First, it was the BPOs and then came the KPOs. Now, the industry is evolving and has given birth to a novel concept – that of an MPO. Does it have a future? We think so!
In the early 1980s, European airlines began setting up back office operations in India. Little did one know that a concept like that would turn out to be a $ 70 Bn industry (in terms of revenue). India can be regarded as a hub for BPO services, but everyone knows this. Now something interesting and slowly coming into the limelight in the outsourcing market is the Marketing Process Outsourcing – currently a 1200 Cr industry!
Here, specific marketing tasks or the entire marketing activity outsourced to an external firm who provides the MPO services and then plays the marketers role! There are several gaps in the current practises that marketers adopt while interacting with external agencies like PR Agencies, Creative Agencies, Media, Direct Marketing Agencies, Research Agencies and so on. The major one would that each agency would own their piece and try to accomplish those objectives, however, no one assumes ownership of the entire project. And mostly, each agency would have a specific approach based on their domain expertise. Each of them would have their own standards and SLAs. No to forget, the time involved in utilising all these agencies!
So well, this model may have worked for some firms to a certain extent; however, there are chances that they might have missed the actual objectives! Now here is where an MPO comes in the picture! A good MPO firm have standardized process of handling projects which may start by :
- understanding the objectives
- preliminary study and confirmation of scope
- working on a strategy
- defining methodologies
- executing the strategy
- presenting analysis from an ROI perspective
There are several advantages of MPO – To name a few – the client can have a greater control over the entire process with reduced dependencies. This in turn, helps in reducing costs and projecting a better ROI than breaking down the tasks for multiple firms. Also, once the relationship is established- the process becomes faster and more efficient! Do you think firms offering specific services should converge and provide MPO services? Let us know!
