Career in Outsourcing

The most common functional areas of outsourcing are – business process outsourcing (BPO), knowledge process outsourcing (KPO), legal process outsourcing, information technology outsourcing (ITO), and other areas where outsourcing commonly happens include logistics, insurance, banking, medicine, healthcare, real estate and manufacturing.

Business process outsourcing includes human resources outsourcing, call centre outsourcing, insurance, web designing, writing and accounting outsourcing. Where as KPO refers to work that needs higher levels of involvement from the worker. The worker has to employ advanced levels of research and technical skills to take higher level decisions as in areas of animation, patent/ intellectual property research, pharmaceutical research and development, etc. Outsourcing for information or technological needs which could be web designing, technological set ups and the like, come under the ITO category. While LPO refers to outsourcing in all legal related matters.

Any process of outsourcing must go through stages like planning as per a client organisation’s philosophy, strategic selection of projects to be outsourced, location of work from where service can be provided and execution of project with proper management.

Education and skills

There are certificate and diplomas available in outsourcing, the most common education programmes are in areas of BPO, KPO, LPO, ITO. The eligibility towards the specialised programmes is at least 10+2 apart from having knowledge of the sought domain area. For example, a programme in LPO is open to law graduates and it teaches courses in legal education, personal effectiveness, enterprise development, business and marketing.

The required skills in the field are – strong business acumen, good communication skills, preferably knowledge of an Indian or foreign language depending upon the location and culture of the client organisation, consumer behaviour, willingness to work for long hours which could be day and night as well, and marketing skills.

Opportunities

Opportunities are galore in this field. One can set up one’s own venture or work in a BPO, KPO, LPO, ITO or various other upcoming fields like insurance, banking, wellness, real estate, animation, nursing and healthcare.