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What is the difference between IPO, KPO, and

BPO?
12 Answers

Divij Singhal, CEO

Answered May 29 2018 · Author has 191 answers and 161.2k answer views
KPO vs BPO: Difference between KPO and BPO

Outsourcing of routine or peripheral business functions is in vogue. It implies

contracting with the third party service provider, with respect to operations and
responsibilities of business processes. At present, there is hardly any multinational
company which is left untouched from outsourcing its business operations. Over the
time, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) has gained ample importance, by providing
services related to marketing, human resources, customer support, technical support,
etc.

Knowledge Processing Outsourcing or KPO is a subset of BPO. KPO involves

outsourcing of core functions which may or may not give cost benefit to the parent
company but surely helps in value addition. The processes which are outsourced to KPOs
are usually more specialized and knowledge based as compared to BPOs. Services
included in KPO are related to R&D, Capital and insurance market services, legal
services, biotechnology, animation and design, etc. are the usual activities that are
outsourced to KPOs. LPO or Legal Process Outsourcing is special type of KPO dealing
with legal services.

BPO

KPO

Definition

BPO provides services like customer care, technical support through voice processes,
tele-marketing, sales, etc.

KPO provides in-depth knowledge, expertise and analysis on complex areas like Legal
Services, Business and Market Research, etc.

Stands for

Business Processing Outsourcing

Knowledge Processing Outsourcing

Requires

Good communication skills and basic computer knowledge

Specialized knowledge

Services

Low end services

High end services

Process

Pre-defined process

Requires application and understanding of business

Employees

Not so qualified employees

Skill and expertise of knowledge employees

Expertise in

Process

Knowledge

Relies on

Cost arbitrage

Knowledge arbitrage

Driving force

Volume driven

Insights driven

A BPO is capable of handling both front end and back end operations of an entity. BPO
provides an array of services such as:

 Customer care, i.e. call center, help desk, etc.

 Human resources, i.e. recruitment and selection, training and placement,
payroll processing, etc.
 Technical support
 Services related to finance and accounting.
 Website services, i.e. web hosting, etc.
 Transcription
The spectrum of services provided by KPO includes:

 Investment research services

 Market research services
 Data analytics
 Business research services
  Others: Legal Process Outsourcing, Financial Process Outsourcing, Media
Process Outsourcing.
Conclusion

Almost all the transnational companies, today, outsource their non-core activities, just to
pay attention to their primary business. Both forms of outsourcing work in a B2B
environment where the service provider and buyer of services both are business
organizations.

One thing must be kept in mind that KPO is nothing but an extended version of BPO.
Over the time, it has been observed that with the expansion of KPO, the BPO is losing its
existence. Now, the service provider companies provide both BPO and KPO services
simultaneously to the organization.

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Nicholas Hargreaves, CEO at Cloud Employee — Global IT Outsourcing Company -

Cloudemployee.co.uk
Answered Apr 20, 2018 · Author has 719 answers and 1.3m answer views
IPO or Initial Public Offering, also sometimes called ‘going public’, is when a private
company goes public by selling its stocks to the general public. Although company
owners loser part of their ownership to stockholders in the process, an IPO can
significantly help the company raise equity capital. This is because new shares are issued
to the public and existing shareholders can sell their shares to the public without raising
new capital.

As for KPO and BPO, both of these terms are related to each other. However, both terms
are far from IPO.

BPO, or Business Process Outsourcing, is the outsourcing of non-primary tasks and

functions related to the business to a third party service provider to save costs and other
resources. BPO has two types: back office outsourcing and front office outsourcing. Back
office tasks include accounting, payment processing, IT services, human resources, and
the like. On the other hand, front office tasks include customer-related services such as
tech support and inbound and outbound sales.

KPO, or Knowledge Process Outsourcing, is a subset of BPO. It is the outsourcing

of knowledge and information-related work to a third party service provider. Tasks
outsourced in KPO are usually high-level tasks within industries like research and
development, financial consultancy and services, business and technical analysis, and
the like.

Furthermore, here are points to clearly differentiate the two:

First: KPO requires expertise in knowledge, while BPO requires expertise in the process.

Second: KPO focuses on high-level processes, while BPO focuses on low-level processes.

