Complete Guide on Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)

Nowadays, to lead the business from good to ideal one, the efficiency is required. Focusing on the latest business process management techniques will help managers to overcome current and future business challenges. Implementation of innovative business processes improves efficiency and leads to the success of a business.

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is the outgrowth of Business Process Management (BPM). The BPO is applicable in various business sectors.

What is Business Process Outsourcing?

 Operational efficiency is required to gain a competitive edge. When the time, money, and resources are spent on non-primary tasks, it becomes tough for the companies to focus and improve the business’s core functions.

So the companies move towards third-party BPO service providers to outsource their non-primary activities to BPOs. Outsourcing is the first solution for customer service, back-office and front-office processes.

The BPO serves in several business sectors like:

• • • Healthcare
    • IT 
    • Telecommunications
    • Retail
    • Manufacturing
    • Banking and Financial 
    • Travel and Logistics
    • Government 
    • Education 

BPO is rapidly improving its importance and becoming an integral part of many organizations. BPO is a fundamental part of the global outsourcing industry, and its market is growing rapidly.

According to Market Research Future, the Global Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Services Market is expected to increase its CAGR by 10.8% during the forecast period, 2019–2024. It might reach USD 335.2 Billion by the end of the year 2024. 

The BPO service providers are now seeking the trends and innovations to surpass the competitors. Many companies are already implementing advanced technologies like analytics, cloud computing, and Artificial Intelligence for process automation.

According to Market Research Future, technologies like AI and Analytics are expected to contribute more to BPO services development. Artificial Intelligence is playing a vital role in providing comprehensive services to contact centers. Several AI-based solutions, like Speech Analytics and Voice Assistant, are helping to establish automation in call centers. 

The Business Process Outsourcing Industry

Currently, the Global Business Process Outsourcing industry is worth over $300 billion. BPO vendors are available worldwide, and they have employed a high number of the global population. BPO companies employ more than 3 million Indians. 

BPO is mainly divided into two types, back-office and front-office. Back-office includes internal business processes, like billing or purchasing. In contrast, the front-office services include customer support activities. 

According to the vendor’s location, the BPO industry is divided into three categories:

Offshore:

In this category, the company outsources its business activities to the BPO vendors located outside of its own country. For example, the company is located in USA can use a BPO vendor from the Philippines. 

Nearshore:

In this category, the BPO vendors and the contracting companies are located in a neighboring country. For example, an Indian company is taking a BPO vendor’s service, which is located in Bhutan. 

Onshore:

In Onshore category, the BPO vendor and the company is located in the same country, but they may be located in different states or region of the country. For example, the company located in Chicago dealing with BPO Company located in Washington, but both are located in the USA. 

What Types of Services Do Outsourcing Companies Support?

Since the last few years, the Business Process Outsourcing Companies have brought many distinct changes in their services as per the time. Necessary changes in services from time to time made it easier for them to serve more industries.

Now they are serving in multiple industries like Banking and Financial, Telecomm, Retail, E-Commerce. With the immense growth in the BPO sector, it resulted in the arising of subspecialties, such as the following:

Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO)

As its name suggests, it processes those activities that need a high degree and expertise. KPO supports the processing of core business functions, which are an integral part of the business.

KPO works around research, analytics, Microsoft Word and Excel, and some other expertise domain. KPO employs skilled, professional, and expert peoples who are qualified for the particular field.

Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO)

The LPO performs the functions related to legal firms. The legal firms outsource the time-consuming activities to LPOs to invest the saved time in essential activities.

LPO performs functions like traditional document management, legal drafting, law office management, litigation support. The few newer legal services provided are legal writing, scheduling, legal research, and legal summary.

Information Technology-Enabled Services (ITES) BPO

The ITES includes a large variety of functions that uses Information Technology to increase the quality and efficiency of service. The renowned examples of ITES are credit card processing, telecom call centers, and back-office accounting.

The major companies of developed countries outsource IT-enabled operations to countries like China, the Philippines, and India to get the services from large, talented humans resources at a reduced cost.

Travel BPO

 In Travel BPO, the company outsources its travel-related processes to a third-party firm. When the travel-related functions like hotel booking inquiry take more time and cost, the company outsources those functions to Travel BPO firm. It cuts the cost and saves time to invest it in the core business process.

Research Process Outsourcing (RPO)

In this competitive world, every business needs to stay updated about the current market trends and facts. They need constant research for this—the RPO firms contracts with the companies that need to continue researching the market’s current affairs.

RPO services include Business Research, Financial Research and Analysis, Life Science Research, Legal Research, Intellectual Property Research.

Customer Interaction Services

Satisfied and trusted customer is the ultimate goal of every running business. The effective customer interaction process is the priority among other business activities. The company outsources it towards the best customer interaction service provider to establish seamless and successful customer interaction.

