Most of the people I have interviewed come to join my organization from the same Industry. They have a very good knowledge of what a BPO looks like and what happens in a BPO.
But I do come across a lot of people who do not know what a BPO is and has vague answers to questions like “What do you know about a BPO?”
There are yet others who have worked in a BPO for some time and answer this question as “A BPO is a Call center”. To an extent this is right. But not completely. If this is not right fully, then what is the difference between a call center and a BPO?
The answers to these questions can be found here.
A BPO as its expansion says is ‘Business Process Outsourcing’. The meaning of the BPO lies in the term ‘OUTSOURCING’. Outsourcing would in a sense mean asking somebody else to do a job I am supposed to do. In other words, certain organizations who believe that there are certain activities that can be done more efficiently and cost-effectively, by handing it over to specialized people do so and in doing it they save on unnecessary costs otherwise involved in hiring and training and such other activities.
From the above definition we understand that a BPO would be an organization who sources the above said kind of activities (which would henceforth be called as processes) from organizations and has a group of specialized staff to do it.
Now what we need to understand is the kind of processes that are or, can be outsourced. Processes that would normally involve huge costs of running and which requires specialized skills or, attributes and that in which the outsourcing organization does not need to get directly involved into would be the front runners amongst the processes to be outsourced. There is a wide spectrum of such processes a few of which would be:

• After sales Customer Service
• Pre sales customer service
• Telemarketing and sales
• Tech-support customer service
• Customer and market research
• Back-office data entry activities
• Transaction processing – This is again a very broad classification and could involve ticketing, accounting services etc.

If all of these constitute BPO then what is a Call center. To understand the definition of a Call center let us again discuss the types of BPO.
The classification that we discussed above is on the kind of processes that can be outsourced. A yet another way of classifying would be even broader.

• Voice processes – All processes that would involve a person using his/her voice and language skills would come under voice processes.
• Non-voice processes – Processes that would not involve voice skills.

These processes can again be classified into Outbound and Inbound processes. We would not go into the details as of now.
Call centers, hence are BPO’s that handle voice based processes. In other words, call centers are just a part of BPO and the term BPO has a wider arena to cover.
This I believe would serve as a good starting point for people who would want to understand what happens in a BPO.

The BPO wave is sweeping India since the last 6 odd years. Things have changed, since the first BPO started its operation in India and the consequence is that today we have a whole new culture – nicknamed as the BPO culture.
Youth is no more as they were before, their choices have changed, preferences and fashion trends have changed. Logics and decisions have also been influenced to a great extent because education is no more a barrier to getting a job, and when I say a “Job”, I mean a handsomely paid job.
I still remember the days when I was at school and I could see my seniors planning their career. The options they had was very limited and preferences went as follows:
1. A government job which meant appearing for exams like UPSC, RRB and such other. Chances of getting selected were very grim because of the reservations and above all the selection procedures.
2. Do an MBBS, BE, CA or, ICWA or such other professional degrees which again has a very low pass % level.
That was it.
Graduates were not even considered for vacancies and where they were given a job, it meant working on an 8 – 8 shift and getting salaries like Rs.1500/- per month, as in my first job. Appraisals were a dream, because they happened only once in a year or, at times even once in 18 months.
Things have changed since and now graduates or, even undergraduates are in vogue. They are the ones who get a job easily and as for the kind of salaries they get; it may range anywhere from 8000/- per month to 12000/- per month. The best thing of all is that you could even get a pay-hike in just about 3 months. What more can you ask for?
Hail the Business Process Outsourcing industry!!!

A few statistics of importance could be as follows:
1. The total number of seats in Call centers across India is about 1, 58,000.
2. The total employees in major BPOs across India was about 63,400 (Source: Economic Times (August 2004)
3. Indian Market size estimates of BPO
o Nasscom has estimated that the Indian ITES industry will gross over $5.7 billion by 2005 (based on a conservative year-on-year growth of 65 percent by Nasscom).
o Nasscom-McKinsey: In 1999 they estimated by 2008 it will be $17 billion but it has been revised to $21-24 billion by 2008. Indian can capture 25% of global BPO offshore market and 12% of the market for other services such as animation, content development and design services.
o Gartner: $1 billion (2002), $1.2 billion (2003). $13.8 billion by 2007. Gartner does not incorporate animation, medical or other (legal) transcription services, GIS, market research, data search, research and development, network consultancy and other non-business processes in its estimates on the ITES market size and potential.

Year Indian BPO revenue
2002 912
2003 1205
2004 1961
2005 3928
2006 7412
2007 13811
Figures in $ million
Source: Gartner Dataquest (May 2003)

Wondering what all of this means to you?
In a simple understandable language all this means that the BPO industry is growing and it is growing big time. It is for you to decide what your part would be in it. You can earn more than any other industry in a BPO and the best part of it all is that you would be groomed and trained to become the leaders of tomorrow.
We would be discussing on lot of other aspects in due course of time.