Third: KPO requires professionally qualified and highly-skilled workers suited for the
work, while BPO requires good communication skills and basic computer knowledge.

Hope this helped! Also, if you’re interested in reading about Outsourcing further, here
are more interesting reads:

Successful Startups Built with Outsourced Development

IT Outsourcing Trends in 2018

Will Robotic Process Automation be the Future of Outsourcing?

Industries that Benefit from Hiring Remote Developers

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Jenny James, works at Digital Marketing
Updated May 7, 2018 · Author has 208 answers and 169.3k answer views
IPO stands for initial public offer, which is a way of raising money from the public by
giving away a part of a company's ownership.

BPO and KPO are business and knowledge process outsourcing respectively. Both are
similar lines of business with some differences. In a BPO, the focus is on the process and
deals with 'low end' jobs. Eg, users have filled up a paper form to update their address.
Instead of being done at the place where the paper is filled, it is scanned and a soft copy
is sent to a place where these are entered in the computer. More for queries about call
center, visit CyfutureBPO.

9.9k Views · View 2 Upvoters

Somina Santosh, former Ex - Consultant at Business Process Outsourcing (2015-2016)

Answered Jan 28, 2017 · Author has 54 answers and 454.8k answer views
The technical definition of the BPO is defined as , Business Process Outsourcing or BPO
is outsourcing of some of the business functions to a third party in order to save money.
It usually consists of the back office or front office operations. While front office services
are related to client interaction and customer support, back office services are related to
finance and HR. If outsourcing is done to a company situated outside the parent
company's country, it is known as offshore outsourcing.

Coming to the KPO, it is Knowledge process outsourcing KPO is a subset is a of

BPO. Both are are related to the business activities of a organisation. KPO involves
outsourcing of core functions which may or may not give cost benefit to the parent
company but surely helps in value addition. The processes which are outsourced
to KPOs are usually more specialized and knowledge based as compared to BPOs..

And last but not the least, IPO is related the stocks of a company. Initial public
offering(IPO) or stock market launch is a type of public offering in which shares of
a company usually are sold to institutional investors that in turn, sell to the general
public, on a securities exchange, for the first time. Through this process, a privately held
company transforms into a public company.

The difference in BPOs and KPOs can also be judged by the way they hire people. While
basic education may be enough for you to get a BPO job but a KPO job requires you to be
competent in a particular field. Also, the training provided by the KPOs is more rigorous
and sector specific. So if you are a 'Jack of all trades', KPOs may not be the right choice
for you.

While KPO is a subset of BPO, they are not related to IPO. IPO, short for Initial Public
Offering, is also known as stock market launch. It is a type of public offering where the
common public get shares of stock on a securities exchange for the first time. This is a
process in which a private company converts into a public company. Companies use
initial public offerings to raise expansion capital and to become publicly traded
enterprises.
49.7k Views · View 38 Upvoters · Answer requested by Shibu George

Gunjan Yogendra, experienced KPO professional

Answered Sep 16, 2015
While KPO is a subset of BPO, they are not related to IPO.
I will try and answer the IPO bit first - the full form is Initial Public Offering.
It means that a privately held company is now venturing in the public to raise
funds/capital for its operations. So it will issue an offering through listing itself on the
stock exchange and ask the public to invest in its shares. Each share will have an opening
price, a market price , based on the market valuation of the company.

The first offering by such a privately held company is thus called an IPO.

A BPO Company is an outsourcing service provider in the business processes space - all
operations work like call centers, finance and accounting, collections, technical helpdesk,
were the first jobs that were low value adding and were clubbed under the umbrella BPO.

Now, if knowledge processes like research, analysis, excel, PPT, work etc. are outsourced,
it becomes a KPO, and is still a subset of BPO, because it is a business process.
33.6k Views · View 12 Upvoters

Alisa Addison, studied at University of Louisville

Answered Jul 10, 2015 · Author has 320 answers and 214k answer views
Knowledge Process Outsourcing or KPO is a subset of BPO. KPO involves outsourcing of
core functions which may or may not give cost benefit to the parent company but surely
helps in value addition. The processes which are outsourced to KPOs are usually more
specialized and knowledge based as compared to BPOs. Services included in KPO are
related to Research and development, Capital and insurance market services, legal
services, biotechnology, animation and design, etc. are the usual activities that are
outsourced to KPOs.

