What is What is business process outsourcing??
What is business process outsourcing (BPO)?Business process outsourcing (BPO) is the practice of contracting a third-party provider to run a defined business function such as customer support, payroll, accounting, or IT helpdesk. The provider takes ownership of the people, process, and technology, and bills you on a per-seat, per-transaction, or fixed-fee basis.
BPO sits at the intersection of labour arbitrage and operational focus. You hand off a non-core function to a specialist that can run it cheaper, faster, or better, and your in-house team gets to concentrate on what actually moves the business.
The category covers everything from a 4-seat phone team in Cebu answering after-hours calls for a US plumbing firm, to a 5,000-seat captive in Manila handling global claims processing for a Fortune 500 insurer. Same idea, very different scale.
If you've used Apple support, ordered from Amazon, or paid with Wells Fargo, you've talked to a BPO provider — you just didn't know it.
How it worksA BPO engagement runs in three layers: contract, transition, and steady state. You scope the function, sign a service level agreement that locks in response times, quality thresholds, and pricing, then transition the work through documented playbooks and parallel runs before the provider takes the keys.
Pricing usually falls into one of four shapes:
Model
How you pay
Best for Per FTE (seat)
Fixed monthly rate per agent
Steady-volume work like inbound support Per transaction
Set fee per call, ticket, or invoice
Variable-volume back-office tasks Outcome-based
Tied to a KPI like CSAT or collections
Mature processes with clean metrics Hybrid
Base FTE rate plus variable bonus
Long-term partnershipsLocation choice drives most of the savings. Sending work to the Philippines or India (offshoring) typically cuts loaded labour cost by 50–70% versus a US in-house team. Sending it to Mexico or Colombia (nearshoring) trims 30–50% while keeping you in roughly the same timezone. Keeping it domestic (onshoring) protects timezone and language fit but barely moves the cost needle.
The provider absorbs the recruiting, training, real estate, tech stack, and compliance burden. You absorb the vendor-management overhead and the risk that comes with handing a function to an outsider.
ExamplesThe global BPO market hit roughly USD 347.95 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow at a 10.05% CAGR through 2035, according to Precedence Research. That growth is concentrated in a handful of hubs and a handful of named buyers.
Google has used Philippine and Indian BPO partners since 2016 for content moderation, ads review, and customer support — a quiet workforce that scales with each product launch. Meta contracts Accenture and TaskUs in Manila for content moderation; the work pulled enough scrutiny in the early 2020s that Meta eventually broadened its provider base across multiple regions. Wells Fargo has operated a Manila back-office hub since 2011, handling mortgage processing, AML checks, and treasury operations for the US parent. JPMorgan Chase runs large captive and outsourced operations in India and the Philippines for KYC, trade settlement, and analytics.The Philippines remains the standout English-language hub. According to the IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines, the country's IT-BPM sector generates roughly USD 40 billion in revenue and employs about 1.9 million people, with growth targets pushing past 2.5 million by 2028.
Related terms Outsourcing: the umbrella term; BPO is the back-office and front-office slice that runs whole processes rather than one-off projects. Offshoring: moving work to a distant country (e.g. US to Philippines). A location choice, not a contracting choice. Nearshoring: moving work to a nearby country (e.g. US to Mexico) to keep timezone and culture closer. Knowledge process outsourcing: KPO handles judgment-heavy work like legal research or equity analysis, not transactional tasks. Call center: one delivery format inside BPO, focused on inbound or outbound voice. Back office: the non-customer-facing operations layer that BPO most commonly absorbs. Service level agreement: the contract clause that defines what "good" looks like in a BPO deal. FAQ What is business process outsourcing in simple terms?BPO is paying another company to run a piece of your business for you, usually a repeatable function like answering support calls, processing invoices, or managing payroll. You keep the brand and the strategy; they run the operation.
What is the difference between BPO and outsourcing?Outsourcing is the broad category — anything you contract out, including one-off projects. BPO is the subset where a provider runs an ongoing, defined business process end-to-end, typically with its own staff, systems, and SLAs.
