Somewhere along the line in between the 1990s and the so-called post-2000 ‘naughties’ a change occurred. This change was subtle but important if you took an interest in enterprise-level management theories, methodologies and delivery mechanisms.
Outsourcing, as we once knew it, became Business Process Outsourcing. With an extended name and an accompanying acronym to boot, BPO arrived.
Actually that’s not strictly what happened; in between outsourcing and BPO we saw outsourcing become offshore outsourcing. Functions from finance and billing to admin and support started to migrate offshore, along with other non-core operations that could be ‘manageably compartmentalized,’ so-to-speak.