SFN Report: IT, printing, circulation most popular functions to outsource for newspaper companies

Posted by Erina Lin on April 17, 2009 at 11:56 AM

The World Association of Newspapers conducted an online survey from November 2008 to February 2009, aimed at understanding the outsourcing and offshoring efforts in different functions of newspaper publishing companies around the world, SFN's Outsourcing Revisited reported.

There were 59 respondents who completed the survey - 39 percent are from Europe, 23 percent are from North America and 18 percent are from the Asia Pacific region. Another 10 percent came from Latin America, while only about 5 percent and less than 3.5 percent are from Africa and Australasia, respectively.

According to the survey, IT, printing and circulation are the functions with the highest outsourcing levels, with more than half of the companies outsourcing those functions partially or fully. The lowest levels of outsourcing went to accounting and editorial functions, with more than 50 percent of the responding companies not outsourcing them.

The most satisfactory post-outsourcing performance measurement went to editorial - more than half of the companies said the quality and efficiency of outsourced editorial work has improved. More than 50 percent said efficiency has improved on administration, advertising and printing functions after outsourcing.

However, less than one-fourth said the quality of circulation and customer service has improved after outsourcing, according to the report, Outsourcing Revisited, released by SFN and the World Association of Newspapers.