Knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) describes the outsourcing of core information-related business activities which are competitively important or form an integral part of a company’s value chain. KPO requires advanced analytical and technical skills as well as a high degree of specialist expertise.
A number of outsourcing and offshoring that were deemed failures led to reversals signalled by the use of terms such as Insourcing and reshoring. The New York Times reported in 2017 that IBM “plans to hire 25,000 more workers in the United States over the next four years,” overlapping India-based Infosys’s “10,000 workers in the United States over the next two years.
Among problems encountered were supply-and-demand induced raises in salaries and lost benefits of similar-time-zone. Other issues were differences in language and culture. Another reason for a decrease in outsourcing is that many jobs that were subcontracted abroad have been replaced by technological advances.
According to a 2005 Deloitte Consulting survey, a quarter of the companies which had outsourced tasks reversed their strategy.
These reversals, however, did not undo the damage.
New factories often:
- were in different locations
- needed different skill sets
- used more automation
