Organizations go for Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) services when their in-house team doesn’t have adequate expertise to handle certain high-level tasks.
Firms offering KPO services can allow you to with data analytics, market research, performance management, and far more. This fashion, you acquire helpful knowledge to make data-driven decisions and strategize higher for optimum success.
In this text, we’ll discuss what Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) is and the 12 sorts of KPO services. We’ll also highlight three major differences between KPO and BPO.
Finally, we’ll examine some common examples, pros, and cons of KPO and discover three leading service providers within the KPO industry.
Table of Contents
Let’s start.
What are KPO services?
Knowledge Process Outsourcing is contracting information-related business activities to an external organization or a third-party service provider. This KPO firm might be in the identical city as your organization or a distinct geographic location throughout the country.
KPO services often involve collecting, storing, and analyzing a high volume of critical company data.
It provides firms additional support in accounting, healthcare, information technology, software development, engineering, and more. And KPO services are offered by a staff with expertise in area of interest or complex business functions.
By outsourcing knowledge processes and analytical tasks, firms can get an authority opinion and objective insights into their business operations.
Say a law firm decides to partner with a legal process outsourcing firm. This KPO company might help them with IP and governance, litigation support, compliance, risk management, and other legal matters that the in-house team is probably not well-equipped to handle.
So knowledge process outsourcing might help firms discover latest growth opportunities, retain high-end clients, and run smooth operations.
Why do organizations need KPO services?
Listed here are just a few explanation why organizations across various industry verticals go for KPO services:
- A scarcity of technical skill and subject material experts throughout the company.
- To satisfy one-time tasks that don’t require hiring a everlasting worker.
- To acquire a highly expert workforce at a lower cost.
- To enhance service or product quality and business process efficiency.
- To remain ahead of competitors by leveraging advanced technologies and worker expertise.
So what are different KPO services organizations can profit from?
Let’s discover.
12 common sorts of KPO services
Listed here are the different sorts of services offered by the KPO sector:
- Market research: Offers business research data on emerging markets, consumer behavior, demographic interests, consumer trends, etc.
- Financial research: Helps industrial banks, investment bankers, stock brokers, etc. improve money flow with asset management support.
- Business management consulting: Analyzes latest market opportunities, customer expectations, and helps organizations with long-term goals.
- Technical evaluation: Uses sophisticated technologies like AI, automation, and data analytics to hurry up and streamline business workflow.
- Legal research: Examines laws (pertaining to litigation or non-litigation areas), determines contract compliance, liabilities, etc.
- Human resources research: Offers latest reports and data on best hiring practices, human resource management, global recruiting trends, and more.
- Medical and healthcare research: Collects surveys and trial results to assist organizations develop latest medicines and medical procedures.
- Data evaluation and management: Uses big data to uncover actionable insights and implements machine learning to construct advanced work models.
- Mental Property (IP) research: Enables clients to actively manage and protect the credit for his or her inventions with copyrights, trade secrets, and patents.
- Customer support and call centers: Provides in-depth reports on customer support trends and statistics to extend customer retention.
- Utility management: Prepares budgets, reports, and optimizes energy (water, electricity, etc.) spendings in your organization through granular, real-time data.
- Content development: Offers content writing services (blogs, social media posts, infographics, newsletters, etc.) relevant to your audience and brand’s tone of voice.
Next up, we’ll discover the first differences between business process outsourcing and knowledge process outsourcing.
While business process outsourcing (BPO) involves the outsourcing of non-core business operations, KPO provides specialized knowledge and data evaluation on complex functions. So, KPO might be considered a subset of BPO.
