The
Economic Times
Publishing: India's new BPO frontier
Ishani Duttagupta & Rajeshwari Sharma
Times News Network [Sunday, August 08, 2004]
NEW DELHI: It's the new frontier for outsourcing. After banking,
financial institutions, IT support services, legal and medical
records, it's now the publishing industry, both print and electronic,
which is outsourcing to India in a big way. So what are the
advantages.
"To begin with the same as other industries - like an excellent,
educated, English speaking workforce at lower cost Add to that writing
copy, editing and proof reading for which also Indians have excellent
skills. We have a mature publishing and advertising industry so you
have a ready pool of talent,'' says VP & Research Director, Gartner
India.
Agrees VP of Nasscom: "Publishers in the developed countries are
routinely outsourcing editorial, design and production processes of
the publishing workflow, content development coding and composition to
countries like India.
Our great resource of highly educated and English speaking
professionals provide the US and UK-based publishing community with
the best value for sourcing their products globally. The cost
advantage is about 40% for the large publishing houses that some of
the Indian companies cater to."
While outsourcing of editorial content may have started as early as 30
years ago, most companies have gone into exporting creative and
knowledge content since about the last three years. "We export
creative work for yellow page ad compositions, catalogue compositions
and data conversion for both the print and web medium. We also do
electronic versions of journals, encyclopedia etc, " says the head of
information processing division, Macmillan India.
Apart from the cost differential, there are other advantages too. "We
typically expect our clients to see major reductions, only partly
because of any cost savings. It is, over time, about enhanced
productivity, better automation and re-engineered processes as much as
wage benefits. We expect the consolidated cost savings to range from
30-40%,'' says Randolph Altschuler, Co-CEO, OT.
In fact, the publishing processes that are being outsourced to India
are often high-end and specialized. Says GM,Thomson Digital:"
Outsourcing of content and all the other services around the
publishing industry is a huge industry and is already pegged at $2.5
billion globally.
With traditional markets like the UK and ones like the US emerging,
this segment of BPO is definitely on a high. However, Australia and
New Zealand could emerge as other big players for a piece of the pie
in the coming years.
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