More companies in all industries are looking into
Knowledge Process Outsourcing - that is, outsourcing highly-skilled jobs. And
they're finding out that KPO is quite different from "traditional" outsourcing.
When buying outsourced services, organizations
frequently hear about the benefits of scale and standardization. The idea is
that a resource serving only a single client can't be as efficient as one that
is used by multiple clients. Supply and demand play a role in this value
proposition, of course, but that preceding pitch is the essence of
outsourcing's business promise.
In KPO, the motives frequently transcend those of
scale. What we're seeing, instead, is the tendency to pursue KPO for purposes
of capacity. It's all about gaining more capability - at favorable
prices, sure, but the access to skilled professionals is the driver of these
deals.
When companies have a hard time attracting and
retaining skilled technicians to perform analytics, research, engineering,
legal or marketing tasks, KPO can be the answer.
And more often than not, the pursuit of a KPO
solution leads to captive offshore operations, which tend to start small and
grow over time. Why captives? Because these models better protect the
competitive advantage of a KPO and help to build institutional knowledge for
future expansion.
