There is a difference between LPO and KPO, the latter requires “domain-specific expertise” that few Indian firms possess. The market for ICT-related LPO and KPO services in India is emerging and more is expected from market leaders like Perry4Law..
THE FUTURE of any organisation depends upon the capability of its workforce and to retain such workforce it has to invest considerably. This expenditure may at times increase the cost of production or operating the organisation. Organisations use many types of cost management and cost reduction techniques to minimise their expenses. This practice also applies to the legal industry.
Legal practice is very lucrative and remunerative in developed countries like US, UK and the European Union. There the cost of retaining even entry-level employees is very high. Many well known law firms of these developed countries outsource their back office and clerical work to Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) companies in India.
According to Praveen Dalal, managing partner of the internationally renowned LPO and techno-legal KPO Perry4Law, “LPO in India is attracting lot of foreign firms and companies to outsource their legal works to India. During the last month alone, Perry4Law received various requests regarding partnerships, LPO assignments, empanelment requests, etc.
We are hopeful of even a larger services contribution when the Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) industry in India would emerge and mature as Perry4Law is world renowned for it techno-legal KPO services.
Clearly, there is a difference between the current LPO assignments and future KPO assignments as the latter requires “domain-specific expertise” that very few firms actually possess in India. Similarly, the market for information and communication technology (ICT)-related LPO and KPO services in India is still emerging and more is expected from market leaders like Perry4Law in the said market.
LPO and KPO assignments are bound to increase owing to developments like the global financial meltdown that has now unnerved the US. More and more corporate houses and investment banks from the US are looking towards the Indian LPO industry for legal advice. In the present globalised world, India is surely heading for a great start.
Source from: Merinews.com
November 20, 2008 at 9:13 am
I agree with Praveen Dalal that KPO services require high level of domain expertise specially if you want to compete on “value” versus just “cost”.
The market for KPO is huge. Based on conservative estimates, i think the market is worth $10 billion by 2014, growing at a CAGR of 20% from 2003.
There are demand side challenges currently such as the financial crisis which has resulted in a freeze of business decision making in the financial services firms this quarter. In addition, KPO sale still requires a leap of faith for the client (and convincing from the KPO sales) that an outsourced arrangement can work, it carries value and results in overall reduction in costs.
But i think the supply side challenges are more severe. As a statistic, only half of the business school graduates are fit for KPO jobs. The key skills required for KPO work such as the ability to take a complex business problem and break it up into workable components, scheduling those components, applying smart ways of completing the tasks, effective client communication and strong business writing skills are not necessarily taught in business schools directly. The KPO industry also needs to get involved in the training of the students to transfer this practical business knowledge to the students.
The other major issue from the supply side is that the project management level resources in this industry are hard to find and take a long time to groom internally. These type of resources are the the foundation on which a scalable organization can be built.
I work as Head of Research at SG Analytics (http://www.sganalytics.com), and we are handling these issues using a set of hiring, training and mentoring processes. You can read more about this on our corporate blog at http://www.sganalytics.com/blog/