Career in Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)

Business process outsourcing (BPO) is a subset of outsourcing that involves the contracting of the operations and responsibilities of a specific business process to a third-party service provider. Originally, this was associated with manufacturing firms, such as Coca Colathat outsourced large segments of its supply chain.

BPO is typically categorized into back office outsourcing, which includes internal business functions such as human resources or finance and accounting, and front office outsourcing, which includes customer-related services such as contact centre services.

BPO that is contracted outside a company’s country is called offshore outsourcing. BPO that is contracted to a company’s neighbouring (or nearby) country is called nearshore outsourcing.

Often the business processes are information technology-based, and are referred to as ITES-BPO, where ITES stands for Information Technology Enabled Service. Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) and legal process outsourcing (LPO) are some of the sub-segments of business process outsourcing industry.

In 2010, the Philippines surpassed India as the largest business process outsourcing industry in the world.

After growing 20 percent in 2012, the BPO industry of the Philippines is estimated to gross revenue of upwards to $25 billion by 2016. By these estimates, the Philippines’ BPO industry will account for approximately 10 percent of the nation’s GDP.