The evolution and maturity of the Indian BPO sector has given rise to yet another trend in the global outsourcing scenario: Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO). KPO involves the outsourcing of knowledge intensive services that deal with the creating, sharing, maintaining, tracking and disseminating of knowledge. This industry is not restricted to the IT or ITES sectors only, but also includes other sectors like Intellectual Property related services, Business Research and Analytics, Legal Research, Clinical Research, Publishing, Market Research and many more.
India: The Preferred Destination
India, with its large pool of knowledge workers has the capability to cater to the KPO industry by providing specialized domain workers. Furthermore, the talent available in India is much more affordable. In the Indian context, KPO salaries could be 25-50% higher than those offered to the same domain experts such as Engineers, Doctors, CAs, Lawyers, Architects, Biotechnologists, Economists, Statisticians and MBAs.
The KPO Industry: Soon to Touch the $10 billion mark
A study by Assocham predicted that the KPO industry could easily touch the $10 billion mark by 2012, provided the sector is opened for biotech and nanotechnology experts and steps are taken to build a strong chain of qualified professionals. At present, the KPO sector is said to be $5.5 billion and the sector is growing by about 15-17%. Assocham’s predictions point towards the KPO industry’s size growing to $8 billion in 2011 and touching the 10 billion mark by 2012 with a growth rate between 25-27 per cent.
An Urgent Need for Qualified KPO Professionals
This predicted high growth rate has brought out an urgent need for a strong base of qualified KPO professionals, especially in the area of bio and nanotechnology. Assocham President Dilip Modi says, “There is a need to create a new pool of KPO workers from emerging domestic knowledge based industries such as biotech and nanotechnology as large numbers of talented young people have joined academic courses for career excellence in these two areas.” Professionals in the fields of engineering, medicine, law, management, accountancy, etc., will be required to serve this growing need.
The Long-Term Success of the KPO Industry
Long-term success of the KPO industry in India will depend on the quality of manpower, and this will require initiatives from all quarters including the Government – to improve the quality and relevance of education, Recruiting Agencies – to help attract, evaluate and recruit the best talent possible and KPO Industries – to train, develop and retain existing talent. Additionally, the issue of data security has to be addressed since the KPO sector deals with confidential data, including financial data, treasury and investment portfolio decisions.
The Future of KPO
According to a report by NASSCOM, India is set to capture 70% of the KPO Industry in the near future.But with countries such as Russia, China, the Czech Republic, Ireland and Israel expected to join the KPO industry, India will need to focus on developing its existing base of knowledge workers in order to stay ahead of the competition.
Contact Flatworld Solutions today to find out how you can benefit from outsourcing Knowledge Processes.
