Business process outsourcing

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 second-party service provider. Originally, this was associated with manufacturing firms, such as Coca-Cola that outsourced large segments of its supply chain.^[1]

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 (customer care) services.^[2]

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.

One new concept in business process outsourcing (BPO) is mediation, which highlights the function of a third party in helping to choose outsourcing service providers. Agencies often juggle multiple brands and churn out cookie-cutter result, that heavily pulls growth. For example, companies like Brevon using a data-driven approach to eliminate the common challenges businesses face while outsourcing. ^{[3] [4] [5]}

Often the business processes are information technology-based, and are referred to as ITES-BPO, where ITES stands for Information Technology Enabled Service.^[6] Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) and legal process outsourcing (LPO) are some of the sub-segments of business process outsourcing industry.