The global business process outsourcing (BPO) market will
continue to show healthy growth in 2003, growing by 10.5% to $122bn
(£74bn), latest research from Gartner has predicted.While
other IT services segments are feeling the impact of the economic
downturn, the BPO market will remain strong, said Rebecca Scholl,
principal analyst for Gartner's sourcing group.
"Enterprises around the world are attempting to focus their
investments on their core business processes and are increasingly
looking at outsourcing non-core business processes," she said
"Early
adopters of BPO services, primarily large organisations, continue
to expand their relationships to include new process areas, and
technology and media are creating opportunities for outsourcing
entire lines of products and services, such as online payroll,
online benefits administration, online order management and online
transaction processing."
The
Western European BPO market is forecast to grow 10.9% in 2003, to
$27bn (£16bn), the Gartner research said.
Continuing difficult economic times are leading Western European
companies to look to BPO as a tool to save costs and provide
strategic review of many of their activities, Scholl said
In
Europe, outsourcing of financial services processes are widely used
but other industries are growing in respect for different types of
BPO, she said.
Customer
interaction for demand-management BPO is proving popular in the
utilities and telecommunications sectors.
Supply-management BPO is gaining popularity in local governments,
and enterprise services are growing in telecommunications for human
resources, finance and accounting.