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Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) Is A Form Of: Clarification Needed

Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) involves carrying out knowledge-related and information work through external companies or subsidiaries, often in different countries, to reduce costs. Unlike manufacturing outsourcing, KPO typically uses highly skilled professionals to make many low-level business decisions. KPO firms provide expertise in business processes and make decisions that can be easily reversed if they conflict with higher business goals. Common KPO services include investment research, business research, data analytics, market research, valuations, legal research, and patent research.

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43 views

Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) Is A Form Of: Clarification Needed

Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) involves carrying out knowledge-related and information work through external companies or subsidiaries, often in different countries, to reduce costs. Unlike manufacturing outsourcing, KPO typically uses highly skilled professionals to make many low-level business decisions. KPO firms provide expertise in business processes and make decisions that can be easily reversed if they conflict with higher business goals. Common KPO services include investment research, business research, data analytics, market research, valuations, legal research, and patent research.

Uploaded by

Akhilesh Asare
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) is a form of outsourcing, in which knowledge-related

and information-related work is carried out by workers in a different company or by a subsidiary


of the same organization, which may be in the same country or in an offshore location to save
cost. Unlike the outsourcing of manufacturing, this typically involves high-value work carried
out by highly skilled staff. KPO firms, in addition to providing expertise in the processes
themselves, often make many low level business decisions—typically those that are easily
undone if they conflict with higher-level business plans.

Contents
[hide]

 1 Overview
 2 Types of KPO services
 3 Market researching
 4 See also
 5 References

[edit] Overview
Process transparency is a major barrier to using KPO services.[clarification needed] Many organizations
do not track carefully which decisions are made by whom, and rely so much on informal social
processes (and "soft skills") that it is unclear how much the use of KPO would disrupt existing
operations. However, requirements like Sarbanes-Oxley and radical transparency movements
like full cost accounting, shareholder activism and eco-labels and moral purchasing require
organizations to be more explicit about when and by whom decisions are made. These trends
make it easier for outsourcing non-critical jobs to be considered by qualifying the impact of
decisions in advance.[clarification needed] Furthermore, it becomes easier to evaluate and compare
success. A fully developed service economy enables KPO by treating all functions as services.
[clarification needed]
So do more technical trends such as service oriented architecture, enterprise
application integration and telework: it is easier to outsource a job if it is already being
performed outside the head office. Organizations adopting ISO 9000 and ISO 19011 should also
find it much easier to integrate externally provided KPO into their operations and audit them on a
fair basis.

As of 2007, most US organizations were hiring foreign professionals under H-1 visas to do jobs
in the USA for several years, after which they would return to their home countries as managers
to train and supervise others, continuing to report to their former business units.

The following extract from chapter two of the British Computer Society book 'Global Services:
Moving to a Level Playing Field' by Mark Kobayashi-Hillary and Dr Richard Sykes attempts to
define KPO:
"KPO is merely a continuation of BPO, though with rather more business complexity. The
defining difference is that KPO is usually focused on knowledge-intensive business processes
that require significant domain expertise (application professionalism in the language of Chapter
1). The offshore team servicing a KPO contract cannot be easily hired overnight as they will be
highly educated and trained, and trusted to take decisions on behalf of the client.

IT outsourcing is strongly focused around technical professionalism, and the migration to


business process outsourcing introduces this extra dimension of application professionalism.
Ever more complex services, as implied by KPO, demonstrate this very well. The profile of
people being hired to serve within KPO service companies are more diverse than just being
drawn from technical IT services – these are people with MBAs, and medical, engineering,
design or other specialist business skills. KPO delivers higher value to organizations that
offshore their domain-based processes, thereby enhancing the traditional cost– quality paradigm
of BPO. The central theme of KPO is to create value for the client by providing business
expertise rather than process expertise. So KPO involves a shift from standardized processes to
advanced analytical thinking, technical skills and decisive judgement based on experience."

[edit] Types of KPO services


KPO services include the following:

 Investment research services (equity, fixed income and credit, and quantitative research)
 Business research services
 Data Analytics
 Market research services
 Valuation and Fairness Opinions
 Legal research services (also known as Legal Process Outsourcing)
 Patent research services

[edit] Market researching


Leaders in the market research industry are slowly seeing the benefits offered by KPO and have
begun outsourcing.[citation needed] Comprehensive IT solutions are offered by vendors who provide
solutions covering the entire life cycle of a market research project. Smaller firms can also
benefit from these solutions as they are cost effective and remain within the budget of smaller
organizations.

KPO is claimed to efficiently increase productivity and increase cost savings in the area of
market research.[citation needed] Advocates claim that the trend is likely to prove increasingly popular
in the global market research industry.

[edit] See also


 Knowledge economy
 Offshoring
 Instructional capital
 Offshoring Research Network
 Business process outsourcing
 Legal process outsourcing

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