Tagged: Business Process Outsourcing RSS

  • Gaurav Mishra 12:29 pm on March 11, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Business Process Outsourcing, BuzzPundit, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,   

    Next Big Thing: Social Media Outsourcing (SMO) (Part 2 of 2) 

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    Quick Summary: Read a soon-to-be-real scenario featuring imaginary Indian Social Media Outsourcing (SMO) company BuzzPundit to understand why SMO will be the next big business opportunity for India after BPO and KPO.

    - X – X – X –

    If you found it difficult to believe my assertion that social media outsourcing (SMO) will be the next big business opportunity for India, let me present a soon-to-be-real scenario featuring imaginary Indian SMO company BuzzPundit.

    Imagine a sprawling corporate campus on the outskirts of a large Indian metro (take your pick from Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Gurgaon or Pune). Imagine 10000 twenty-something Indians sitting in front of their computer screens. If you must, think of a call center. Except that these twenty-somethings are not making call after call to customers in the US; they are reading articles, posts and comments and tagging them, or responding to them.

    Welcome to BuzzPundit. You are at the corporate campus of one of India’s many social media outsourcing (SMO) companies.

    If you visit BuzzPundit’s website, you’ll find that BuzzPundit claims to provide end-to-end social media solutions to Fortune 500 clients. In fact, it often does. It has an impressive client roster of Indian multinationals who now have an international footprint and want to engage with a global audience via social media. BuzzPundit provide the entire gamut of social media solutions to such clients, including online reputation monitoring, development of social media strategy and deployment of social media tools.

    Six Step Social Media Delivery Process

    However, only less than 10% of BuzzPundit’s 10000 strong workforce works (directly or indirectly) with Indian clients. 90% of BuzzPundit’s workforce works on international client accounts.

    BuzzPundit has sales offices in the US and Europe and its international clients are a mix of Fortune 500 corporates and social media agencies who work for them.

    BuzzPundit rarely provides an end-to-end social media solution to such clients. Such clients have basically out-sourced two social media processes (SMPs) to BuzzPundit —

    - Social media monitoring, which basically involves reading and tagging thousands of articles and posts on a daily basis and presenting the results in pre-decided formats.

    - Business-to-consumer or B2C community management, which basically involves reading and responding to thousands of customer posts, comments and complaints on a daily basis.

    The Case for Social Media Outsourcing

    But enough background now; let us go back to BuzzPundit’s corporate campus and see for ourselves what a typical day at work looks like for its 10000 employees.

    Neha has been working with BuzzPundit for the last two years. When she joined BuzzPundit fresh after graduation, she was put through a rigorous six week orientation program and given an understanding of concepts like social media, conversations, buzz, reputation and sentiment. She was also trained and tested on the speed and accuracy of her reading comprehension.

    She was then assigned to the Nokia account — BuzzPundit handles Nokia’s global English language social media outsourcing account — and put through another six week orientation program on Nokia’s and its competitors’ products, the business drivers in the mobile phone industry and the meaning of reputation in Nokia’s specific context.

    For almost a year, Neha worked as part of a 500 member Nokia team in BuzzPundit’s social media monitoring department. Almost 7000 of BuzzPundit’s 10000+ employees work in this department.

    Every morning, Neha would log into her computer and BuzzPundit’s proprietary crawler would have 100+ articles and posts ready for her. Every entry would pre-classified with source, product, location, spokesperson and other pre-defined tags. Neha’s work involved reading the entry and answering 50+ multiple-choice questions related to the entry’s context and sentiment, such as –

    What is the overall sentiment of the entry w.r.t Nokia? Rate on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 is strongly negative and 5 is strongly positive.

    What, if any, customer complaints are discussed in the entry? Choose one or more from the drop-down menu.

    What is the overall sentiment of the entry w.r.t Nokia’s handling of customer complaints? Rate on a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 is strongly negative and 5 is strongly positive.

    After a year, as Neha’s understanding of Nokia’s mobile phone business and the nature of online conversations matured, she was transferred to BuzzPundit’s business-to-consumer (B2C) community management department as a community manager. Almost 1000 of BuzzPundit’s 10000+ employees work in this department.

