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Business process outsourcing

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is the leveraging of technology or specialist process vendors to provide and manage an organization's critical and/or non-critical enterprise processes and applications. The most common examples of BPO are call centers, human resources, accounting and payroll outsourcing. Business process outsourcing may involve the use of off-shore resources.

Use of a BPO as opposed to an application service provider (ASP) usually also means that a certain amount of risk is transferred to the company that is running the process elements on behalf of the outsourcer. BPO includes the software, the process management, and the people to operate the service, while a typical ASP model includes only the provision of access to functionalities and features provided or 'served up' through the use of software, usually via web browser to the customer. BPO is a part of the Outsourcing Industry. It is dependent on Information Technology , hence it is also referred to as Information Technology Enabled Services or ITES. Knowledge Process Outsourcing, or Legal Process Outsourcing are some of the sub sets of Business Process Outsourcing.

[edit] Industry Size

The global BPO Industry is estimated to be worth 120- 150 billion dollars. ^{[ citation needed]} Of this the offshore BPO is estimated to be some US$11.4 Billion.^{[ citation needed]} India has revenues of US$ 6.4 Billion [1] from this Industry and US$ 36 [ [2]] Billion from IT and BPO.

India thus has some 5-6 % share of the total BPO Industry, but a commanding 63% share of the offshore component. This 63% is a drop from the 70% offshore share that India enjoyed last year, despite the industry growing 38% in India last year, other locations like South Africa, Philippines and Eastern Europe have emerged to take a share of the market. China too is trying to grow from a very small base in this industry, though the industry is expected to continue to grow in India. Its market share of the offshore piece is expected to reduce.