Commerce · Ch 16 — Emerging Service Business in India
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO)
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO)
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is the contracting out of a specific business process — a defined, often repetitive, function — to an external service provider instead of performing it in-house. BPO is commonly divided into voice-based BPO (for example, inbound/outbound call centres handling customer support, telemarketing or technical helpdesks) and non-voice/back-office BPO (data entry, payroll processing, document management, transcription).
Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) goes a step further: it involves outsourcing processes that demand specialised domain knowledge, analytical ability and judgment, rather than routine, rule-based execution. Typical KPO work includes equity and financial research, legal process outsourcing (contract review, legal research), intellectual-property and patent research, engineering and product-design services, and medical transcription combined with clinical data analytics. Because KPO work requires trained professionals — chartered accountants, lawyers, engineers, doctors — who exercise judgment, it commands higher value per employee than routine BPO work. …
Contracting out a defined, often routine business process — voice-based (e.g. call centres) or non-voice (e.g. data entry, payroll) — to a thi …
Contracting out processes that require specialised domain knowledge, analysis and professional judgment (e.g. equity research, legal process outsourcing, engineering design), as distinct from th …