Business Process Outsourcing(BPO) is a form of outsourcing which involves contracting

operations of specific business processes. BPO company might outsource services like
call center, internet marketing, legal services, business consulting, data entry, book
keeping and financial services. BPO includes not only calls but it is an organization that
receives outsourcing full fledged activity for another organization not limited to only
calls.
7.4k Views · View 1 Upvoter

Igor Popov, IT Expert, Technical Consultant, PM and tech start-up adviser

Answered Mar 20, 2015
KPO is a form of outsourcing, including legal process outsourcing. These are both high-
value-added forms of business process outsourcing (BPO). KPO firms provide domain-
based processes and business expertise, rather than just process expertise, and actually
make many low level business decisions - typically those that are easily undone if they
conflict with higher-level business plans
IPO(Initial Public Offering )
The first sale of stock by a private company to the public. IPOs are often issued by
smaller, younger companies seeking capital to expand, but can also be done by large
privately-owned companies looking to become publicly traded.

BPO (Business Process Outsourcing )

BPO is the outsourcing of back office and front office functions typically performed by
white collar and clerical workers. Examples include accounting, human resources and
medical coding and transcription
10.5k Views · View 1 Upvoter

Nachum Sokol, works at Cleveland

Answered Jul 17, 2015
BPO is Business Process Outsourcing, providing troubleshooting services such
as customer helpdesk, customer support, technical support to the customers of a
particular company those have some problem in their product.
KPO is Knowledge Process Outsourcing, it is further extension to the BPO and working
same as BPO with some internal operations or backend operations.
IPO is Initial Public Offering. These are owned by small companies which are seeking
their capital to expand, but can also be done by huge private companies which are
looking to be publicly traded.
6.4k Views

Alexis Powell, Marketing Manager at Go4Customer Australia (2016-present)

Answered Apr 3, 2017 · Author has 307 answers and 149.9k answer views
BPO:

Business Process Outsourcing or BPO is outsourcing of some of the business functions to

a third party in order to save money. It usually consists of the back office or front office
operations. BPOs usually deal with fringe business activities such as customer care,
finance and HR and at the same time, the USP of a BPO is their being cost effective.

KPO:

Knowledge Process Outsourcing or KPO is a subset of BPO. KPO involves outsourcing of

core functions which may or may not give cost benefit to the parent company but surely
helps in value addition. The processes which are outsourced to KPOs are usually more
specialized and knowledge based as compared to BPOs.

IPO:

IPO, short for Initial Public Offering, is also known as stock market launch. It is a type of
public offering where the common public get shares of stock on a securities exchange for
the first time. This is a process in which a private company converts into a public
company. Companies use initial public offerings to raise expansion capital and to
become publicly traded enterprises.

The difference in BPOs, IPO’s and KPOs can also be judged by the way they hire people.
While basic education may be enough for you to get a BPO Business Process
Outsourcingjob but a KPO job requires you to be competent in a particular field.
 10.5k Views · View 3 Upvoters

Jacob Michael, former Digital Marketing Consultant

Answered Jan 24, 2019 · Author has 228 answers and 29k answer views
Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) is the outsourcing of core, information-related
business activities, meaning that knowledge and information-related work is carried
out by workers in a different company or by a subsidiary of the same organization.

Knowledge Process Outsourcing or KPO is a subset of BPO. KPO involves outsourcing

of core functions which may or may not give cost benefit to the parent company but
surely helps in value addition. The processes which are outsourced toKPOs are usually
more specialized and knowledge-based as compared to BPOs.

77 Views

Saleem Shaik, mba Business Management & Marketing, International Economics (2012)
Answered Oct 2, 2018 · Author has 1.7k answers and 1.1m answer views
IPO stands for initial public offer, which is a way of raising money from the public by
giving away a part of a company's ownership. BPO and KPO are business and knowledge
process outsourcing respectively. Both are similar lines of business with some
differences

254 Views · View 5 Upvoters

Anonymous
Answered Nov 28, 2014
IMHO, IPO is Initial Public offering and has no relation to KPO or BPO. To know the
differences between KPO & IPO please see What are the difference between KPO and
BPO?
5.2k Views · View 1 Upvoter
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