What is KPO?

Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) deals with outsourcing strong domain expertise like financial research, retail market analysis, business intelligence, etc. The KPO provider adds value to companies by providing skilled and intellectual services to complex problems. Thus KPO takes outsourcing to a higher and more advanced level. BPO providers worked on simple tasks such as data entry, data merging, bookkeeping, by following standard procedures. In contrast KPO needs complex business expertise in which the analytical and intellectual skills of the experts solved the problem.

The KPO Market

The KPO market today is about $1-3 billion and it is expected to increase to 8-10 billion by 2010. KPO covers many areas, which until now were considered as strictly onshore operations are moving to offshore locations. Some of the growing areas of KPO include pharmaceutical, biotechnology research, analytical services such as equity research and financing research, intellectual property research, legal services and market research. Most of the KPO service providers are located in countries such as India, Russia, Israel and China, they employee professionals like Lawyer, MBA graduates, and Engineers. Following are some of services provided by KPO providers:

Business and Market Analysis
Business & Market Research
Pharmaceuticals and biotechnology
Medical Services
Legal solutions
Intellectual Property (IP) Research
Data Analytics
Training and Consultancy
Engineering design and development
R&D work on various vertical domains
Various educational services

Benefits of KPO
There are several reasons for outsourcing and most of which are also relevant for KPO. The primary benefits of KPO are 40-60% of costs are reduced compared to cost of professionals in the client’s country of origin. KPO provides companies an opportunity to tap into specialized knowledge in various vertical business domains. KPO can bring different opportunities that a business may not have considered in their day-to-day work. The KPO team provides independent judgments within a framework allow businesses to benefit from their research and advice independently from their own employees. Also the KPO providers have been working in different but similar industries they can bring in fresh and innovative ideas they gained in different projects.

KPO service providers offer their clients an opportunity to work with some of the best brains in the profession without having to hire them permanently. Often the clients may not be able to find the skilled professionals that they need for the job and KPO provides them access to top quality and high-level intellectuals. Good KPO service providers are able to provide excellent infrastructure, multiple delivery modes such as offshore and onshore and can scale up or down their resources.

Businesses of all sizes can benefit from KPO as it allows them to chart a course of growth and expansion with the support of the service providers. KPO allows companies from across the world to come closer and create a global business community.