The Opportunities and Challenges of Business Process Outsourcing with Microsoft Dynamics NAV

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) has been around for decades, but has really only taken off at the outbreak of the new century, and for the past decade it has kept growing. Depending on which statistics or analyst firm you want to trust, the scale of the BPO market is currently somewhere in between 120 and 300 billion US$, but what all of analysts agree on: it keeps growing. While the economic recession has slowed down a lot of businesses, it seems that the BPO industry is one of those rare few that not only survive, but thrive and expand when all others are going through a rough period.

If you are an ERP consultant specializing in Microsoft Dynamics NAV, you might think that BPO is not of your concern. While you've certainly been able to ignore BPO for quite a while, soon it could become the largest threat to your business. Or your largest opportunity.

What is BPO

According to Wikipedia, BPO is the practice of contracting the operations and responsibilities of specific business functions (or processes) to a third-party service provider. It is typically divided in back office outsourcing, where functions such as human resources, finances or accounting are outsourced to third-parties; and front office outsourcing, where functions such as customer service or call centers are outsourced.

Which processes are typically outsourced?

The processes that companies outsource vary widely by geography. However, these categories of processes are most commonly outsourced: logistics, production, customer service, human resources, information technology, and finance & accounting, with the latter three being the fastest growing ones as well.

Typically, companies outsource those processes that are not their core business, that don't provide good economies of scale or quality levels when kept internally, and ...