3 min
Many people connect Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) with call center locations abroad. But since the 1980s, the BPO concept has expanded, as companies see the benefit of reducing costs, improving efficiency and customer service, and enabling high growth while working with limited resources.
BPO, now a $ 26 billion industry, has expanded to include Accounts Payable (AP) automation, email outsourcing, document scanning, HR recruitment and IT services, among others. Here’s how the industry has grown over the past four decades:
1) BPO Didn’t Start With Contact Centers; It Was Also Used for Data Entry
Call center outsourcing to foreign markets began in the early 1990s, when American companies reduced labor costs by outsourcing to countries such as India and the Philippines. What is less well known, however, is the story of how BPO was used in the 1980s to help with data entry.
As early as 1988, outsourced data entry was being provided to law firms, microfilming companies, and businesses as a way to cut costs. At the forefront of this market shift, the founders of the MetaSource Company provided overseas data entry services to US-based companies, and established long-term relationships with BPO providers around the world.
Since then, its creators have remained at the forefront of digital technology and in 2001, they founded MetaSource, a document processing outsourcing company that tailors AP processing, digital mailroom outsourcing, and other digital transformation solutions to help companies meet market demands in a profitable manner.
2) How the Internet Revolutionized BPO
As with most other industries, the Internet changed the rules of the game for Business Process Outsourcing. It expanded its capabilities, allowing companies to outsource IT, accounting, transcription, translation, mailroom, AP processing, and many other processes that are critical to day-to-day operations.
While the modern Internet dates back to 1983, digital transformation, or the shift in the activities, processes, and capabilities of businesses and organizations from an analog to digital backbone, really began in the 1990s. Information and communication moved from physical paper to digital formats. From microfilm to floppy disks, CDs and the cloud, the Internet has dramatically changed the way businesses capture, process, and share and store data. Since then, organizations have gained a competitive advantage, reducing costs and improving customer service by outsourcing operations that are not core to their core offerings by partnering with BPO companies.
3) How Companies Use Business Process Outsourcing Today
From front-end customer service to back-end operations, today’s processes are automated and outsourced across various departments and companies of all sizes. BPO has made business management easier, helped reduce risk, increase quality assurance, lower storage and operating costs, and streamline compliance efforts, among others. In fact, in a recent survey, 59% of business executives globally said they rely on outsourcing services to reduce costs.
For example, to meet tight response times, lower costs, and gain a competitive advantage, many companies are leveraging digital mailroom outsourcing to include electronic receiving, scanning, processing, managing, and storing critical transactional documents.
4) The Future of BPO
In the future, BPO includes not only tasks that can be automated, but also highly technical operations. One area of growth is Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO), a subset of BPO that requires highly specialized expertise, in areas such as digital marketing, healthcare, and banking.
For example, to meet tight response times, lower costs, and gain a competitive advantage, many companies are leveraging digital mailroom outsourcing to include electronic receiving, scanning, processing, managing, and storing critical transactional documents.
Today, leveraging Business Process Outsourcing enables companies to outsource and optimize critical business tasks so that they can focus on their core competencies. There are many companies, like masvoz, that can tailor specific BPO services to the needs of their clients, adapting and improving their current process.
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