Love to research? Start your market research business right from home

Yes, writing business proposals, marketing strategies and market research reports can turn to be a profitable business if you really love research. The only asset needed in this business is your intellectuality and the marketing capacity of promoting your intellectual asset. However not as many other businesses, this business requires a lot of previous experience and an already established recognition to succeed as an individual in this industry. The best benefit here is that this business can be done from home and the actual challenge starts in finding the real customers. A home based research professional should start his/her business with the small business firms that outsource their market research function. Nowadays, it seems most of the small companies outsource their functions such as R&D and bookkeeping considering their limited ability to undertake such vital tasks internally.    

Hence, the logic here should be understood is that they just outsource their functions in order to minimize their operating costs, which absolutely necessitates a market researcher to practice a competitor based pricing or even a price penetration strategy if necessary. However, it is not to say that only small firms do outsource their marketing research but also some big players do it for several purposes. Their intention is not that they don’t have the ability to undertake such functions, but outsourcing is one part of their business considering their back-office supply chain operations, established business networking, Just In Time quality management practices and their time management operations.  

However big crocodiles always target some big fishes and this logic says that big companies always will focus to outsource their R&D with big BPO players in the global industry such as RR Donnelley. Hence, as a small home based researcher, you will have to always approach small fishes and have to find the best ways to keep them with you for a long time.

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RR Donnelly in Sri Lanka; is it logical to expect an excellent (worst?)Working place as other multi-national firms` in Sri Lanka?

Yes, RR Donnelley a multinational company headquarted in Chicago currently hunts for people in Sri Lanka, which is one of the giants in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry. It seems very often to notice their vacancy advertisements in Sri Lanka`s leading Newspapers and in the job brokering websites such topjobs.lk. The amazing fact is that they recruit the young minds of Sri Lanka just with three passes in A. Levels for specific positions, and the quantity needed to fill the space in their organization equals more than fifty for each position that they are hunting for. Preferred experience in the related field equals to 0 to one year, and it seems anyone with moderate level of qualification and experience can join with this global firm but is not necessarily a truth. The company owes different stages of process in its recruitment practice that stands for several interviews, exams, voice test, personality test, focus training and so on. The company executives claim that, they have innovated the recruitment process that no one has not yet even practised in the context of Sri Lanka, and the company`s logic behind recruitment denotes logical employees who have brains and not the fools with tons of qualifications. 

RR Donnelley Head office in the world trade center seems to be junked with the massive amount of crowed inside, one crew stands for the people who are already recruited by the company, and the rest stands for the people who are dying there to join with them. Most of the Sri Lankans prefer to work for multinational organizations just preferring their culture, flexibility, international working conditions, and narrower distance of hierarchy and for the other added working benefits. Who knows they might expect the same from RR Donnelly too, which seems not so logical after reading the employee reviews that claim this company as not a convenient place to work, and most of those reviews point-out the management as inefficient in all branches worldwide. A common complaint about this company is that employees are not treated well and even some employees find that their work life and personal life balance gets messed while admiring the high payouts.

However, regardless of whatever this company does practice in other countries, there is a common question that doubts on the excessive recruitment of the employees in Sri Lanka and India. The first concern here would be that RR Donnelly is a BPO company that needs enormous human capital as well IT resources. Countries such as India and Sri Lanka can be the HR farms where such companies may find highly IT erudite people at the lowest possible wages.  However, not all age groups are willing to fulfill this requirement and here is where they have targeted the right segments, youngsters after A. Levels who owe less or no experience, who are willing to flex their time whenever wanted even for seven days in a week if necessary, and who can commit themselves a bond for one or two years. I think RR Donnelley is doing well from the company`s point of view.

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