What Is KPO?

KPO, or Knowledge Process Outsourcing market, is estimated to grow to $45.18 billion by 2025. The difficulty of researching and acquiring expertise prompts businesses to seek professionals on the outside, further growing the revenue of the market. 

What is KPO, its perks, and which industries need it the most? 

What Is KPO?

Knowledge Process Outsourcing is the outsourcing of information-related business processes and activities. It involves outsourcing to third parties who have a required expertise and experience working in the field. It is a specific type of BPO that requires more analytical thinking and knowledge-based tasks that might have a significant impact on business. 

Knowledge Process Outsourcing requires a very tech-savvy team that can work with big volumes of information, all the while understanding business needs. The KPO team should understand how to implement different information for different purposes, to be at its most efficient. 

Among the most popular Knowledge Process Outsourcing services are: 

• Engineering service outsourcing.
• Financial and banking research outsourcing.
• Business and market research outsourcing.
• Legal process outsourcing.
• Business analysis.

KPO — Pros and Cons

✅ Reduce the Costs

Businesses spend up to $23 billion on R&D. Deloitte estimates that 64% of businesses outsource with a single aim of cutting the costs of their processes. Reducing the spending with the help of KPO by at least 20-30% could make a significant difference. The bigger the business, the more significant is the impact.

By reducing costs, business opens up resources for future development. It gains the opportunity to extend the team and deliver a better performance of in-house teams. Combined with KPO, this results in an overall better performance and an improved customer journey. 

❌ Might Result in Temporary Shortages and Slight Delays

While Knowledge Process Outsourcing provides businesses with an opportunity to scale their team without wasting resources and time on hiring and onboarding, it might also slow the process down. 

This might happen due to the complexity of the process: while hiring people might be easy, onboarding and teaching will take more time. As a result, the process might slow down during the initial integrating and team hiring.

As soon as the processes are set up, the pace will pick up. 

✅ It Is a More Secure Option

Knowledge Process Outsourcing may provide businesses with more secure solutions. 

For example, more than 80% of medical facilities have reported at least one security breach since 2018. Opting for a KPO team can shield them from experiencing breaches and leaks. 

It is especially important to select a Knowledge Process Outsourcing provider, compliant with or certified by various security standards — GDPR, PCI DSS, ISO, HIPAA and so on. This will be the most secure way to outsource very tech-demanding tasks, gain additional expertise and protect customers’ information.  

❌ Searching for a Vendor Might Take Time

The search for an outsourced partner becomes more difficult, when the task in question is as demanding as Knowledge Process Outsourcing itself. The search for a KPO partner includes: 

• Analysis of the market.
• Determining the exact business needs.
• Confirming that a market has a solution that fits the business’ goals perfectly. 
• Negotiating the Knowledge Process Outsourcing details and scope. 
• Setting up and training the team. 

Going through all these stages might take a business a lot of time and, once again, slow the process down for a while. 

✅ It Is Always Worth the Effort

Knowledge Process Outsourcing has a lot of perks that compensate for every inconvenience:

• It allows businesses to get the necessary expertise without having to hire and onboard new members of the team. 
• It lets businesses address their own issues without having to be distracted with the R&D process. 
• Knowledge Process Outsourcing enables fast scaling and ensures more secure solutions. 
• It makes the process of arranging big databases easier. 

These and additional perks put together provide businesses with a clear picture — KPO is worth giving a try to. But do all businesses need to consider Knowledge Process Outsourcing, or are there fields that require it more than others? What is the spectrum of KPO needs? 

Industries in Need of KPO

Banking

‼️ Reasons behind the need: 

• The initial complexity of the systems. 
• Difficulty in finding experienced and well-taught professionals for in-house information-related processes and tasks. 
• The system needs to be as secure as possible. 
• Performance of the tasks requires specific knowledge. 

The financial segment and any banking system requires either specific knowledge and a special education or a lot of time to form an understanding of the processes. Businesses operating in the field use KPO as a way to ensure a high quality of services and a high level of security. 

Services employed:

• Data collection, analysis and systematization.
• Updating existing market research.
• Business strategy support.
• Mergers and acquisitions research.
• Customer behavior analysis. 

Healthcare

‼️ Reasons behind the need: 

• The initial complexity of the systems. 
• The tasks should be performed quickly. 
• The system needs to be as secure as possible. 
• Performance of the tasks requires specific knowledge. 

While medical establishments’ need for Knowledge Process Outsourcing is not as severe as for the banking system, they still require additional expertise of gathering data and developing innovative solutions for safer data handling. To ensure the highest efficiency, this segment requires specific knowledge and a never-ending learning process. 

Services employed:

• Medical coding outsourcing.
• Record keeping.
• Diagnostic process chain outsourcing.
• Data files handling.
• Billing-related tasks.

IT

‼️ Reasons behind the need: 

• The initial complexity of the systems. 
• Difficulty in finding experienced and well-taught professionals for in-house information-related processes and tasks. 
• The system needs to be as secure as possible. 
• The field develops non-stop, which might create difficulties for an in-house team. 

The IT industry has a lot of complex processes that can cause a lot of strain on the team and on the internal systems. Professionals in the field have to be well-taught and have a deep understanding of the systems implemented by an IT company. 

Services employed: 

• Database handling and updating.
• Product development. 
• Quality Assurance.

Manufacturing

‼️ Reasons behind the need: 

• The information needs to be processed in large volumes.
• The tasks are not ordinary and might require a long time to be completed. 

Manufacturing might not be the first industry to outsource KPO. Different manufacturers do choose Knowledge Process Outsourcing to cut the costs of their operation or be able to focus on further development of the process. 

Services employed: 

• Updating databases.
• Working with supply lists. 
• Researching optimization options. 
• Providing supply chain disruptions support. 

Retail

‼️ Reasons behind the need: 

• Businesses need to pay more attention to the customer-oriented processes.
• The tasks should be performed quickly. 

Businesses operating in retail are mostly customer-centric and customer-focused. What customers do not see are the behind-the-scenes processes. Knowledge Process Outsourcing allows businesses to focus on improving their customer journey while their data-related processes are taken care of. 

Services employed: 

• Market and competition research and analysis. 

Searching for a perfectly suitable KPO partner or establishing the exact business needs might take time, but implementing Knowledge Process Outsourcing will save a lot of resources and time. 

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