Have You Considered the Different Forms of BPO?

Key takeaways:

• Small and medium enterprises across all industries can benefit from BPO.
• Businesses can choose from various types of BPO to fit their needs.
• BPO is the future of streamlining business operations.

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) firms have an expansive scope that can benefit businesses of different sizes and industries. The BPO industry is like an all-in-one shop with something for everyone. For instance, Information Technology-Enabled Services (ITES) serve technical teams while Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) is suitable for data-driven tasks. Legal professionals benefit from Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) and research companies reap big rewards from Research Process Outsourcing (RPOs).

So, how do you want help scaling your business? We discuss various types of BPO and how they can supercharge your enterprise. 

1. ITES

This BPO model utilizes IT, especially web-based, to serve firms and deliver contracted services. A perfect example of this service is when a company contracts its online help desk system. The ITES provider utilizes software to manage clients, submit client problem tickets, and answer customer questions through email. 

Additionally, ITES firms help emerging businesses with document processing. A contracting enterprise that needs information extracted from large documents can also hire ITES service providers. The company transmits its documents via the Internet after scanning or typing them. Their employees engage in processing activities like:

• Processing documents into databases
• Coding information
• Categorizing data

2. KPO

Knowledge is power; hence, knowledge-based tasks are very important. These labor-intensive tasks like data analytics, market research, and data management need a lot of effort. Someone needs to gather, manage, analyze, sort, and transmit it. Knowledge-based tasks and firms can contract a KPO to handle all of these activities for them.

KPO offers different services that help knowledge-dependent businesses focus on their core tasks. Some ways in which a KPO firm can benefit emerging businesses include: 

• Conducting data analytics to help enterprises access actionable insights 
• Performing market or business research that enables businesses to get accurate answers to their pertinent questions 
• Offering go-to reporting and performance measurements increase operational excellence and productivity
• Managing data to enable companies to integrate, store, retrieve, and share it for corporate reporting and analytics
• Filing tax returns
• Preparing accounts
• Conducting computer-aided simulations

3. LPO

Legal experts can benefit from LPO by shedding the repetitive tasks another firm can perform. This way, law firms save time, reduce costs, and reduce their full-time employees’ workload. This aid lets legal businesses focus on their core duties and become more profitable.

Below are some encouraging stats on LPO.

• The legal industry spends USD $6.2 billion yearly on LPO, e-discovery, and document review service providers. 
• The above study also revealed that law firms spend $900 million annually on contract attorneys, in-sourcing, and staffing services.
• About 48% of legal practitioners that participated in the Altman Weil Survey in 2019 said they use contract attorneys. Another 57% said they use part-time attorneys while 24.1% outsource all non-lawyer functions. 

So, what services can lawyers outsource to maintain their primary focus on their clients? Here are some tasks an LPO firm can do for a legal professional.

• Legal research and surveys
• Motions
• Pleadings
• Discoveries
• Document reviews
• Leases
• Wills
• Demand letters
• Powers of attorney
• Agreements
• Legal articles and other writings

What do law firms gain by delegating these jobs to LPO firms? Here are some of the benefits a legal firm reaps:

• Expanded expertise scope
• Flexible staffing solutions such as freelance lawyers
• Flat-fee billing
• Reduced legal service costs for increased competitiveness during these tough economic times
• Enhanced work-life balance for attorneys and their core staff

4. RPO

The job market is getting trickier as challenging economic times keep setting in. Job security can become endangered. Also, companies can never be sure a CEO or dependable in-house employees won’t leave. Employee turnover has crippling financial consequences. It’s no wonder a 2012 study the Center for American Progress (CAP) conducted paints a grim picture. It placed the cost of employee replacement at the following percentages of their annual salaries.

• 16% for low-earner jobs (below $30,000 yearly)
• 20% for mid-range job groups ($30,000-$50,000 per year)
• Up to 213% for graduate executive jobs; for instance, replacing an MD who earns $100k annually costs $213,000

Now, take all these figures and compound them with the current COVID-19 scenario, and you discover that the challenges are even greater. Fortunately, RPOs come in handy to rescue small and medium companies grappling with hiring challenges.  

RPOs supply emerging businesses with essential technology and staff that meet a company’s staffing needs. These firms benefit small and medium enterprises on three leading fronts, as we shall shortly discuss below.

On-demand 

Under this arrangement, a company enters a contract that defines its number of duties for a given period. The contracted firm here must know its customers, their business processes, and desired results.

Function or project-based

In this setting, the contracted firm uses end-to-end processes that avail experts to meet sudden staffing needs for individual projects. 

Full or end-to-end 

Under this arrangement, an RPO supplies full internal recruitment functions that include the providers’ resources like technology. This model offers medium and small businesses the best cost-saving opportunities and efficiency that improve customer experience. Enterprises can leverage these services to meet needs at divisional, single-market, or global enterprise levels. 

Start your BPO journey today

Now that you have a clearer picture of what various BPO solutions providers can do for your business, the ball is in your court to make the best decision for your company. DOXA is here to provide proprietary talent matching, process optimization, and more. Contact us today for a free consultation session to get started.