Is BPO only about cost savings?No. Cost is the entry argument, but mature buyers cite access to specialist talent, 24/7 coverage, faster scaling, and freeing in-house leaders to focus on growth as bigger long-term wins. See the directory of vetted providers on Clutch for how the market positions itself today.
What functions do companies outsource most often?Customer support, IT helpdesk, finance and accounting, payroll, HR administration, content moderation, and data entry top the list. Higher-judgment work like legal research, equity analysis, and medical coding has shifted to KPO providers over the last decade.
Which countries dominate the BPO industry?The Philippines leads voice and customer experience, India leads IT and analytics, and Latin America (Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica) leads nearshore work for North American buyers. Eastern Europe serves Western European clients on similar terms.
How do I choose a BPO provider?Match scale to your volume, check for relevant compliance (ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS, SOC 2), ask for two reference clients in your industry, and pilot a small scope before committing to a multi-year contract. Walk away from any provider that won't share agent attrition data.
Ready to scope a BPO partner? Outsource Accelerator lists 4,000+ vetted providers across the top global hubs — use the directory to shortlist, compare pricing, and book intro calls without paying a referral fee.
What is Social Media Virtual Assistant?
What is a social media virtual assistant?Social media is playing a significant role in any business’ marketing and sales strategy – now more than ever. How you manage your business’ social media pages can help flourish or tarnish your brand’s reputation.
This is where the services of a social media virtual assistant comes in. Social media virtual assistants are social media experts that will solely work for your brand remotely. They offer a wide range of services, including developing a social media strategy and curating your channels.
Responsibilities of a social media virtual assistantSocial media management is not just about posting on your Facebook page and leaving it at that. Social media has become a very efficient marketing tool, and a social media virtual assistant can be tasked with an array of responsibilities to promote your brand and appeal to customers.
Here are some of the responsibilities of a social media virtual assistant:
Set up your social media presence
Write copy and blog posts for all your social media channels
Reply to and manage comments
Interact with your brand’s followers, answer questions, and deal with reviews
Create surveys and other promotional strategies Benefits of hiring a social media virtual assistantHiring and training can be too expensive and will take too much time that can be spent on other essential tasks. By hiring a social media virtual assistant, you'll get to save up on hiring costs and other expenses like office space, desktops, and internet connection. Social media virtual assistants are also equipped with the right experience and skills for the job, so training will be very minimal.
By delegating your social media management to a qualified virtual assistant, you’ll get to enjoy more time in your hands for more essential tasks leading to your business’ growth and development.
What is Resolution Time?
What is Resolution Time?Resolution time is the average amount of time it takes for a customer service provider to resolve a customer’s issue, request, or concern. It is the amount of time from when the client creates an incident report or files a ticket, to when the problem or cause of concern is actually solved.
This metric is typically measured through business hours instead of clock hours, due to the company's customer service organization down time. It may vary depending on the company though, as more and more businesses are investing in 24/7 customer service teams.
Resolution time vs. response timeThese two terms are typically interchanged, but they have one distinct difference. Like mentioned above, resolution time is the average amount of time it takes for a customer service provider to resolve a customer’s issue, request, or concern.
Response time, on the other hand, refers to the average amount of time it took for a customer service provider (automated bots not counted) to address the client’s incident report and let them know that they’re currently working on it.
What is Shared Services?
Shared ServicesShared services is an internal operating model where one in-house team delivers repeatable functions — finance, HR, IT, procurement — to multiple business units from a single center. The goal is standardized work at lower unit cost, with the parent company keeping full control rather than handing the work to a third party.
Key takeaways Shared services centralizes back-office work inside the company; outsourcing hands it to an outside vendor.
The model typically cuts process costs by 25–40% once consolidation and standardization are complete, per Deloitte's 2023 Global Shared Services and Outsourcing Survey.
