The State of Sourcing

The e-book market is still hazy at best, and the influx of e-book readers is not helping publishers and readers.  To get a better sense of how many e-book readers are out there, I did a Google News search. There are close to 1500 articles from the start of this year – an indicator of the flurry of activity that the device space has seen. (In all fairness, a significant proportion of them might be from Apple and the iPad). I am  amazed at how many e-book readers are already out there or are due for launch. Many gadget companies have already started looking at this space and are accordingly launching their products. I have listed a few of the e-book readers that I have come across. (Do let me know if I missed any)

Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, Barnes and N0ble Nook, Apple iPad, Plastic Logic, InfiMedia Pi, Asus, Lenovo, Acer, Samsung, Neonode, BeBook, Spring Design Alex, Aluratek Libre, Yinlips, Teclast K3, Oppo Enjoy, Hanlin, Cube, iRiver, Interead Cool-er, Elonex, Bookeen Cybook Opus, Onyx BOOX, QuokkaPad, Hanvon, IREX, Copia

Continue reading ‘Reading into the device market…’ »

US President Barack Obama announced his decision to end tax breaks to American firms that ship out jobs abroad. In his first State of Union address, he said “To encourage… businesses to stay within our borders, it is time to finally slash the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas, and give those tax breaks to companies that create jobs right here in the United States of America.”

Since this announcement, there have been speculations about the impact of this move on the offshore service providers (especially the Indian IT and ITES industry) and the future of the outsourcing industry.

Continue reading ‘End of tax breaks! – Can outsourcing be wished away in this era?’ »

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’ »

In his recent blog post, Tom Anderson commented about the trends that the market research industry would witness in the coming year. One of the trend that he talks about is the effectiveness of research. He points out that research can be called effective when it significantly drives bottom line results. In one of my earlier posts titled “Real time updates: Companies want to know now!”, I highlighted the value of real time updates that will help companies analyze data at a faster speed. With a constant flow of data, companies can take decisions quickly that would impact the bottom line of the business.

So how far have we reached? As per the “New Gen Market Research” Group MR trends survey, the top 3 answers for “new analytical techniques” that companies want to use were, Continue reading ‘MR techniques: to socialize or not to socialize’ »

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?’ »

Global market research biggies like Nielsen, TNS, IPSOS and Synovate have always been the water hole where all the Market Research Outsourcing (MRO) companies have been going to. Although the water has not dried, the water-hole has indeed become congested and competitive.

The top 25 market research agencies around the world contribute nearly 65% of the global market research revenues and have their presence across all continents. Indeed, that has led MRO companies to target the big guns to establish strong relationships with them. A strong relationship with an established market research agency offers an opportunity to build on the services capabilities of an MRO vendor, build credibility in the buyer market and of course, have a steady cash flow. However MRO vendors are also looking at the small and medium sized research agencies for business.

Although the top 25 global giants offer huge business opportunity, it has always proved a difficult segment to crack.

Continue reading ‘Market research outsourcing: shift in buyer landscape?’ »

The global market research (MR) industry has seen a decline in the past couple of years with revenues at $32.5 billion for the year 2008, according to a report by ESOMAR

Given the current recessionary crisis, although the MR industry’s overall growth has been slightly sluggish, it has shown better revenue figures when compared to other sectors. Global MR companies have resorted to budget cuts as one of the precautionary measures to deal with cost pressures caused by the recession. Budgets were slashed by 9.5% in 2008, and by 2.9% for the first half of 2009.

Market research industry: keeping a watchful eye
The market share of the top 10 research companies has been 55-60% for the past 3-4 years with established players diversifying and expanding their markets globally. Large global companies like The Nielsen Group, TNS, Kantar Group, Synovate, etc, have penetrated global markets and have established long-term relationships with FMCG companies and other industry leaders. The opportunity for mergers and acquisitions is very high in the global MR industry given the large number of unorganized and small players. Niche players, with regional expertise in markets like Latin America, Africa and Asia, are attractive acquisition targets for captives of large global MR firms.

Continue reading ‘Market Research: Shift from Reactive to Proactive’ »

e-learning has been a service oriented industry since its inception. Indian e-learning service providers have also traditionally taken on offshored custom services from clients, on an ongoing basis or through annual contracts. According to a ValueNotes report, the revenues from this offshoring market are estimated at $341 million for the calendar year 2008. Trends in the industry now suggest that while the offshore services framework may serve as a good strategy for companies in the short term, future growth for Indian e-learning companies will be sustained by a diversification/upgrading of service offerings.

Productizing for alternate revenue streams
ValueNotes research suggests that e-learning providers will most likely go into the learning products business in the future, for domestic as well as international client markets. This is because scalability is achievable to a high degree with such offerings, and providers are able to target specific new audiences with their products (such as B2C products for English language, primary school children; B2B products for sales training, soft skills). For example, Zeus Learning, an e-learning services company, recently launched its product ‘TestFunda.com’, an online/CD ROM based learning courseware delivery platform for CAT aspirants. Companies looking to diversify from their offshoring services model are concentrating more on developing such offerings in the next year.

Continue reading ‘Productization and SaaS as a Strategy for e-learning’ »

Turnovers in research agencies are improving slightly, as per a survey conducted by MarketResearchAgencies.eu. The survey included 114 Market Research Agencies’ (MRA) members spread across the globe. Comparing the data from Nov’09 with a report published in May’09, only 45% of the agencies have experienced a reduction in turnover, compared to 60% in May’09.

Although this is a small sign of improvement, it does gives us a small peak into what we can expect in the coming 6 months. With the global recession revenue worm slowly ceasing to dip, a slow recovery growth rate will have a positive impact on the business of the research companies. On a more positive note, 36% of the respondents have seen an increase in their turnovers, compared to 20% in May’09. The cross-section would be of more interest, in order to see how big (in terms of scale and maturity) are the agencies who have claimed an increase in the turnovers in the past 6 months. It has been the relatively small-mid size companies that have been negatively impacted by recession. This cross-section becomes important, as we also have 23% of the respondents now that have experienced a substantial decrease in their turnovers, compared to 21% in May’09.

Continue reading ‘Turnover in market research: Snail paced recovery’ »

This was the heated discussion that took much of the limelight, at the first ever ‘CLO Summit 09‘ held yesterday at the TISS Convention Center, Mumbai, India. The event saw the attendance of Learning and Development heads of many leading companies across the Indian corporate field (including Novartis, Pepsico, Oracle, L&T, IBM, NIIT, HPCL, ONGC, SBI Life Insurance, BPCL and Aditya Birla Group.), as also some domestic e-learning providers. The Chief Guest, Bhaskar Chatterjee (IAS, Secretary, Dept. of Heavy Ind. & Public Ent., Government of India) set the context for the event, by defining what it means to be a ‘CLO’ at an organisation, and the many roles and characteristics that the title assumes. Panel discussions and audience inputs throughout the rest of the Summit then debated these concepts.

LeapVault’s CEO, Kumaar Bagrodia gave his vision for learning in the future, encompassing the principles of change and innovation for competitive advantage. Panel discussions and presentations by eminent corporate representatives discussed topics such as the role of the CLO and L&D in organizations; learning in public sector and non corporate organizations, learning in multicultural environments and the role of Learning in R&D intensive organisations.

Continue reading ‘CLOs: To appoint or not to appoint?’ »