    Now, when Neha logs into her computer, BuzzPundit’s proprietary crawler has 100+ posts, comments and forum entries ready for her, culled from the 25+ blogs, forums and groups about Nokia that are assigned to Neha. After a year of being a part of these communities, Neha has learned the nuances of each one of them. Every day, she responds to hundreds of customer comments and complaints about Nokia’s products, and, if the conversation turns particularly nasty, escalates it to her supervisor Ram.

    Neha has been told that she will be promoted to a supervisor position in BuzzPundit’s business-to-consumer (B2C) community management department next year. As a supervisor, she’ll handle a team of 10+ community managers who work on the Nokia account. She’ll have overall responsibility for the 250+ blogs, forums and groups about Nokia that are being handled by her team members. She’ll monitor the tone and content of her team members’ interactions in these communities and step in herself every time a conversation turns particularly nasty.

    After two years of working as a supervisor, Neha hopes to be promoted to the position of the account manager in charge of Nokia’s community management program. She’ll have 20+ supervisors and 200+ community managers reporting into her. Some of the supervisors will be in charge of communities focused on Nokia and others will be in charge of distributed conversations about Nokia and its products. Overall, Neha’s team will participate in 20000+ conversations about Nokia and its products on a daily basis.

    Some day, Neha hopes to become a social media analyst at BuzzPundit. Aditi, who is BuzzPundit’s social media analyst in charge of the Nokia account, has 5+ years of experience in the mobile industry after doing her MBA. She works with Nokia, and its advertising and public relations agencies, to design and direct their social media monitoring and community management programs. After understanding Nokia’s strategic and tactical campaign-level or product-level social media objectives, she works with the two Nokia account managers at BuzzPundit (one each for social media monitoring and community management) and the technology and delivery department at BuzzPundit to design and upgrade the tagging system and the social media dashboard for Nokia.

    The technology and delivery department at BuzzPundit has 500+ software engineers. It is responsible for developing and upgrading BuzzPundit’s proprietary crawler, tagging system and customizable client dashboards. It also works with BuzzPundit’s 100-strong social media solutions team to do the coding for the proprietary social networks, social applications and other social media campaigns developed for BuzzPundit’s local clients.

    BuzzPundit is now planning to open three more campuses in India, apart from campuses in China and Mexico to handle Chinese and Spanish social media outsourcing accounts for its present clients.

    Now that you can visualize the business BuzzPundit is in, the business of social media outsourcing, let me ask you the same question again —

    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?

     

    • Anjali 3:12 am on March 12, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      I noticed BuzzPundit does not have a website. Can you point me to one?
      Your post is fascinating-any idea why mainstream media has not covered the phenomenon yet?

    • Gaurav 8:44 am on March 12, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      @Anjali: BuzzPundit does not have a website because it doesn’t exist. Please read the quick summary again:

      Read a soon-to-be-real scenario featuring imaginary Indian Social Media Outsourcing (SMO) company BuzzPundit to understand why SMO will be the next big business opportunity for India after BPO and KPO.

    • Rajesh 5:59 pm on March 12, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Gaurav,

      Social media outsourcing is not a new phenomenon and a couple of KPO outfits have been playing some over the last year or so… there have some interesting assignments right upto the highest point on the value chain.

      I also know of outfits which handle outsourcing of a totally different kind – creation, management and SEO of fake blogs. Why are these fake blog s created? To kill negative reportage on relevant categories by generating content on an ongoing basis.

      Factory like in their orientation, they are alive and kicking, these outfits.

      More face-to-face.

      Cheers.

      R

    • Rupesh 5:03 pm on May 5, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      @Gaurav,
      But I have some concerns about this model:-

      1. See, taking your e.g. only, Nokia has a large number of employee database. & mostly are on social n/w sites. Many are themselves bloggers. Now, the scenario might be that these social n/w sites are inaccessible as per silly corporate rules.. but what if they understand this fact & open the gate. Their incentive system will add a parameter called social branding.. No other 3rd party can understand the company better than the Nokia employees.
      Then there will not be any need of outsourcing the SMO thing as “Divide (the job among huge Nokia employee base) & conquer” will work for sure..
      What is you say on this?