Here’s a comparison table on your higher understanding:
| KPO | BPO | |
| Methodology | KPO entails outsourcing of core, high-level tasks requiring adequate knowledge and business acumen. The staff generally provide insights or predict business outcomes based on their judgment and data evaluation. | BPO services deal with low-level business processes and peripheral activities of the organization. The outsourcing team often follows pre-defined rules and methods throughout the execution of the BPO service. |
| Required Expertise | Highly expert employees with superior problem-solving, analytical, and technical skills. | Staff with basic qualifications possessing good communication skills. |
| Task Complexity | Involves advanced, knowledge-based tasks like business research, human resource management, investment research, legal services, engineering services, financial services, etc. | Involves relatively easy tasks related to back office functions, data entry, customer support, accounting, transcription, website services, payroll processing, etc. |
Take a look at this comprehensive guide to BPO, including seven key trends that can matter in 2024.
Now let’s explore some examples of data process outsourcing services.
3 common examples of KPO services
Listed here are three instances from different industries selecting KPO services:
1. Manufacturing industry
Manufacturing industries often use KPO services for supply chain management. The KPO firm leverages analytics through which they analyze data to enable a business to predict future demand for raw materials higher. The service providers help a corporation understand customer needs after the initial order and choose which products might be minimized.
2. Food and beverage industry
Food and beverage industries profit from toxicology consulting services offered by a KPO company. The service provider can test the ingredients utilized in a specific product through hazard screening and risk evaluation. The outcomes of those tests might be compiled in the shape of reports for submission to regulatory agencies that approve the ultimate product.
3. B2B industry
B2B businesses can outsource web research services to collect information on various businesses of their database. The KPO company can conduct meticulous research to gather data and prepare the contact list. This fashion, the B2B business can access the updated information of the important thing contact individuals, including their designation, employment history, location, emails, etc.
Let’s explore the several benefits of using KPO solutions for your small business.
4 significant advantages of KPO services
Here’s how organizations can profit by including a KPO process of their business strategy:
1. Reduce operational costs
The common salary in leading outsourcing destinations like India and the Philippines is lower than those in Europe and North America. By outsourcing knowledge-based business activities to a KPO firm, western firms can reduce on worker hiring and training costs.
Furthermore, the KPO staff you’re employed with are primarily contractual employees. So that you won’t have to offer additional salary advantages for transportation, medical, etc.
And because you’ll be coping with outsourced employees remotely, your organizations can save a considerable amount on office equipment, hardware maintenance, and more.
The truth is, as per Deloitte’s 2020 Global Outsourcing Survey Report, cost reduction is one in all the key reasons for organizations to show to outsourcing.
2. Optimize core business processes
By outsourcing complex tasks to a third-party service provider, firms can elevate their core business processes and even customer care strategy. This enables in-house employees to look into other necessary facets of your small business.
Let’s say you’re a law firm that decides to go for legal process outsourcing services. The outsourcing team can provide specialized knowledge on federal laws, compliance laws, arbitration letters, deposition summaries, and so forth.
Then again, your internal legal team can conduct client research, handle legal disputes, negotiate settlement terms, and allow you to retain high-end clients.
So knowledge process outsourcing can allow you to deal with your core competency and improve the business process efficiency.
3. Improve performance in non-core areas
As outsourcing firms aim to satisfy their clients’ complex business requirements, they all the time hire competent employees with impressive qualifications. The outsourcing team’s technological know-how helps them deliver one of the best results on your support processes like information technology, marketing, human resources, etc.
Delegating such ancillary tasks to your in-house team may allow you to get things done internally under your direct supervision. But in the event you’re understaffed and your employees are overworked, it could reduce the general organizational performance.
As a substitute, you possibly can recruit a team in a KPO company specializing in these support services. This fashion, your work quality isn’t compromised.
4. Access to advanced technology
Most firms within the KPO sector deploy revolutionary technologies to assist businesses with their complex processes within the shortest possible time.
In accordance with the 2022 Statista survey, 64% of respondents imagine that data and analytics improve workplace efficiency and productivity.
For instance, if you outsource call center services to a firm, they will harness your customer data to offer a whole picture. Through advanced analytics and AI-powered tools, they will allow you to evaluate customer lifetime value, churn rate, loyalty, VoC (Voice of Customer), and more.
