What are BPO and KPO?
Outsourcing is subcontracting a process, such as product design or manufacturing, to a third-party company. BPO stands for business process outsourcing while KPO stands for knowledge process outsourcing. These two terms BPO and KPO have emerged as two of the most debated concepts of business in the USA in particular, and world in general. There are two schools of thoughts, one being in favor of BPO & KPO, while the other opposing it. In simple words, both the business outsourcing processes involve third parties to carry out specific tasks. There are two advantages to that - the company (client) saves money, and two, more jobs are created in the market place.
Are BPO and KPO good? The answer is both - yes and no. When the business process outsourcing is done at the cost of regular employees, it is bad. However, when this is deployed without harming the interests of the regular employees of the company, it is good for the overall business scenario. Another advantage that can be drawn is - when a company chooses to follow BPO / KPO path, it finds its own set of employees performing higher end jobs while outsourcing lower end jobs to outside parties / contractors. Let us take an example here. We will never find (or rarely find) top management of a company being outsourced! However, the same organization will have outsourced its customer care center. Yet another advantage of outsourcing to countries like India is time zone. Due to a time lag of approximate 12 hours between the USA and India, turn around times could be squeezed to next business day that otherwise would take full 24 hours. Last but not the least, so much money could be saved in the process that is beyond imagination.
India is today recognized as a dominant player in the offshore outsourcing industry that includes both BPO and KPO. India is proud to have huge pool of well educated, talented, low cost and English speaking workforce, excellent IT and networking infrastructure, very stable democracy, business friendly laws and an ambience that is conducive to business growth. The offshore outsourcing market in India is ever growing and has produced many success stories making India a popular offshore outsourcing destination for BPO and KPO services.