      2. Leave the employee base, fans & devotees are doing it for “FREE OF COST”. You can see many communities on orkut, groups on Facebook, run by fans only in self interest.
      I am a blogger [though a lazy one ;-) ], i have received many times news, beta service invitation .etc. from CEO’s, CTO’s directly to blog upon.
      Because bloggers need only one thing, RECOGNITION. And any breaking news .etc. will help drive traffic to their blog. That’s what they want most of the time.

      I would appreciate if you & others continue the discussion from where I left…!!

    • Rupesh 5:45 pm on May 10, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Gaurav,
      To add more-
      3) social media is a part of web 2.0… correct?
      but when you are talking with the e.g. of Nokia, it says a dedicated social media firm will be always there to look after Nokia talks… right..?? then what about Web 2.0 approach… involvement of users..??

      Also, users will always be there to write negative about the brand.. and who knows may be they are also doing as Negative SMO..??

      BTW, did you read this post http://www.micropersuasion.com/2008/03/three-internet.html ?

    • Rupesh 12:08 pm on May 27, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      As I said before, corporates will start their own SMO units & will do it in-house.
      The trend has already started in US. check out- http://socialmediajobs.com
      I guess, India is not too far. What say?

    • manuscrypts 11:05 am on June 27, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      hmm, definitely possible.. my only discomfort would be the cultural nuances that are associated.. rough eg. a communication of nokia that’s a spoof of a local happening somewhere in europe.. would an outsourced unit be able to comprehend that and be part of the conversations? while its true that bpos handle this even now on a smaller scale, would it be replicable in social media? but as always, the ideasliver ;) is great :)

    • Gaurav Mishra 3:02 pm on June 30, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      @Rajesh: Interesting. We should have that face-to-face (or phone) conversation about these KPOs soon. As for fake blogs, well, what can I say…

      @Rupesh: Apologies for not replying earlier. Since you raised such interesting points, I wanted to respond with a full post, but couldn’t.

      Well, you are right. Ideally, all of Nokia’s employees should participate in social media conversations about Nokia, and engage with customers and citizens directly. This is the approach most social media purists would prefer.

      However, this is not always possible. Only a few Nokia’s employees would be comfortable with directly talking with consumers or citizens and even fewer will be comfortable using social media tools. Even the employees who have the ability and the inclination to engage in social media conversations may not have the bandwidth. Therefore, the need for a dedicated social media resource.

      In a high-value, low-volume B2B context, an in-house community manager may be the correct answer, as the number of social media conversations will be fewer.

      However, in a low-value, high-volume B2C context, like Nokia, a dedicated in-house team will be too costly, and outsourcing will be the only option.

      Call centers operate on the same logic. Ideally, all customer complaints should be handled by company employees, but they are handled by a third party call center because of cost considerations.

      Response-based social media outreach is basically online customer support. If Nokia can outsource telephone customer support, why not outsource online customer support too?

      I hope I have answered some of your questions.

      @Manuscrypts: I guess that answers your question too. And, in response to your tweet, yes, this is similar to what Rajesh does, only on a much larger scale.

    • Sanjay Mehta 1:56 pm on March 31, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      Gaurav,
      Excellent scenario mapping.
      I agree that it will be a huge market opportunity, and count me amongst the many who are working on getting a piece of the pie! Look forward to remain engaged with you, on the subject.
      - Sanjay

  • Gaurav Mishra 12:05 am on March 11, 2008 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Business Process Outsourcing, , , , , , , , ,   

    Next Big Thing: Social Media Outsourcing (SMO) (Part 1 of 2) 

    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).

    - X – X – X –

    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

    Six Step Social Media Delivery Process

    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 –

    The Case for Social Media 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?

     

    • Sudhanshu 1:04 pm on March 11, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Gaurav,

      I quite like you posts. It really calls for a lot more debate.

      I was just considering the pitfalls and was thinking that since it is analysis you’re mostly talking about, have you considered that people can automate the whole process.

