Progress in Knowledge Prowess - Looking through the Human Lens

Achieving excellence through business operations in today's competitive era is complex and challenging. Today, the businesses sell and excel only through the reservoir of knowledge. This gave birth to Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO), a step ahead of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). It started emerging in India around the turn of the century, when the global industries realized that apart from software development and technical support, knowledge work could also be outsourced. It involves transfer of business processes to other geographic locations; specialized domain specific knowledge and business expertise of a higher level rather than just process expertise. Even in the times of downturn, the KPOs had been teaming with vocation. The fundamentals of business as BCG matrix posed a question to the bosses of what to preserve and whom to serve. The art of being prudent and aversion to risk with an increasing emphasis on the need for corporate governance and being transparent with the investors made KPOs to come in limelight. The objective of this paper is to understand the evolution of KPOs and various challenges that they encounter in their progress. The paper shall try to identify its future scope in India and suggest measures to overcome the challenges.