Tuesday, January 05, 2010
The pluses and perils of outsourcing
http://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2010/news/city-dailies-outsource-subbing-to-pa/
To see papers as well known for quality as these taking this step is certainly a surprise — because many or their readers will buy them for their unique take on events and individual style — but the business logic is understandable.
As revenues continue to decline, the pressures to manage costs down accordingly in order to maintain profits keep on relentlessly. So outsourcing that which you really don’t HAVE to do yourself becomes a no-brainer if you can ensure quality is maintained to the degree that the customers don’t even notice the change and that you will save money compared to keeping it in-house.
More and more content is king in the battle for sales, so you’ll still need your own reporters to get exclusive content to give you a competitive advantage and differentiation, but if you can codify your subbing style book and layout it can be outsourced seamlessly without loss of quality. Or at least that’s what they’ll hope is true.
Only time will tell if it is.
Dangers? As ever with outsourcing, less of control could cause issues with quality and flexibility. Want to change a page very late to get a breaking story in? In-house it’s easy. One it’s outsourced the answer may be “sorry, that page has gone”.
To see papers as well known for quality as these taking this step is certainly a surprise — because many or their readers will buy them for their unique take on events and individual style — but the business logic is understandable.
As revenues continue to decline, the pressures to manage costs down accordingly in order to maintain profits keep on relentlessly. So outsourcing that which you really don’t HAVE to do yourself becomes a no-brainer if you can ensure quality is maintained to the degree that the customers don’t even notice the change and that you will save money compared to keeping it in-house.
More and more content is king in the battle for sales, so you’ll still need your own reporters to get exclusive content to give you a competitive advantage and differentiation, but if you can codify your subbing style book and layout it can be outsourced seamlessly without loss of quality. Or at least that’s what they’ll hope is true.
Only time will tell if it is.
Dangers? As ever with outsourcing, less of control could cause issues with quality and flexibility. Want to change a page very late to get a breaking story in? In-house it’s easy. One it’s outsourced the answer may be “sorry, that page has gone”.
Labels: newspapers subbing outsourcing
