Usually, when people here about off shore work, they would immediately say that it is Business Process Outsourcing. While this is partly true, It doesn’t’ do justice to the range of services that are usually asked of the outsourcing companies. It is partly true because, this mindset is brought about by the fact that most companies would outsource services such as Call center work, but the mentality is also wrong since there are other tasks that are given to these outsourcing partners.
This is because there are actually 2 common types of Outsourced work. The two types are Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and the Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO). While they are both outsourced works and are commonly interchanged, there are actually some differences between the two.
Here are some of the ways that you can differentiate between BPO and KPO.
Business Process Outsourcing:
BPO is where the Back office processes of a company are done by an offshore outsourcing partner. These are usually the manual tasks that help the company make their services more efficient, but are not necessarily considered as highly critical. These can also be the type of tasks where a large manpower is needed or additional equipment or infrastructure is required.
Example of BPO services would usually include contact centers, chat and email support, website maintenance, design and search Engine optimization, and even data entry or encoding services.
Knowledge Process outsourcing:
KPO is where knowledge related and information related work are carried out by workers of a different company. Nowadays, KPO is usually done by an offshore outsourcing partner. Unlike Business Process Outsourcing, KPO typically involves high-value work carried out by highly skilled staff.
Examples of KPO tasks done are investment research services such as equity, credit, and risk related research, Market research and analysis, legal research services, and even patent research services.
