| Quality of outsourced work is a concern for publishers |
| Wednesday, 20 October 2010 | |
|
Last year we, at ValueNotes Sourcing Practice,
surveyed 200+ publishing professionals from various parts of the
publishing industry’s value chain. The publishing industry has changed
dramatically over the last two years. The global economic slowdown hit
industry revenues hard. Moreover, rapid technological advancements led
publishers to a rude awakening – the business model they were operating
by for decades wasn’t working anymore.
Last year we, at ValueNotes Sourcing Practice, surveyed 200+ publishing professionals from various parts of the publishing industry’s value chain. The publishing industry has changed dramatically over the last two years. The global economic slowdown hit industry revenues hard. Moreover, rapid technological advancements led publishers to a rude awakening – the business model they were operating by for decades wasn’t working anymore. While publishers have made attempts to raise decreasing revenues, consumers as well as corporate clients had reduced spending. Rise in costs of print and production has led to a “two pronged” dilemma for publishers - increase revenues or decrease costs. In this context, publishers increased their interest in the digital market – for it addresses the” two pronged” dilemma quite effectively. While opening up new channels to monetize content, it is significantly cheaper to distribute a unit of content. However, transitioning to ‘digital only’ form amounts to re-inventing the business model and brings in additional challenges (copyright protection, internet economics, etc). The context of an industry in turmoil and looking for answers to these questions prompted us to ask the publishing industry “What are the future plans for outsourcing?” Quality still remains an issue Most of the publishing services buyers we had surveyed indicated an increase of 25% in the volume of outsourced work – this in spite of the lack of exceptional experiences while outsourcing. The following chart illustrated satisfaction levels while sourcing publishing services. Only one out of five buyers had indicated high satisfaction while outsourcing. Clearly, outsourcing in the publishing industry has not peaked. Quality is a major issue for most publishers – more than half having indicated a lot of improvement is required on the vendor’s part – from low end services such as composition, typesetting, conversions to high end services such as copy-editing, quality of outsourced work leaves a lot to be desired. Quality is also a deterrent while outsourcing – buyers not satisfied with quality will often need to re-work, thus increasing costs. The rise of the digital model in the publishing industry has led to several challenge areas for publishers – mostly cost, capability and resource constraints. Publishers have already started leveraging outsourcing as a means to address these issues. Quality is still an issue - findings from our survey on “The Current State of Digital Content, 2010-2011” indicate that publishers remain unsatisfied with the quality of outsourced work. Future outlook Outsourcing has become mainstream, especially in the digital context, and our recent survey suggests 4 out of 5 publishers have outsourced and/or considering outsourcing. Quality and user experience (across varying devices and formats) remains critical for publishers. For vendors, the digital content market represents an opportunity in services that include production, conversions, workflow management, XML and consulting. However, tapping into this opportunity involves meeting buyer expectations on quality. As the digital market grows and matures, there will be opportunities for both publishers and vendors. For publishers the opportunity will lie in cross-selling content, for vendors it could be providing the services that facilitate it. A vendor’s role is fast changing. Buyers are now looking for companies that offer value beyond the process. This value manifests itself as thought leadership in automation, processes, optimization, etc. One publisher we interviewed outsourced digitization to a publishing services vendor. Through a steep learning curve, the vendor progressed up the value chain, by continually providing quality services with inherent value addition. This process eventually culminated into the vendor becoming the publisher’s partner and entering into a revenue share model with the client. For vendors, the opportunity is in moving up the value chain and evolving into a trusted partner. Before that, quality issues will need to be overcome… Related Items: |
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
