What's BPO
BPO or Business Process Outsourcing is the delegation of one or more business processes by an organisation (such as a Fortune 500 financial company) to an external provider (like 24/7 Customer). The external provider extends services for the selected process based on certain pre- defined and measurable performance criteria specified by the organisation.

Read more in the BPO Think Tank Section >> here

Career Possibilities
What's a BPO Career all about? A BPO career revolves around the core activity of delivering business process outsourcing services. This involves voice (telephone) and non-voice (email, chat) based customer interaction services, transaction processing, telemarketing, technical support or analyzing of customer specific data. It also involves back-end jobs such as claims processing and processing of Finance & Accounting transactions.

In a growing BPO organisation, career opportunities exist across various facets of the business - extending from the core contact center to support functions like HR, legal, marketing, quality, administration etc. In a multi-faceted BPO organisation that services diverse industries opportunities exist for individuals from various backgrounds and industries.

• The Future - See what the experts have to say!
• o An IDC report says the worldwide outsourcing spending will increase from $116 billion in 1999 to $177 billion by 2004, at a CAGR of 9%.
• NASSCOM estimates that the BPO industry will fetch India revenues of $21-28 billion by 2008.
• According to a Goldman Sachs Report, the BPO market is expected to grow at 15%-20% annually to $200-250 billion by the calendar 2005.
• Analyst firm Ovum Holway has predicted the BPO market to grow to £10.3bn by 2005, up from £3.5bn in 2001.
• A recent report by IDC, "Vertical Views of BPO Demand: A Study of Five U.S. Industries," indicates retailers are one of the biggest adopters of BPO. In a survey of 105 U.S. corporate managers and executives across five verticals--financial services, manufacturing, utilities/energy, retail/wholesale, and healthcare--retailers showed the most interest in BPO, with
• 55 percent indicating their companies currently make use of BPO services at some level. Only 15 percent of retailers indicated they have no plans for using BPO services.
• European Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) market is expected to grow 4.5 per cent year-on-year in 2004 to 25 billion euro and in the next three years, the growth will be greater and trend of offshoring of these services will gain strength, according to a study.
• ''BPO is now the fastest growing segment within IT services, and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.8 per cent to reach 33 billion euro in 2007,'' according to research and advisory firm Gartner
• The Ernst and Young Offshore Outsourcing Survey on Indian third-party vendors says that nearly 13 per cent of Indian BPO companies have actually entered into BOT contracts.
• The BPO market will grow to $146 billion in 2008 estimates Forrester.
• By 2007, the sector would employ 2 million people and would be adding roughly about 300,000 people every year, says Nasscom president, Kiran Karnik