Businesses face intense global competition and demanding customers and employees. Cost competitiveness and speed-to-market are now closely tied to outsourcing and offshoring. Many companies adopt business process outsourcing (BPO) to become agile and customer-centric, emphasizing efficient time and process management.
The rise of Philippine BPO highlights a focus on outcomes, especially customer satisfaction, rather than just a new operational strategy. This evolution has led to the emergence of knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) as the next wave in global outsourcing.
Even though KPO owes its existence to BPO, it is an entirely different entity. The BPO industry usually attracts low-end work. This includes employee payroll, data entry, technical support, voice calling, and other back-end support. BPO mostly requires firms to acquire simpler operational models, as workers are only required to gain process expertise to perform their tasks. In comparison, the KPO industry involves outsourcing high-end knowledge work.
Outsourced KPO services include research on intellectual property, legal support, equity research, market research, business research data analysis, and financial analysis. To perform these duties, workers must have expertise like analytical skills, business or domain knowledge, legal skill set, drafting, technical know-how, and knowledge of processes.
These services are usually provided by a comparatively higher-skilled workforce, such as Masters of Business Administration (MBAs), doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other professionals with expertise in specific domains.
Overall, we see growing client interest in KPO. The sector is viable, vibrant, and likely to grow. However, it also faces challenges that are similar to those faced by the ITO and BPO industries, including Select VoiceCom, an experienced BPO company in the Philippines. KPO will continue to hold client attention and will gain through a steady growth rate.