Media and Entertainment

Media and entertainment outsourcing: trends, benefits, and tips

The media and entertainment (M&E) industry is a mix of diverse segments, including broadcast, television, streaming services, music, publishing, internet, advertising, and gaming, combined into a single vertical. Although we see it as an integrated sector, the drivers for each segment are distinct and vary across geographies, demographics, and consumer segments.

In the last few decades, emerging technologies, digital trends, and changing generational behaviours have completely transformed business process management (BPM) in entertainment. The industry is rapidly evolving to accommodate new-age trends such as direct-to-consumer (DTC) services, advanced gaming tech, and highly curated content.

Interestingly, legacy M&E models like terrestrial radio and cable television continue to coexist with newer streaming services, straddling generational and demographic disparities. The sheer diversity of consumer profiles and range of products complicates BPM in entertainment and necessitates outsourcing.

Outsourcing trends in M&E

Traditionally, M&E companies outsourced only back-office operations such as customer care, accounting and bookkeeping, and data entry. Entertainment giants from developed nations sometimes outsourced their pre-production work to lower-cost overseas studios.

Today, increasing traffic and changing consumer needs have created the need to outsource processes that require creativity, specialization, and deep domain knowledge. Some key processes that M&E companies now outsource are:

• Call centre services
• Finance and accounting
• Creative design services
• Translation and transcription
• Subtitling and closed captioning
• Software development
• Research and analysis
• Web analytics
• Social media management

Benefits of outsourcing in entertainment

Besides reducing costs, outsourcing enables M&E companies to focus on the core and improve their offerings. The key benefits of outsourcing in entertainment are:

• Operational efficiency

  Outsourcing back-end tasks and non-core processes streamlines BPM in entertainment and enables the in-house teams to focus on their core competencies.

• Cost-effectivity 

  Cost reduction is a prime benefit of entertainment outsourcing. Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) agencies can provide economical solutions that easily integrate with the company’s core practices.

• Customer-centric solutions

  Outsourcing to agencies with deep domain expertise enables M&E companies to cater to diverse audiences and deliver highly personalised content.

• Access to tools, resources, and talent

  Outsourcing provides access to a variety of tools, resources, and talents quickly and at scale. BPOs can meet multiple project requirements, including creative services, technology, security, and compliance, which are difficult to manage in-house.

• Analytics insights

  Outsourcing web analytics enables businesses to gain actionable insights through big data, enhancing their digital transformation capability.

• Effective social media marketing (SMM)

  Outsourcing SMM is the best way to leverage expertise in building brand value, generating leads, and driving conversions. SMM includes an array of services, such as social media optimisation, content marketing, display advertising, and affiliate marketing.




Tips for outsourcing in media and entertainment

Outsourcing is a valuable growth strategy for businesses. Done right, it can future-proof the M&E industry and turn asset-heavy organisations into adaptable and customer-centric ones. Here are some effective tips for outsourcing in media and entertainment:

• Choose the right outsourcing partner

  While selecting a BPO provider, prioritise criteria such as service quality, technical and compliance specifications, on-time delivery, and good customer references. Pricing is important but making it the prime consideration for vendor selection can compromise your final product quality.  

• Respect culture and time differences

  Entertainment companies commonly outsource creatives and pre- and post-production to lower-priced locations. While offshoring work, be mindful of language barriers, cultural differences, and time zones. Respect mutual boundaries for the best outcomes.

• Choose a social media partner that resonates with your brand’s voice

  Social media content directly reflects your brand’s personality. When you outsource social media processes or content creation, define your end goals and target audience, ask for work samples, and set clear guidelines to stay relevant.

• Outsource the right competencies

  Identify your team’s core competencies and outsource only what you cannot accomplish in-house. This way, you can derive the maximum benefit from their abilities while saving time and costs on non-core processes.  

• Communicate

  Communication is crucial in any collaboration. Your outsourcing provider will need regular inputs from your core team to provide the right services, deliver on time, and resolve issues.

  For organisations on the digital transformation journey, agility is key in responding to a rapidly changing technology and business landscape. Now more than ever, it is crucial to deliver and exceed on organisational expectations with a robust digital mindset backed by innovation. Enabling businesses to sense, learn, respond, and evolve like a living organism, will be imperative for business excellence going forward. A comprehensive, yet modular suite of services is doing exactly that. Equipping organisations with intuitive decision-making automatically at scale, actionable insights based on real-time solutions, anytime/anywhere experience, and in-depth data visibility across functions leading to hyper-productivity, Live Enterprise is building connected organisations that are innovating collaboratively for the future.

  
  

  How can Infosys BPM help?

  A consumer-driven marketplace, the proliferation of new technologies, and the convergence of telecom, television, and the internet have created unmanageable disruptions for M&E enterprises. Our digital BPM offerings provide solutions to modernize generation, transmission, distribution, and customer networks. Know more about media and entertainment bpo.