry – the e-book. With the foundation being built slowly over the past two years, the e-book industry is now unleashing its full marketing potential to convince tablet owners to make the “digital switch” from traditional hard covers and paperbacks to its electronic form. Amazon and B&N have already established their proprietary e-book formats and dozens of other publishers are getting on-board to digitize their output.

Continue reading ‘Holiday season cheer for publishing outsourcing with meteoric rise in demand for e-book services’ »

It was the first quarter of 2009. We were interviewing service providers to create our report on “Offshoring in the Publishing Vertical, 2009“. One such interview has left a lasting impression on us. Not because the company was unique in its offerings. Not because the person we were talking to was exceptionally eloquent. But because of one statement that was a commentary on the things to come -

Continue reading ‘Technology in publishing: What next?’ »

In the recent months, we have been studying the effect of the digital market on the publishing industry. Across segments and geographies, publishers are experiencing challenges centered on costs, resources and technology that have made it necessary for them to re-invent their business models.

Of the 200+ publishing professionals we interviewed, we found that close to 4 in 5 publishers are either outsourcing or considering outsourcing publishing services. So, if the whole industry is pretty much outsourcing technology, back office processes and industry specific publishing services, why is it still taboo? Perhaps some context would help.

Continue reading ‘Why is the outsourcing of publishing services still taboo?’ »

As a market to sell in or as a destination to outsource to, businesses across the world have been fascinated by China. The Chinese economy has relied heavily on exports – mostly contract manufacturing. Contract manufacturing here is a loosely used term. It encompasses everything from shoes, clothes, books, computer peripherals to machinery, heavy fabrication, automobile parts etc. It would be safe to assume, that every product out in the market has a Chinese contribution. Services might take longer to make a significant contribution to the economy, but once the population overcomes language issues, revenues from services are likely to increase.

This week, I came across an article that mentioned a few numbers about the publishing industry – which I think is indicative at best. While the numbers might be debated upon (and that would be welcome), it does not discount the fact that China is a strong contender – as a destination to outsource printing and as a potential market to sell in.

Continue reading ‘The Paper Dragon’ »

One would expect customer satisfaction levels with outsourcing providers to be proportional to the years spent in outsourcing. However, our findings from a recent survey of publishing industry segments – STM/Academic and Educational publishing threw some of these assumptions off the mark. It is surprising to note that publishers from the STM/Academic segment indicate such low levels of satisfaction with outsourcing despite being pioneers in outsourcing and offshoring.

Continue reading ‘Satisfaction with outsourcing: Educational vs. STM publisher’ »

Publishers lament the lack of skills when it comes to offshoring complex copy-editing to India. Some complain that even simpler, less complex copy-editing jobs are difficult to procure at the same level of proficiency that a US/UK-based counterpart can achieve. Service providers admit to the huge challenge of finding the right guy for the job, and more importantly keeping him there. The talent gap is evident… solutions are elusive! Apart from intensive on-the-job training provided by most service providers, other steps have been tried and proved useful, some of which include:

- Setting up training arm within the company to develop and absorb trained manpower

Continue reading ‘So where is the talent hiding?’ »

The newspaper and magazine segments are the largest contributors in revenues to the global publishing industry – contributing close to 52% of global publishing revenues. It would therefore be safe to assume that of all the challenges faced by the industry, none would be as altering (in terms of revenues) as the challenges faced by these two segments. The newspaper and magazine segments have already lost considerable revenues on account of dip in ad revenues. This is directly attributable to the global economic slowdown, which has led to decrease in consumer and corporate spending.

Continue reading ‘Magazines: Ad-ing up the losses’ »

With the publishing industry facing cost pressures, change in consumption patterns and struggling to sustain its revenues, it only seemed logical that the industry as a whole would outsource more. To truly understand how the industry value chain perceived outsourcing, we at ValueNotes Sourcing Practice decided to conduct a publishing survey.

To gain clarity on where the industry is heading, we needed to understand: Continue reading ‘Publishing Survey: Disparity in cost savings continues’ »

The newspaper and magazine segments are the largest contributors in revenues to the global publishing industry – contributing close to 52% of global publishing revenues. It would therefore be safe to assume that of all the challenges faced by the industry, none would be as altering (in terms of revenues) as the challenges faced by these two segments. The newspaper and magazine segments have already lost considerable revenues on account of dip in ad revenues. This is directly attributable to the global economic slowdown, which has led to decrease in consumer and corporate spending.

Does a drop in revenues merit a need to re-invent the business model? How are publishers coping with the dip in revenues? Will the digital market provide a strong revenue source? Will this mean more outsourcing/offshoring?  Over two posts, I will answer these questions, starting with the newspaper segment.

Continue reading ‘Newspapers: Stop the presses?’ »