BPO SEGMENTS: Opportunities Galore

Publishing Services: Write it Right

One BPO opportunity that can act as the great leveler between bigger and smaller locations

If processes like HR and equity research are more discussed than done in India, publishing services is one area where much happens with little media attention. Companies like Macmillan India, Thomson Press, Techbooks and Datamatics have been around for more than 10 years, before BPO or offshoring became popular.

Like call centers, these services came to India because of two factors—lower cost and English skills. However, there is one major difference. While call centers require people with good spoken English skills, this requires people with excellent command over written English—something that is considered more important in Indian curricula than the ability to speak English. This area also requires the services of academically-qualified people in other science and humanities disciplines.

For years now, Indian companies have proved that they can do this not just cheaper but better. Look at the clients in the table below. Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, McGraw Hill, Blackwell, Pearson, John Wiley, Macmillan and Taylor & Francis—the giants of publishing.

Publishing services differs from most other BPO opportunities.

Processes are extremely domain-specific. This has resulted in focused players. Two of the Top 15 bpOrbit companies are in this domain.
Despite being process-centric work, publishing services does not require extraordinarily robust telecom infrastructure, resulting in facilities that have come up in smaller locations.
n The clients prefer to work with multiple vendors. So it is not surprising to find the same names in most client lists provided in the table.
Scale does not matter much. Scale is not necessarily a parameter that the client looks at while selecting a vendor. Smaller companies like SR Nova and SPS have the same kind of clients as bigger ones.
It is a mix of short-term and long-term contracts. Periodical publishers usually go for long-term contracts while book publishers go for projects.

Despite being a major opportunity, the sector has not got the attention that it deserves. An opportunity that started out before the big wave of technology enablement came in, technology acts as a differentiator in this business. Companies often boast of their technology, proprietary workflow processes and tools. The advent of XML has changed the way the whole industry works.

MAJOR PUBLISHING BPO SERVICE PROVIDERS
COMPANY	LOCATION	PEOPLE	MAJOR CLIENTS
Techbooks	NCR	1,750	McGraw Hill, Prentice Hall, Pearson, John Wiley, Oxford University Press, Earlham School of Religion, Royal Society of Chemistry, Kluwer, IEEE, Elsevier, Wiley, Cambridge University Press, Law Writer, HW Wilson, NetLibrary, Books 24x7
Datamatics	Mumbai	750	Partnership with Cadmus, Lexus-Nexus….
Macmillan India	Bangalore	NA*	American Institute of Physics, Hodder, Oxford University Press, Blackwell IEE, Palgrave Macmillan, Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishing Group, John Wiley & Sons, Pindar Group, Commonwealth Secretariat, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Reed Business Information, Elsevier, McGraw Hill, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, Euroscript, Macmillan Australia, Saarbrücker Zeitung, Extenza, Macmillan Education, Swets & Zeitlinger, Fry Communications, McQuarrie, Wisdens, Gill & Macmillan, Nature Publishing Group, WIT Press
Thomson Press	NCR, Chennai	NA*	American Institute of Physics, Blackwell, Elsevier, Reed Business Information, John Wiley, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Springer Verlag, Swets and Zeitlinger, Thomson Learning, Thieme Medical, Pearson Group
Integra	Pondicherry	600+	Pearson, John Wiley, Elsevier, Blackwell, Taylor & Francis, McMillan, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press
Kolam (SPI Technologies)	Pondicherry	NA*	Blackwell, Elsevier, John Wiley, Kluwer, Macmillan, Oxford University Press, Routledge
Newgen Imaging	Chennai	NA*	Academic Press, British Medical Association, Blackwell Publishers & IEE, Institute of Physics, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Kluwer Law and Plenum, Oxford University Press, Palgrave, St.Martin’s Press, Taylor & Francis
SR Nova	Bangalore	110	McGraw Hill Ryerson, Cambridge University Press, Charlesworth Group, University of Chicago Press
Cyber Media CaPS	NCR	50	NA*
Scientific Publishing Services	Chennai	NA*	NA*
*Not Available

This is one opportunity that needs government encouragement the most because it can actually act as a great leveler among the smaller and bigger locations. As it is, the standard of English education in most southern and eastern states is of high quality. However, because of the way English is taught, and because of the social environment, not many from these can speak fluent English, despite mastery over the written language.

These places can be good potential destinations for these kinds of services. In fact, places like Kolkata are a favorite hunting ground for companies like Techbooks. Some also operate from smaller locations like Pondicherry.

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