A Telenovela In Japanese and 14 Other Languages: What are BPO companies capable of doing?

Outsourcing is a division of labor crudely defined by experts as the migration of employment from the U.S. (and other rich post-industrial knowledge worker economies in North America, Western Europe and Japan) to other “emerging” economies like China, Brazil, the Philippines, India and South Africa. These emerging markets need a constant infusion of business and so the competition between these business process outsourcing (BPO)-destination countries is alive and well with newer markets and impressive efficiencies constantly emerging.

Outsourcing has come a long way since it began in the 1980s. Today BPO services are as diverse as they were unheard of and even unthought of two decades ago. Despite opposing assertions about its merits, outsourcing has benefited the giants in business in ways that go beyond mere cost reduction. What activities do global companies actually send offshore that translates for them up to 30-40% year-over-year revenue growth every quarter, according to a study done by PricewaterhouseCoopers?

The US federal government infused $20 billion as new capital into ailing Citigroup, and Citigroup is moving more equity in the Philippines, according to country business manager Mark Jones. The company plans to hire 1,000 employees for its call center and financial reporting operations this year and another thousand in 2010. This sends a clear message of the Philippines’ strength in being a financial BPO provider. However, the services BPO companies provide and provide exceedingly well have gone beyond just banking and finance. Functions like logistics, manufacturing, customer support and service, research & development, and human resource management have been sent offshore with impressive results.

Accenture, for example, provides financial support services to Bristol-Myers Squibb, but also IT application services. Accenture, as a multi-services provider, leads the way with a dizzying amount of expertise in infrastructure outsourcing, HR BPO, health administration BPO, procurement BPO and even Navitaire for airlines, to mention a few. Its business and industry acumen is being leveraged by 94 of the Fortune Global 100 corporations.

Outsourcing enables companies to tap into a labor pool ripe with talent and innovative capabilities. Case in point: Apple outsources the manufacturing of the iPod to China because of China’s unique intellectual property governing packaging and materials science. Peoplesupport in the Philippines offers accounts receivables management solutions with a focus on high netback while maintaining good customer relations but also provides transcription of medical records from dictation, and captioning of TV broadcasts which they can do in 15 languages!

BPO companies have also ventured into design and animation services such as illustration of story books and interior/exterior architecture renderings. Art pundits have taken up arms against this- as expected- but who’s to say really what is art and what is not? Artists have long worked with materials available to them whether it be a cave wall or technology. In fact there are some who sincerely believe that science, technology and art in their higher levels are the same thing.

Other offshore service providers like Open Access Marketing provide custom BPO thru services such as call centers, data services (e.g. data mining, trend analysis and brand research) and professional services which includes eCommerce store management, and search engine optimization.

With BPOs, the culture is always of innovation, that whatever the mind can conceive, it can be achieved- and can probably be achieved for less off shore. It is an exciting and challenging time for global business. Curious as to what else we can do for your company? Log on to our website at  www.openaccessmarketing.com. Or you may call us at +1.800.626.9479 or email info@openaccessmaeketing.com.