This BPO firm serves in retail, insurance, banking and financial, E-commerce, manufacture, and many more industries where customer interaction is essential for business.

 

The Risks of Business Process Outsourcing

Outsourcing the critical business processes to the third-party firm causes several risks for the company. Below are some of those risks:

 

Overdependence On Service Providers:

The Company that employs BPO vendors considers the vendor as part of the workflow. Sometimes due to a lack of information provided, the company may encounter problems with the vendor.

To avoid such issues, the company should ensure that the correct information must be provided to the vendor. With more accurate information, vendors can work efficiently to produce quality work.

Communication Issues:

The communication issue may occur due to a language barrier or difference in accents. It is the most common risk, and mostly Offshore and Nearshore vendors frequently suffer communication issues with the company. The Onshore vendors may have the chance of suffering from communication barriers, but they struggle less than Offshore and Nearshore vendors.

Onshore vendors can sometimes face language issues, but they can communicate through their national languages to avoid communication issues. Language problems may arise when the company and vendors are located in different regions of the country.

 

Security:

Security is the major risk the companies face while outsourcing their business operations to third-party BPO vendors. Third-party vendors get access to the Information System along with confidential business data.

The vendor must be trusted with its robust security aspects to secure the companies information privileges. For security, the business must focus on technology-based solutions to prevent hacking information systems and other cybercrimes.

 

The other possible risks are:

Quality Control

Political Uncertainty

Adaptation with the latest technology

Operation restoration

Data Violation

Artificial Intelligence now powers the call center automation software. The product of AI works as the best call center solution to assist in the automation of several processes.

Several risks and threats related to technology are most hazardous for business security. Such technology-related threats need powerful technology-oriented solutions. Technologies like the Internet, Cloud Computing, Big Data, and Artificial Intelligence are already serving in the industry to bring efficiency and innovations.

Contact Center industry of the BPO is mainly implementing AI for their business processes. Contact Centers are transforming operations, upgrading services, and reforming processes to integrate Artificial Intelligence solutions successfully.

Manage Your BPO with Powerful, Automated Workflows in Artificial Intelligence:

Artificial Intelligence is the replication of human intelligence processes by machines. AI is rapidly growing since most business sectors have already enjoyed the benefits after integrating several business processes with AI solutions. Several BPO firms already agreed that AI would encompass significant BPO industry processes.

To excel in such a competitive environment, implementation of AI solutions is the only way. Speech Analytics, AI Voice Assistant, and Speech Recognition are robust AI solutions to acquire efficiency in the contact center processes. Many automation softwares for the contact center can run operations in contact centers for efficiency.

Speech Analytics that analyses the customer calls in contact centers. Keyword Analysis of spoken words helps to detect knowledge about customer experience with the company. Sentiment Analysis helps in detecting customer’s feelings during the call interaction.

It can tell about the actual intent of customers about the company’s services and assist the managers in building powerful business processes. Marketing teams can develop effective marketing strategies based on customer insights through Speech Analytics.  

AI-Voice Assistant evaluates the customer conversation to gain knowledge about the customer during the call. It assists business professionals to improve call center efficiency through automation. It communicates in a human-like voice to gather the client’s requirements accurately.

It also analyses the customer call data to produce essential call data insight. This insight is useful for further research and development for contact center. The knowledgeable insight produced by AI-voice assistants will help managers examine agent performance and develop training sessions.

Kwantics AI-Voice Assistant can speak and understand multiple languages to make effective customer interaction without any human interference. It saves the expenditure of hiring voice-over artists for recorded messages.

Speech Recognition is another powerful AI solution for call center automation to improve efficiency. It analyzes the real-time speech data and converts it to the text format. This AI enables solutions to provide fast transcription of call data accurately. It is a scalable system and learns from conversation to improve its functionality with time.

The noise-robust speech to text conversion functionality converts the noisy audio into text format. It sharply excludes the noise from audio and obtains other call information like pause duration, speaker information, and time stamp.

Multilingual recognition features detect the multiple languages spoken in a sentence and accurately translate it to the text form. The innovative voice command feature of Speech Recognition can be integrated with digital products and enables the customer to use voice commands.

The Speech Synthesis by Kwantics can convert text-to-speech in human-like natural voice. Speech Synthesis engines can help make personalized calls to improve the user experience. A large number of customized calls can be done in a short time with speech synthesis.

It can create a brand voice for a company as it can simulate any voice model. It is an excellent solution for call centers as it can broadcast personal messages and provides a flexible and quick mechanism to connect with the customers on a personal level.

It can assist the marketing team in enhancing campaigns by implementing personalized marketing activities. 

We are giving a live demo of all our AI-Powered Speech AI Solutions. Click here to book a slot.