Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) requires third parties to perform unscripted knowledge-intensive tasks like business research, equity research and credit analysis. To perform such tasks, third-party service providers also need to have analytical judgment and decision-making skills in addition to the requisite domain expertise. American and European businesses have been savvy enough to leverage the strengths of the Indian service providers to spruce up their operational efficiencies, address issues arising from peak demand imbalances and unlock capital to deploy it in more profitable applications like innovation and brand building.

Service sector constitutes nearly a two-third of the output in the US economy. The rationale behind moving jobs, covering a wide range of professional skills, from the US to India is to cut costs and correct peak demand imbalances. In addition to IT related work, other professional work outsourced to India includes receivables management, equity and bond analysis, accounting, income tax filing, drug research and clinical trials. In any case, Western professionals consider these jobs to be sweat work and ignore them out of hubris. Moreover, Western businesses may also want to escape public scrutiny and duck inconvenient regulations, a part of their hidden agenda.

Shortage of skilled professionals and compulsions of cost cutting have forced the developed nations to focus on building competitive advantage by creating intellectual wealth. While they focus on creating new technologies, designing new products and performing core business processes, it makes perfect economic sense for them to outsource all other non-core activities to low cost yet effective providers located particularly in the emerging economies like China and India. Both China and India are happy to grab these emerging opportunities with both hands largely due to their socioeconomic compulsions.

Managing Director, CEO, Infosys, Technologies,Ltd., reportedly remarked at the World Economic Forum in January 2004 - "Anything that you can send down a wire is up for grabs. India has, indeed, grabbed these opportunities by choosing to become knowledge-intensive-service provider to the world rather than become factory to the world like China".

Global CEO Magazine, Knowledge Process Outsourcing Industry, Business Research, Credit Analysis, Indian Service Providers, Decision-making Skills, Brand Building, Information and Communication Technologies, Indian Companies, Foreign Direct Investments, FDIs, Business Process Outsourcing, BPO.