Business Process Outsourcing

2007-11-26T10:46:00.000-08:00

For You to know about BPO

BPO is the act of transferring some of an organization's repeated non-core and core business processes to an outside provider to achieve cost reductions while improving service quality.

The main difference between BPO and more traditional IT outsourcing is that BPO offers companies a way of achieving transformational outcomes much more quickly.

In a typical BPO contract, a service provider takes over a specific corporate function. Effective BPO encompasses much more than just changing who is responsible for performing the process.

In BPO, the outside provider not only takes on the responsibility to manage the function or business process, but also re-engineers the way the process has been traditionally done.

Offshore outsourcing, Nearshore outsourcing, Onshore outsourcing

BPO that is contracted outside a company's own country is sometimes called offshore outsourcing.

BPO that is contracted to a company's neighboring country is sometimes called nearshore outsourcing.

BPO that is contracted within the company's own country is sometimes called onshore outsourcing.

Call Centre

A call centre or call center is a centralised office used for the purpose of receiving and transmitting a large volume of requests by telephone.

A call centre is operated by a company to administer incoming product support or information inquiries from consumers. Outgoing calls for telemarketing, clientele, and debt collection are also made. In addition to a call centre, collective handling of letters, faxes, and e-mails at one location is known as a contact centre.

Constitutes of a BPO

Administrative support, Customer relationship management, Document processes, Finance and accounting, Human resources and training, Intellectual property research and documentation, Legal services, Medical transcription, Payroll maintenance and other transaction processing, Product development, Publishing, Research and analysis, Sales and marketing (including telemarketing), Security, Supply chain management, etc.

BPO Business Models

Transactional BPO : Transactional BPO handles one aspect of a process only. The customer has to carry out a significant part of the process in-house and hence the customer owns the risk of the process.

Niche BPO : A niche BPO carries out 3-4 aspects of a process. A niche BPO, which also makes certain investments in the customer's process, aims at improving the efficiency of the process.

Comprehensive BPO : A comprehensive BPO handles both transactional and administrative tasks in a process and takes 70 percent responsibility of the output.

Reducing Operational Risk in BPO

Operational risks: Possible slippages on quality, cost or speed of process execution.

Reducing these risks is essential to the success of the outsourcing effort.

BPO metrics provide a good framework for continuous monitoring, reporting and management of operational parameters.