What does BPO stand for? What does it mean?

BPO stands for Business Process Outsourcing. Major corporations in the US and Europe are outsourcing their back office operations to India to save costs. E.g. employee payroll is maintained in India for their employees worldwide. Although these jobs usually are not directly IT-related, their data-based orientation often means that they require IT departmental support to be successfully outsourced.

 

 

What does ITES stand for? What does it mean?

ITES stands for IT-enabled services. IT-enabled outsourcing can be defined as,

Those outsourcing services that use information technology in the processing and delivery of the service.

Services are typically delivered through a telecommunications or data network, or other electronic media

 

 

What is nearshoring?

The practice of sending outsourced functions of any sort, whether IT-based or business process positions, to a nearby country rather than choosing markets such as India or Malaysia that are thousands of miles away. For e.g. US nearshores the work to Canada and Mexico. The physical proximity of these "nearshore" countries is a big threat to India.

 

 

What are the reasons for outsourcing?

 

Reason	Savings
Cost reduction	43%
Focus	35%
Access to special enterprise	45%
Resource related reasons{relieve resource constraints, reduce IT staff and augment IT staff}	75%

 

 

What exactly does the BPO market comprise of?

There is a disagreement as to what exactly constitutes BPO. With the rapid expansion of the BPO industry and the extent of its reach, it is becoming increasingly difficult to define what a BPO exactly means. It encompasses a wide variety of activities such as human resource, accounting, financial research, marketing, sales, legal work, logistics and so on. Software services are also regarded as a part of the BPO market by many firms.

 

 

What is BPM?

BPM stands for Business Process Management, basically this is about outsourcing the business processes.

 

 

Now what is BTO!! ?

 

BTO stands for Business Transformation Outsourcing. Accenture defines BTO as a strategic partnership between the customer and the outsourcer with the advantage of sophisticated financing mechanisms. It would involve the firm acquiring strategic stakes in the BPO operations that companies have outsourced. BTO involves sharing risks and gains with an outsource business partner, measuring the performance improvement in dramatic gains in the share price, market position and return on capital.

A BTO provides a comprehensive set of services across the entire organisation resulting in a pre-decided output, whereas a BPO is just a contract for outsourcing services/ functions to be done in a specified way. BTOs are more profitable and higher up in the value chain.

 

BTO also stands for Business Technology Transformation. It is a fast growing nice in BPO and is expected to become a $7 billion industry by 2007 from the current $2.5 million [2004]. BTO can reduce the overhead cost of enterprises by 20%. BTO is about governing the priorities, people and processes of organizations. It aligns IT and business strategy of a company while optimising quality, performance and business availability. According to Yankee Group, BTO enables companies measure and maximise business value across its IT investments.

 

What is BPO2?

BPO2 stands for Business Process Optimization and Outsourcing.

 

 

What is KPO?

KPO stands for Knowledge Process Outsourcing. KPO involves offshoring of knowledge intensive business processes that require specialised domain expertise, thus delivering high value to organisations by providing business expertise rather than just process expertise.

 

 

What is MBPO?

MBPO stands for Medical Business Process Outsourcing. Apollo Hospitals is the first major hospital to be getting into this.

 

 

Can medical transcriptions be considered as BPO?

Yes.

 

 

What is HRO?

HRO stands for Human Resource Outsourcing. HR is getting outsourced to third party providers who can bring in the benefits of knowing the domain.

HR as an activity, it comprises of a group of activities, which include payroll management, training, staffing, benefits administration, travel and expenses management, retirement and benefits planning, risk management, compensation consulting, etc. These activities are outsourced by which the client can concentrate on their core competency.

In the US context, HR outsourcing is a huge area. For instance, nearly about 29-30 per cent of the outsourcing space is HR.

 

 

What is RPO?

RPO stands for Research Process Outsourcing. This is popular in the biotech industry. Clients outsource their R&D work. This was termed reportedly by India's biotech queen Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw.

RPO also stands for Recruitment Process Outsourcing. RPO is a key component of Human Resource Outsourcing (HRO). The RPO team basically handles all the recruitment work for their clients.

 

 

What is defect density?

It is defined as the number of errors per 1000 lines of code. Accroding to Meta Group it has grown from 0.53 (2002) to 0.6 (2003) and is expected to further rise to 0.87 (2005).

 

 

What are the 4Es?

Engagement, education, enactment and enforcement framework is expected to ease the concerns of security and data privacy issue.

 

 

 

What is Procurement BPO?

Procurement BPO is transfer of management and execution of one of more procurement activities, transfer of the entire procurement sub-segments or transfer of the entire procurement business functions to an external provider. It offers increased productivity, cost reduction and business transformation to the client. It has a market potential of $10 billion by 2006.

 

 

What does BOT mean?

BOT stands for build, operate and transfer. BOT is not applicable only to BPO. Generally clients who wish to have their captive centre partner with a local company which builds and operates the centre for 2-3 years and then transfers it completely to the client.

 

What is HIPAA?

HIPAA stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. The US healthcare industry has been interested in simplifying administrative processes and improving efficiency for several decades. The industry leaders concluded that greater standardization of data and transactions was necessary to improve efficiencies. This conclusion was subsequently memorialized by specific administrative simplification language included in the healthcare legislation called the HIPAA.