A subset of outsourcing in which a company contracts a specific business process to a third-party service provider. BPO originated with manufacturing firms outsourcing parts of their supply chain, such as Coca-Cola, then expanded to back-office and front-office services and to information-technology-enabled service (ITES); the global BPO market was valued at approximately $302.62 billion in 2024. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Core MechanismA company contracts out the operation and responsibility for a specific business process, such as payroll or customer support, to a third-party service provider rather than performing it in-house. 1 Connections
Associated With
IBM operates one of the ten largest global consulting and business-process-outsourcing practices, spanning strategy consulting, technology and systems integration and operations.
Source Wikipedia, IBM
A service bureau, an outside firm performing data processing or clerical functions for clients who lack the equipment or staff to do it themselves, is an early named form of what the business-model literature now generally calls business process outsourcing.
Source Wikipedia, Business Process Outsourcing
Open Questions
Source Wikipedia, Business Process Outsourcing
Sources
1. Wikipedia, Business Process Outsourcing
Wikipedialead section
Business process outsourcing (BPO) is a subset of outsourcing in which a company contracts the operations and responsibilities of a specific business process to a third-party service provider.
Lead section
Business process outsourcing (BPO) is a subset of outsourcing in which a company contracts the operations and responsibilities of a specific business process to a third-party service provider.
lead paragraph, first sentence
Business process outsourcing (BPO) is a subset of outsourcing in which a company contracts the operations and responsibilities of a specific business process to a third-party service provider.
Associated With: Technology Industry, Types of BPO
information technology-based, referred to as ITES (Information Technology Enabled Service)
View the Source Wikipedia, IBM
WikipediaAssociated With: IBM, Consulting sectionQuote, Associated With: IBM, Consulting section
With 160,000 consultants globally as of 2024, IBM is one of the ten largest consulting companies in the world, with capabilities spanning strategy and management consulting, experience design, technology and systems integration, and operations.
Open Questions (1 open question)
In what year, and in what industry, did business process outsourcing first take the form recognized today, rather than only general contracting-out of a business function?
The source article defines BPO and gives an early example (Coca-Cola outsourcing parts of its supply chain) under its Types section, crediting manufacturing firms with originating the practice, but it names no year for that origin and no year for when BPO became a distinct, named business-process category rather than ordinary subcontracting.
What would resolve this A business-history source giving a specific year or decade for when the term "business process outsourcing" was coined, or for the first documented contract commonly cited as BPO in its modern (rather than general manufacturing subcontracting) sense.
Business HistoryWikipedia, Business Process Outsourcing
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