The State of Sourcing

Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee emphasized on ‘inclusive growth’ in this year’s budget. The focus was more on the education, infrastructure and social sector development.

From the IT-BPO industry’s perspective, the budget did not provide a reason to celebrate. There were no long term benefits announced for the IT and BPO industry. While there were no major positives for the industry, these are some of the recommendations by the Finance Minister of relevance to the BPO/IT sectors.

Increased outlay for education and infrastructure: The Finance Minister has given special attention to the education and infrastructure sectors. This will benefit the IT-BPO industry in the long term (provided it is implemented properly) by way of availability of a larger and employable talent pool and better infrastructure.

Continue reading ‘Budget 2010-2011: No reason to celebrate?’ »

Last year, Rio Tinto, a leading international mining group, created news by announcing its plans to offshore legal services to India. Following the footsteps of Rio Tinto, last week Microsoft announced its plan to send routine legal work to CPA Global.

While a team of 70 people from CPA Global has been offering services such as intellectual property and patent maintenance to Microsoft since 2005, this is a separate contract for the LPO related work. Microsoft engaged CPA Global for a pilot in October last year. CPA Global will be providing multi-jurisdictional legal support work and legal research to the tech giant out of its Gurgaon office.

Continue reading ‘Microsoft follows Rio Tinto’s footprints’ »

“ICG acquired a minority stake in CPA Global”, read the headline of a news article. Intermediate Capital Group (ICG), an independent investor and fund manager acquired a significant minority stake in a well-known LPO service provider. I was quite excited to read this news piece. Why? Investors taking interest in a segment positively reflects on the “sustainability factor” of the industry.

Most service providers in the LPO industry started off as self-funded companies and a few received funding from angel investors. In order to build marketing presence or significant knowledge base ahead of others, service providers are seeking VCs/PEs/angels. Yes! Investors are getting interested in the LPO segment. Funding from VC/PE firms started flowing in, but of course is limited at the moment as most companies are still quite small.

Continue reading ‘Investors get interested in LPO’ »

Despite the compelling needs of outsourcing, there have been instances in the recent past where some companies (although for different reasons) have shifted work back to their roots (onshore). This has been primarily seen in verticals including banking, financial services, retail, etc.

Bringing back the (offshored) operations in-house is not an attractive option for any company, as it eventually adds to their costs. However, there must be some compelling reason that forced companies to take work back onshore/in-house. The reasons might vary from….not enough cost savings, unsatisfactory results, quality not as expected to not a right choice of vendor.

Last year, we had conducted a survey of US and UK based law firms, which threw an interesting finding – “10% of the survey respondents tried and rejected offshoring”. During our course of research, we found a number of buyers who cited unsatisfactory work quality for abandoning their offshoring initiatives. Could this mean not enough groundwork done before selecting a vendor? Possibly!

Continue reading ‘Vendor selection – How important is it?’ »

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?’ »

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 LPO industry has not grown as fast as was had estimated earlier. The industry growth rate (CAGR of 40+% over 2003-07) dropped to 28% in 2007-08, and further slipped to 16% for 2008-09.

As the global legal industry suffered, the offshore industry could not escape the negative impact (although short-term). The slow down in the buyer market impacted the offshore industry resulting in a drop in the growth rate. Revenues from the offshore legal services industry were US$320 million for 2008 and are expected to reach $440 million by end 2010, according to a recent ValueNotes study titled ‘Legal Process Outsourcing: Crisis Creates New Opportunities‘. Consequently, there has been a shakeout in the industry. Over the last two years, >20% of the total number of service providers exited the LPO business. Is this an unusual situation? Textbooks of micro-economic theory talk about firms exiting an industry all the time. This is probably a live and recent example they can update their texts with. As profits diminished, smaller firms that could not take the hit exited. In an uncertain economy, mid-sized and smaller service providers are the worst affected by margin pressures. However, over-hyped prospects and ease of entry in this industry led entrants to believe that getting business would be easy. Few bothered about the potential risks or competitive dynamics, resulting in many weaker players fading away in the current environment.

In the current scenario, almost all offshore legal service providers are in fact, battling. While in some cases billing rates have come under pressure, in others the volume of work has shrunk. A pertinent question is, in this situation, which company is best positioned to sustain the growth? While the smaller businesses battle with survival issues, service providers with multiple service capability will be better positioned to weather the storm. ‘Multi-service capability’ will become critical not just for sustaining growth but also for the very survival of service providers! Incidentally, we have recently released the ValueNotes Sourcing Prism: Legal Outsourcing Edition that presents a list of service providers who are currently best positioned in the industry. Follow this link to find out more about the product.

In one of my previous posts, ‘UK Law Firms: Catching up on offshoring‘, I shared my views about UK based law firms opening up to the idea of offshoring. The growing interest amongst the buyer community was also evident at a recent conference that I attended on ‘Legal Process Outsourcing and Offshoring‘, organized by the Lawyer magazine in London.

The fact that several partners and attorneys participated in the session reflects the high level of interest in the subject. Several law firms indicated that their clients are increasingly suggesting using offshore service providers. The motive behind corporates pressurizing law firms is quite obvious – lower costs.

Continue reading ‘Wake up call to law firms!’ »