      Anyways, the bigger question is that how long would the social media phase survive before the world moves on to something new.

      Would love to hear your comments on that.

      Cheers

    • Gaurav 1:41 pm on March 11, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      @Sudhanshu: You have raised some valid concerns. Let me respond to them one by one.

      - How robust is the social media phenomenon?

      The basic principle here is that people will continue to talk about brands in one form or another. Conversations may take place on the PC web or the mobile web. Conversations may take place on blogs, micro-blogs, social networks, forums, videos, podcasts or another totally different platform. But conversations about brands will only increase and, along with it, the need to make sense out of it.

      - Why don’t we automate monitoring?

      While natural language processing, machine learning and Bayesian filtering algorithms are becoming increasingly more sophisticated, computers are not great at sensing context and sentiment. Most experts agree that a layer of human intervention will continue to be important in the foreseeable future.

      In any case, I’m not only talking about outsourcing monitoring. I’m also talking about outsourcing business-to-consumer or B2C community management.

      Like Keith Pardy, Senior VP Nokia Strategic Marketing said at the WFA/ IFA Effective Consumer Engagement conference at Mumbai recently:-

      Social marketing intelligence will be the black hole of the twenty first century. There will be too much data and the key will be to make sense of it.

      Social media outsourcing will play a significant role in making sense of conversations related to brands at a competitive cost.

    • Santosh Maharshi 3:14 pm on March 12, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      Hi Gaurav,
      Agree with you it’s a special job and it would be much beneficial for businesses to outsource it. But I am really worried about agencies or professional who project themselves as new media or social media experts in India.

      I have come across people in their 20’s, just playing up with wordpress and fishing out in the market to offer their advices on new media, viral, social, web 2.0 strategies.

      The outsourcing model when really comes into effect – we will see much more sanity in this market.

      Also liked your post on problem with social networking.

      Have a great day
      Santosh

    • Gaurav 4:17 pm on March 12, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      @Santosh: We are at the beginning of the social media gold rush.

      No one has all the answers posed by social media and all of us will try to get our hands on whatever (answers/ authority/ accounts/ money etc.) we can.

      As you said, over time, standards and business models will evolve, people who know what they are talking about will stand out, and sanity will prevail.

      Till then, we’ll collectively and individually search for the answers.

    • metatarcus 2:17 am on October 22, 2008 Permalink | Reply

      this is a great breakdown of the SMO process, i am with you on the promise that this might be huge on the condition that corporates will turn to social media as a more cost-effective solution during the downturn.

      u shld have seen this already but just in case u dun, this link might validate your stand: http://www.webguild.org/2008/10/india-making-mi...

    • Morgan Polotan 5:38 pm on September 30, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      Interesting post. I agree with you that steps 1-5 of the social media delivery process can be outsourced, as it doesn't involve owner interaction. Only step 6, “engage” necessitates the owner or person from said business to interact with the social media community.

      What I wonder is how much will be automated by software, and how much will be outsourced. I work for Hubspot, and our software does steps 1 – 5 automatically with no need for outsourcing. Granted, our product is tailored towards small to medium sized businesses, so large corporations may be the main drivers of social media outsourcing in the near future. Labor in India is cheaper than labor in America, but computers are cheaper than both.

    • Gaurav Mishra 2:13 pm on October 2, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      @morganpolotan: I am a big believer in automation, but you can't really automate the understanding of social context.

    • max191 11:22 am on October 4, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      What a comprehensive and interesting blog. Really nice to read it. Please include more details if possible.
      regards
      charcoal grill

    • nanoinfosoft 5:51 am on November 5, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      SMO is the best way to make relation with international community. SMO is the most popular way to share the blog posting, share photos, videos.

    • Social_Media_Ghost_Writer 11:58 pm on December 6, 2009 Permalink | Reply

      outsourcing social media to india will work for people and companies that are just looking for mass production. the problem will be the differences in customs, culture and slight nuances in language. even minor miscues on language will sink a company or scream “outsourced social media” defeating the purpose.

      a great social media outsourcing group will make be completely transparent to the follower.

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