The last decade marked the rise of the east as the back-office of the world. Last couple of months have proved that East is not just rising, but it has risen and is shining bright! lobal economy had its way of being lopsided in the favour of the western hemisphere. But that has changed with the East not just emerging as the largest market to dump consumer goods, but also the largest human resource base, where all services are offered better in quality and better in price! And with the emergence of Computer Technology, it has become easier to access this wide resource pool. Information Technology and its Enabled Services (IT and ITES) have resulted in the shifting of back offices back across continents.
This can be said to be an evolved system of BPO services where both clients and the service providers share a unique, mature, multi-cultural and symbiotic relationship. Combined, this has dramatically affected the relationship between clients who need Business Process Outsourcing and providers who dial it in. In many ways we’re seeing the birth of the second generation of BPO, a more complex business model that will require both buyers and providers to evolve and mature. Here are a few trends to keep your eyes on:
1. Contracts not based on head count
Companies are increasingly looking at call center outsourcing business operations as more than just a way to save money on overhead costs. More and more businesses want overall improvements in both platform and technology. Not only could this lead to more a complex partnership agreement that may require a bolstered procurement management contract , it may completely change operational strategies within a company.
2. More transparency
Today’s BPO buyers want to know how providers are producing their results. They want to know details about who is leading the project and who the management team is. In this way, today’s BPO landscape favors the client. This could lead to a outcome-based pricing scale which would be a grand departure from the previous decade.
3. Increased regulatory strictness
Auditors are inspecting the operations of BPOs with greater frequency and intensity. This will continue to zap money and resources from both BPO and KPO services clients and providers, gradually changing the ways BPO contracts are managed.
4. Social media increasing options
BPO providers can no longer ignore social media as distinct from the call center services they offer. Real-time data must be constantly aggregated and analyzed in order to optimize a business operation to meet the standards of the end-customer.
5. Buyers are mixing on-shore with off-shore
It’s not black and white anymore. BPO buyers are outsourcing some of their operations to offshore providers, while some of their operations are being managed by onshore providers. Still other operations are being managed in-house. This creates a complex dynamic of cost-cutting with optimization. It also creates a globalized network of partners increasinglydependent on cloud services and the Business Process as a Service (BPaaS).
These five trends represent a changing of the guard in the BPO world. This changing dynamic will see an evolution of outsourcing models as well different relationships between buyers and providers and different pricing scales. A single business process may now be managed from multiple locations on the globe at once and a reduction of overheard costs is no longer the sole objective.