KPO companies
In the past few years, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) companies have contributed to the Philippines’ economic growth, and in more recent years, Knowledge Process Outsourcing has come to the country as well. Several KPO companies have cropped up or have taken up offices in the Philippines, but first things first. What is the difference between BPO and KPO?
BPO vs. KPO
First off, KPO companies require skilled and experienced employees since the services they provide are much more complex than the relatively average work taken up by BPO companies. Where BPOs focus more on the volume and quantity of their production, KPO companies are geared toward producing high quality services and products. Also, companies would source their non-core processes to a BPO while KPO professionals tend to be given close to core duties that may come with some decision-making responsibilities as well.
Depending on the clients they serve, KPO companies may employ a wide range of professionals like engineers, doctors, writers, market analysts, and even animators to answer their clients’ needs. As a result of this higher skill requirement, KPO companies offer higher salaries compared to BPO companies.
Both BPO and KPO companies offer the same cost effective manpower solution to their clients; offshore operations are mostly cheaper since outsourcing capitalizes on the fact that some countries have a lower cost of living. Also, both outsourcing solutions offer clients a chance to expand their operations at lower costs and with little to no snags in terms of recruiting, screening, training, and managing manpower. Taking away the HR responsibilities and general workforce management also lowers cost for the client. Human resource management, training, equipment, and the manpower are usually shouldered by the BPO and KPO companies, charging their clients a flat rate for services rendered.
A BPO’s strength usually lies in the efficiency and its ability to clear out vast volumes of business processes while a KPO banks on its specialties, quality of service, and the level of expertise of its skilled workers. Some qualify accounting and bookkeeping, customer management, medical and legal transcription, and payroll processing as processes delegated to BPO companies while web content development, research and development, financial consulting, patent research and IP asset management, and animation are mostly entrusted to KPO companies.
KPO Destinations
Many US companies outsource greatly to counter rising energy costs, economic instability, and lower profit margins; the common destinations of companies looking to outsource are developing countries like India, the Philippines, China and other Asian countries like Pakistan. KPO companies can take advantage of each country having developed their own specialties. India, for example, produces several thousand IT graduates every year and continually develops their IT and telecom infrastructures to ensure reliability.
Other countries with potential to provide KPO companies with a good number of skilled workers are Russia and Canada. Russia has a lot of scientists and engineers though most of them don’t speak English. Canada, on the other hand, is politically stable, has good telecommunications infrastructures in place, and is ideal for software development KPO companies, though Canada has the highest IT salary out of the other countries that offer offshore services.