Based on the research and insights, you possibly can optimize your customer care strategies.
Nevertheless, there are specific disadvantages that it’s essential to consider before taking the ultimate call.
3 primary challenges of KPO services
Listed here are just a few limitations of data processing outsourcing that you must consider before partnering with a KPO company:
1. Risks of mental property theft
Before tying up with KPO providers, you must be sure that the outsourcing agreement specifies ownership of mental property rights.
Mental property theft is a standard problem within the KPO sector. It happens when the service provider has access to your technical know-how or other confidential information. The information is all the time at the danger of being stolen, sold, and even misplaced within the technique of working with an out of doors vendor.
You possibly can avoid this problem by drawing up an NNN (Non-Disclosure, Non-Use, and Non-Circumvention) agreement. It can prevent your outsourced employees from disclosing, using, or selling your trade secrets.
2. Miscommunication and language barrier
Your outsourcing team in Asian countries is probably not that fluent in English. It might make it difficult for them to grasp the complex requirements of the duty, resulting in mistakes or subpar work quality.
Ideally, you’ll must hire a proficient translator or have just a few bilingual speakers in your outsourcing team to mitigate the risks.
3. Worker monitoring issues
Analyzing your worker’s work efficiency isn’t easy, especially after they are working remotely from a distinct geographic location.
In spite of everything, you’ll don’t know what number of hours they put in every day or how long they take to wrap up particular tasks?
Using this worker management software, you possibly can gain clear insights into your outsourcing team’s performance.
Now let’s discover the highest KPO providers making a mark within the KPO sector.
Top 3 KPO service providers
Let’s go over just a few of the favored KPO firms on this planet:
1. HabileData
HabileData is an India-based business process outsourcing company offering high-quality knowledge services like data processing, data management, catalog management, etc. Their clients are largely from Latin American and European countries across the industries of travel, hospitality, healthcare, and real estate.
Key services
- Offers consulting expertise to B2B firms to lower the associated fee per customer acquisition and add profitable customers to the database.
- Provides real estate photo editing services to boost the look of properties and improve customer engagement levels.
- Helps clients create page layout design for books and periodicals together with typesetting and formatting.
- Assists with cost-effective end to finish data cleansing services to enhance your data quality and make it error-free.
2. FilWeb Asia, Inc.
FilWeb Asia, Inc. is a KPO firm headquartered within the Philippines, offering cost-effective pricing options for his or her KPO services. It makes a speciality of back office functions, customer support, web development, and other outsourcing services.
Key services
- Offers inbound call center services, including call overflow, inquiry handling, issue resolution, order management and processing, etc.
- Helps with 24X7 technical support through state-of-the-art systems, equipment, and latest technologies.
- Provides search engine marketing services to spice up your website’s online presence, increase traffic, and convert more leads.
- Hires skilful project coordinators to help you along with your writing related work and research processes in a specific field.
3. Evalueserve
Evalueserve is a number one outsourcing service provider offering solutions for data analytics, investment research, legal process, supply chain, and more. This KPO company is headquartered in Switzerland and has multiple branches in Chile, China, India, the USA, and the Netherlands.
Key services
- Helps you understand which variables impact your small business and which competitors to be wary of, through business strategy and planning services.
- Offers data engineering services with AI and advanced analytics to capture more value and drive real-time decisions.
- Develops meaningful customer segments to support targeted campaigns under marketing and sales enablement services.
- Provides expert financial service through agile risk technology, analytics, and domain expertise.
Final thoughts
Many organizations worldwide select KPO services to profit from a highly expert workforce and revolutionary IT solutions.
Nevertheless, you’ll need to think about your existing work model, long-term goals, and other business expectations before partnering with any firm within the KPO industry.
Read through this text to grasp the professionals and cons of KPO and the way it differs from business process outsourcing to make one of the best decision for your small business.
