Most kpo projects are smaller by a factor of 5 to 10

Most KPO projects are smaller by a factor of 5 to 10 than the corresponding BPO projects. Furthermore, the •
salespeople selling KPO services need to be well versed in these services and to have the required domain
expertise in order to be credible. In this regard, a typical KPO firm lies somewhere between a BPO firm on one
hand and a consulting firm on the other.
The fifth facet of a KPO is the scalability factor of the process wherein the methodology is similar but there •
is a premium placed on domain expertise. Research and development departments of global high-technology
companies (example, IBM Research) and consulting companies cannot be considered KPO firms and, not
surprisingly, such organisations take substantial time to reach scale. For example, IBM Research took nearly
50 years to reach 3,000 researchers and McKinsey took 75 years to get to 6,000 consultants. In contrast, a pure
KPO firm like Evalueserve may only take ten years to reach 6,000 professionals globally.
The last but probably the most important distinction between a KPO firm and a BPO firm is that in a KPO firm, •
the client is involved during the entire execution process. Furthermore, the offshoring company providing KPO
services may only contribute 70-95 percent of the work-product, with the Client contributing the remaining
5-30 percent by providing the appropriate direction to the KPO firm or by otherwise adding value to the work-
product.

Knowledge Process Outsourcing
32/ JNU OLE
In other words, the relationship between a KPO firm and its client is more of a partnership and less of an arm’s length,
client-vendor relationship.As a final remark, it is worth mentioning that although most Knowledge Process Offshoring
services are being provided from India, countries such as the Philippines, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, China
and South Africa are beginning to provide more and more KPO services. Indeed, in the near future, Knowledge
Process Outsourcing and Offshoring is likely to be driven by factors such as breadth and depth of coverage, domain
expertise, location advantage (example, near-shoring and language capabilities), sales and marketing capabilities,
data compliance with respect to regulatory standards (especially those defined by the United States, Canada and the
European Union) and the management of business risks. Hence, it is quite likely that companies – both those with
their own captives and those that use third-party vendors may use a “hub and spoke” model, in which a provider in
India may constitute the “centre” and other units around the world may provide the appropriate “spokes”.
3.12 Important Sub Sectors within KPO
Provides estimates for the number of billable professionals likely to be employed in various sub-sectors within the
KPO industry in India during 2010-11 and the revenue generated within these sectors. Of course, the delineation
between some of the sectors is somewhat arbitrary and both the revenue and the number of billable professionals