Although we have stepped in 2021, yet, the COVID-19 pandemic effect is continuing to transform business strategies throughout the telecommunications, media, and entertainment sector. In the media and entertainment industry, the pandemic has boosted many trends that were already afoot.

Just for instance, in most part of the world, movie theatres and multiplex were closed. In the later part of 2020, they started to operate in some parts of the world but with limitations in the number of attendants. This created a new trend by which customers got more attracted towards direct-to-home (DTH) or direct-to-customers (DTC) platforms. This switching of customer preferences compelled the leading studios to make first-run movies available to such customers via streaming services.

As a result, there has been a great leap in the consumption pattern of the streaming content with a positive trend. This has led to an increase in the number of subscription services along with an increase in the categories of online advertising models. These advertising models are designed to satisfy the increasingly cost-conscious customers.

Owing to such events and market factors, the leading M&E industry players have set customer retention versus acquisition as their top priority goals. In order to achieve the same, DTH and DTC services providers and OTT networks have started providing a broad range of content like video, music, games and podcasts.

This is simply a brief of the “new normal” of the M&E industry as gradually we are recovering from the COVID-19 blow.  The industry players are keen in the process of understanding consumer behavior patterns and developing a more nuanced approach to engage with customers. As consumers are repeatedly experimenting with the entertainment options, providers are scaling themselves to adopt new strategies and agile approaches for content development, aggregation, and delivery.

In 2021, the telecommunications, media, and entertainment organizations would be focusing on three key strategic opportunities for dual purpose to recover from the COVID-19 crisis and to boldly position them to thrive in the future:

Three-part methodology to formulate your offshoring strategies;

1. Keep Your Core Tight

Outsource low-priority works while keeping the high-priority process in-house. However, the critical works must be carefully considered. Thus, your first step should be to prioritize the process based on the value it will create for the clients and to the company. 

Your executives should know the importance of this, but they may not know the way to factor them into determining about offshoring. Well, a simple way of doing this could be answering one question that is how important is the process in comparison with others in building value for the company? Though, the answer will vary from business to business and sometimes industries, by the end you are likely to come to a definite decision.

2. Find the Elephant in the Room

Risk analysis is critical to offshoring. Look systematically at the process to find and then eliminate the operational risk and structural risk, if any, to ensure smooth operation.

Companies can lower their operational risk by;

1. Codifying the work. While documenting
   the works for the employees, state the different issues that can be faced and
   stipulate the responses for each. For example; if a financial institution draws
   up rules regarding their consumer loans, they should have stipulated measures
   to resolve exceptions arising out of the same. This way one can even outsource
   even the most complex tasks such as equity research.

2. Using appropriate metrics to analyze the quality of processes. Most businesses fail to develop efficient metrics, especially when they are outsourcing for the first time. This is why they do not understand whether the providers have executed better than their employees. Therefore, businesses must create better metrics to measure the quality of both offshore and in-house processes.

Structural risk;

This occurs when vendors do not invest in training the employees or hire professionals who aren’t enough qualified as the agents. For example; when signing contracts, the vendor may tell you that they will hire people with postgraduate degrees. But as the business grows, they may staff the projects with managers who may have a master’s degree, but not necessarily in the specific field that your outsourced project will need. And thus the quality of service falls. In such a situation you have no choice but to bear the entire training cost to speed up the process.

So, you see there’s nothing to assume that the vendors will act to maximize both your and their interest. Instead, you must put your company’s supervisors at work to monitor your vendors work and ensure best practices.

3. Have Your Cake and Eat It, Too

Determine the locations for the offshore process and the organizational forms like joint venture who can examine the process risks. When picking the organizational forms businesses trade off the authority and quality with the profits from the vendor’s offered specialization. In such a scenario, when offshoring has led to a more hybrid form of organization, it is more agreeable to work adopt sense-and-respond methodology instead of command-and-control.

In a hybrid business ecosystem, it is more expected from the companies to specify the quality of services while working closely with the vendors to ensure high quality. And today when technology enables almost everything, real time exchange of information is no big deal. Since offshoring isn’t only about companies crossing geographical boundaries, but also redrawing organizational boundaries to cater to a collaborative knowledge, and, expertise, attaining an extended or hybrid organization can prove to be cost-effective. 

To sum up, though it may sound a bit cliché, businesses must treat offshore processes as indispensable, it is only then one can reap all the benefits.

In short, digital experiences will replace physical experiences. And marketers must take it from there. 

1. Fit into Your Consumers’ Pipeline

Listening to social media posts and asking your customers what they want is the best way to adapt your strategy to their demands. For example; people are looking for lesser or free deliveries for their online purchases.

Build your business model in a way to cater to their wants. That’s how you spread the word.

2. Get Your Social Media Marketing Right  

If you do not have a social media page for your business yet, get it now. Send invites to your friends, relatives and acquaintances and let them know about your business. You can even share your business page in your personal profile and announce the availability of the good and services. Let’ say you serve home-cooked foods and offer free delivery, then share the menu on the page and request your friends and followers to share your business profile on their page. A video of the kitchen is worth sharing too.

Join social media marketplaces and engage with a pool of other businesses and customers. Market your business there and make the maximum use of your online presence. This is a great way to establish a mutually benefited online business ecosystem.

3. Digi-payment is the Need of the Hour

Do not be rigid about the payment method as in the time of social distancing people are hesitant to pay cash. Keep all the payment methods open for your customers, like bank transfers, and e-wallets, etc. 

4. Get Your Online Store Model, Now!

World Trade Organization survey says merchandise trade will drop up to 32% in 2020 and estimates of recovery in 2021 is highly uncertain, with results depending on the duration of COVID-19 and responsiveness of the economic policy.

As customers are getting more involved in panic buying of food and essential items during lockdown, they are shifting to online purchases.

Retailers who do not have an online store model, they must implement or turn to doorstep delivery over a phone call or open their store on online marketplaces such as Amazon and hire a delivery van for deliveries during the lockdown period.  

5. No Hard Selling, Please!

When people are dealing with anxiety and are full of doubt, let’s not hard sell our products. Instead transform your business into a more meaningful brand.  You focus should be to build a rapport with your customers beyond what you sell.

Seek creative ideas to help your customers reach you. For example; these days, you will find many influencers partnering with various fitness apps to ensure people stay healthy at home. In fact, Vogue is offering three months free digital access to support its consumers.

These ideas will only give you loyal customers who will keep coming back to you even when this pandemic ends.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson rightly said, “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”

And for that a lot needs to begin from home. Daughters shouldn’t be raised to be a much-bedecked lamb who one-day will be led to the slaughter of the wedding ceremony. Sure, it is always good to teach kids the ways to do the household chores as the common basis for survival and not because “shoshur barir lok ki bolbe!” (Literal meaning: preparing for marital life).

Girls should be raised to be ambitious, develop their personal interests, be self-sufficient and take charge of their life. Dependence of any sort can never be a choice, neither for a man nor a woman. Similarly, a woman who is career-driven even after having a baby, should not be questioned when they leave her baby at home with a nanny. And it is also not okay to call out her husband for “not being manly enough” when he is being supportive. Having said that, I understand it is a lot to ask for, especially in a society where women are deprived of their basic rights like education, and safety. And then there are also few privileged women who enjoy playing the second-sex card. But you see I am an optimist.