subject: Cousins Of Bpo: Kpo And Lpo! [print this page] The business process outsourcing sector has a couple of cousins, so to speak! These have not become essential parts of a call center yet. But there are many call centers across the world that offers these services in addition to BPO. These are Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) and legal process outsourcing (LPO). It requires some different resources for a BPO service unit to provide these services. For example, a KPO would need writers and web designers. A LPO on the other hand would need employees who understand the legal procedure and the statutes. The costs associated with getting the work done in the developed countries are quite high. That is why these business and legal firms are outsourcing their work to countries like India and the Philippines.
KPO involves a call center in work related to development of literature for the client and the services. The call centers taking KPO projects should expect to create and develop websites for the clients. The task of the unit is to get these writers to develop the content and information pages of the websites. Several units are also entrusted with the research and development on a particular domain. Knowledge sharing is a big business entity in the modern world. Call center services providers are keenly eyeing the KPO market because that is where the future lies. The BPO market will always pay dividends for these firms. It's the additional share of the pie that they are looking for!
There is warning note to be sounded here. Call center firms taking on KPO projects must realize that these projects require high value work as compared to telemarketing. The projects are generally not something that simple data entry executives can do. The call centers have to hire qualified professionals who are able to take on something like this. You will need writers with a certain standard. Similarly you will need designers who can work on websites that have an international appeal. Failure to do that would mean that the projects would stand to be cancelled. It's not something that the BPO units would be ready to do if they feel that they do not have the necessary resources. To set up a KPO you will need to source greater talent and manpower that you would need in BPO service. Before signing on the dotted line, this is one aspect that should be kept in mind.
The same goes for LPO. This is more of a niche project. There are legal firms in USA and Canada that need help with documentation. It's expensive to get the documentation done by the legal professionals there. So the work is outsourced to the call center units that take on such projects. It's the work of the call centers to hire young legal professionals and lawyers, even law students, who can prepare this documentation. The cost of getting the job done in India is far lesser, even at an hourly rate. These are some additional work that the BPO units can do to tide over any dip in the amount of telemarketing services that they do.
