European organisations will spend increasing more on
business process outsourcing (BPO) services between now and 2011, a
report from Forrester Research has predicted.
In BPO an organisation uses a services company to take over
responsibility for a particular business activity such as
payroll.
The analyst firm said that its projections for BPO expenditure,
growing at a five-year compound annual growth rate of 11.5%, mean
that the BPO will see the highest growth of all IT service
categories that it tracks.
Sonoko Takahashi, researcher at Forrester Research, said that
financial services and public-sector organisations buy the most BPO
services.
“Government and public services agencies, especially in the UK,
also spend big on BPO, with several councils and government
departments closing HR-flavoured deals for payroll and pension
administration. Cases include London’s Metropolitan Police contract
with LogicaCMG and the UK Crown Prosecution Service’s deal with
Atos Origin,” she added.
Organisations will use BPO services in several areas, including
human resources, financial services back-office, procurement,
finance and accounting, and customer care.
Total European spending will rise from €11.0bn (£7.5bn) in 2006
to €18.9bn in 2011, with human resources BPO attracting the largest
spend, followed by spending on financial services back-office
BPO.