Business process outsourcing, commonly refered to as BPO is a segment of the outsourcing industry that involves the outsourcing of back office tasks of many varieties. Common BPO tasks involve call center (contact centre) work, HR, accounting, bookkeeping, finance, and data entry. Transcriptions are another huge source of BPO work these days too. There is legal transcription, business document transcription, and of course medical transcription work to be done.

There are companies of various sizes doing BPO work all over the globe. India is by far the leader in the field, and one of the most popular and standard places for Western companies to look for outsourcing help. Larger companies typically control their own destiny by having a branch office in a foreign country to do certain operations for them. However, outsourcing is an excellent cost saving option for mid-sized companies. Even smaller companies can try it.

Certain tasks are ideal to offer to a BPO company. Simple repetitive tasks are good jobs to outsource, becuase there is less training, and its easier to moniter the quality of the work. Database is a good task to outsource to India, since there are so many excellent programmers there. Customer service BPO jobs are trickier to place, as you need individuals with good communication skills. Many companies prefer to find tech support and call center providers in the Philiipines or Latin America due to their cultural similarities with the West.

Hiring a BPO company allows you to have flexibility in your workload. If you suddenly get triple your normal workload, the outsourcing company can easily absorb that work with no issues. If your workload suddenly dries up, the people who lose the work are 10,000 miles away, and you don't have to fire your regular staff members.

There might be more security risks with hiring a BPO company, as you don't know what type of security measures they take to ensure that sensitive information is not stolen. You can't believe everything a company says about their security unless you see how they function on a daily basis. Its common in India to be overly picky about security Monday through Thursday, and then hire a new person on Friday who doesn't know the procedure, flakes, and allows a breach to occur. Security in America is likely to be more systematic than in other countries, so don't expect American levels of reliability in other countries. Everything will be different in all ways the minute you cross the border.

KPO is a rapidly growing industry which is a type of BPO which focuses on work requiring a high degree of knowledge. Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) is a commonly used term for accounting, finance, legal research, market research, and other smart jobs. Please read our KPO page for more information on the topic.

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