Most large enterprises now run hybrid setups: captive shared services centers in low-cost hubs like Manila, Krakow, or Bengaluru, with selective outsourcing layered on top.The term took hold in the early 1990s when General Electric and Ford pulled scattered finance teams into single sites to standardize ledgers and cut headcount. Three decades on, the playbook still works — but the scope has widened from finance to almost any rules-based function a corporation runs.
Outsource Accelerator has tracked this shift since 2017, and one pattern keeps repeating: companies that treat shared services as a pure cost play stall around year two, while those that treat it as a process-redesign program keep compounding savings.
How it worksA shared services center (SSC) consolidates similar tasks from across a business into one team that serves every unit under a service-level agreement. Work is standardized, automated where possible, and priced back to each business unit on a per-transaction or subscription basis.
The build typically moves through four stages:
Stage
Focus
Typical duration 1. Consolidation
Pull scattered teams into one site, freeze processes
6–12 months 2. Standardization
Adopt single workflows, single tools, single chart of accounts
12–18 months 3. Optimization
Lean, automation, RPA, analytics layered on top
18–36 months 4. Value-add
Center moves from transaction processing to advisory work
36 months+Governance sits with a steering committee from the parent business; the SSC itself runs on KPIs like cost per invoice, days-to-close, first-contact resolution, and customer satisfaction. Per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, business and financial operations roles (the bulk of SSC headcount) are projected to grow 7% through 2033, faster than the all-occupations average.
Location strategy matters as much as design. Captive centers in the Philippines, India, Poland, and Costa Rica typically deliver labor arbitrage of 50–70% against US or UK in-house rates, while keeping the team on the parent company's payroll and inside its security perimeter.
ExamplesReal shared services programs look very different from the textbook diagrams.
Procter & Gamble Global Business Services (GBS): Runs finance, HR, IT, and facilities for the entire group from hubs in Manila, San José (Costa Rica), and Newcastle. The center serves roughly 100,000 P&G employees and has been repeatedly cited by Gartner as a benchmark GBS program. Shell Business Operations: Five sites (Manila, Krakow, Chennai, Bengaluru, and Kuala Lumpur) covering finance, HR, contracting, and customer operations for Shell's downstream and upstream units. The Manila site alone employs more than 5,000 people as of 2024. Unilever Enterprise & Technology Solutions: Consolidated 26 separate finance back offices into four global hubs between 2018 and 2023, reporting a reduction in days-to-close from 8 to 3 across the group. Philippine government BPO partnership: The IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines reported the IT-BPM sector hit USD 38 billion in revenue and 1.82 million direct jobs in 2024, with captive shared services centers accounting for a growing share of new hires. Related termsShared services sits inside a wider family of operating models. Read these next:
Business process outsourcing: third-party vendor delivery, the closest cousin to shared services. Captive center: wholly owned offshore site; most modern shared services hubs are captives. Global business services: the evolved form of shared services that covers multiple functions worldwide. Back office: the function set that shared services typically absorbs first. Knowledge process outsourcing: higher-judgment work that often follows once the SSC matures. Offshoring: the location-cost lever that makes most captive shared services models pencil out. FAQ How is shared services different from outsourcing?Shared services keeps the team inside the parent company, on the parent's payroll and inside its security perimeter. Outsourcing hands the same work to an external vendor under a contract. Many large groups run both at once.
What functions are usually first into a shared services center?Finance and accounting almost always go first: accounts payable, accounts receivable, general ledger, and payroll. HR transactional work and IT helpdesk are the typical second wave.
How much does a shared services model actually save?Mature centers report 25–40% lower process costs once standardization and automation are in place. Labor arbitrage from offshore locations adds another 50–70% on the affected roles.
Where are most shared services centers based?The Philippines, India, Poland, Malaysia, Costa Rica, and Romania dominate the list. Manila is the largest single hub for English-language finance and customer operations work.
Is shared services still relevant with automation and AI?Yes — automation moves the work, not the model. Robotic process automation and AI agents now sit inside the SSC rather than replace it, freeing people to handle exceptions and analytics.
Looking to benchmark or build a center? Browse vetted partners on the Outsource Accelerator directory.
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