March 11th, 2008
Next Big Thing: Social Media Outsourcing (SMO) (Part 1 of 2)
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Quick Summary: Read why Social Media Outsourcing (SMO) will be the next big business opportunity for India after Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO).
Social media practitioners often talk about it in cryptic “conversation is an art form” terms, but you can break down the social media delivery process in six discrete steps that correspond to the oft-quoted Listen -> Understand -> Engage model:-
1. Data collection
2. Data mining
3. Data analysis
4. Insight delivery
5. Consulting
6. Solution delivery
If you look hard at these six steps, you’ll find that many of them are driven by dynamics that make them very susceptible to outsourcing –
While the details are best dealt in a white paper, or a business plan another post, here’s a summary of what steps in the social media delivery process are most susceptible to outsourcing –
- Data-collection and insight delivery will involve a one-time process set-up, after which they’ll be more or less automated via crawlers and dashboards respectively.
- Local expertise and relationships will continue to be important for consulting and parts of insight delivery (client interaction) and solution delivery (client interaction, design and B2B community management).
- Man-hour intensive parts of the social media delivery process, like data mining (basically content tagging), parts of data analysis and parts of solution delivery (coding and B2C community management) will be outsourced to countries that have a low-cost web-savvy workforce with a good understanding of the language.
I didn’t get any firm numbers for the size of the global social media business, but most analysts seem to agree that it is the next big thing for businesses.
I did get some firm numbers for the business process outsourcing industry. The global BPO industry is expected to grow to $230 bn by 2012 with $50 bn of it coming to India only (Nasscom-Everest study).
How much of that $230 bn will be social media outsourcing? How much of that $50 bn will be social media outsourcing?
Do you agree with me that social media outsourcing will be the next big business opportunity for India?
