From BPO to KPO
Companies are now considering Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) after the success of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO).
According to the UK’s National Outsourcing Association (NOA), “knowledge process outsourcing, which covers areas like research and development, will benefit from increasing levels of trust in business process outsourcing”. “The downturn in the economy and possible recession will see increasing numbers of executives view technology and outsourcing as solutions to the need to slash overheads and minimize any negative impact on the bottom line”, NOA forecast.
Maneet Puri, director of a web design and development company based in India with roots from the UK, notes: “KPO will be the next big boom after BPO and reason for this could be that KPO not just restricts itself to information technology but also looks at other sectors like business research, data acquisition, Clinical research etc. Future of KPO is bright and in next 5-7 years is will be on higher end then BPO. The KPO regime is all set to accept challenges of high training cost and a much higher attrition rates. But industry is accepting all challenges with the objective to set mark like BPO has done.”
Bertrand Barthelemy, CEO of Capgemini France-Technology Services and leading authority in talent management and offshoring to India and China, said that knowledge process offshoring will be a booming market and would serve as another opportunity for IT companies.
A report released by Evalueserve last July 2007 predicts: “Knowledge Process Offshoring world-wide is expected to grow to US $ 16.7 billion in revenue by 2010-2011 implying an annual growth rate of 39 percent and it will employ approximately 350,000 professionals by March 2011.”
According to Evalueserve chairman Dr. Alok Aggarwal, “The main reasons for this huge growth in the KPO sector is the vast pool of educated and experienced professionals in countries like India, China, Russia, Poland, the Philippines, Hungary and many republics from the erstwhile Soviet Union. Evalueserve sees these countries to eventually emerge as strong contenders in the KPO business. In fact, in the near future, KPO is likely to be driven by factors like breadth and depth of coverage, domain expertise, location advantage (e.g., near-shoring and language capabilities), sales and marketing capabilities, data compliance with respect to regulatory standards (especially those defined by the United States, Canada and the European Union) and the management of business risks.”
Author: Kim G.
