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| Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) refers to knowledge-intensive work that involves specialized domain expertise. KPO is one step ahead of Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO), in that KPO firms need to have domain-based processes and business expertise, rather than just process expertise. KPO involves processes that demand advanced information search, analytical, interpretation and technical skills as well as some judgment and decision making. Examples of KPO functions are legal back-office processes, intellectual property or patent research, R&D in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, data mining, database creation, high-end customer / technical support and a range of analytical services such as equity research, competitive intelligence, industry reports and financial modeling. |
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| According to a report, the KPO industry is expected to reach USD 17 billion by 2010, of which USD 12 billion is expected to be outsourced to India. KPO has almost unlimited potential as it is not restricted only to IT or ITES sectors, but includes all sectors. Due to a large knowledge pool and a significant cost arbitrage, countries like India, Philippines and China are front runners in providing these services. |
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| ValueLabs segued into this service area in 2003. One of our existing clients, a growing force in the on-line photo vertical, was looking to outsource their email based customer support function. At that time, we were already partnering with this client for software product development and testing. When this client was not entirely satisfied with the vendors they evaluated, we approached them to let us take a shot at the execution. It was an easy decision for our client as we offered them a ‘no strings attached’ risk-free pilot. The pilot was a roaring success. Today, we have 45 people on email-based and live-chat customer support for this client, handling emails 24x7x365. The number of people is expected to triple over the next 12 months. |
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| More than any single service, the fact that we offer multiple services to this client has caused the total to be greater than the sum of the parts. For example, our QA folks know the exact changes that are being incorporated in the next release; they take up the responsibility of training our Customer Support (CS) folks. At the same time, the CS folks are trained to identify and report trends in customer emails. This helps our QA and Development teams to identify and fix trouble spots early on. This feeding of service areas into one another has considerably enhanced the value of the relationship to our client. |
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| The tremendous success of this initial engagement encouraged us to go forth and take up KPO services for our other clients. Our deep understanding of our clients as a result of ongoing engineering engagements helped us deliver much higher value in KPO too. We have successfully executed work in data cleansing, technical support, site operations and marketing research, to name a few outside of email customer support. |
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| The last 4 years have given us the confidence to offer KPO as a stand alone service; a service with which we can initiate a relationship, rather than riding on the back of an engineering relationship. We are confident of being able to successfully execute in areas requiring depth in domain and processes maturity. This confidence is based on our experience of the last 4 years. This confidence is demonstrated by our offer of a “no strings attached” risk-free pilot to let our prospects test the waters before taking the plunge. |
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