What is BPO and why is Costa Rica your ideal location to do it?

Business process outsourcing (BPO) is the externalization of a business process to an outside provider that controls, executes, and conducts the chosen process. There are two major categories of BPO offerings: horizontal, which are those that can be used across specific industries, and vertical, which are those that need a specific industry vertical process expertise.

Organizations normally use BPO in two areas of work: back-office functions, such as accounting, information technology (IT) services, human resources (HR), quality assurance and payment processing, and front-office functions, such as customer relation services, marketing and sales. However, there are other processes such as data mining and data analytics, which can also be externalized.

Some of the benefits of BPO can be financial, as the outsider provider can execute the process at lower costs, improve flexibility and increase competitive advantage while also working under a process that has higher quality and better performance by accessing innovative technological resources.

Even though there are categories and areas, there are also different types of BPO: offshore, onshore, and nearshore, depending on the location of the service provider. In offshoring outsourcing, the provider of the services is in a foreign country; in onshore outsourcing, the company that provides the service is located in the same country as the hiring company, and in nearshore outsourcing, the company hires another to provide the service in a neighboring country.

Costa Rica has transformed itself into a multifunctional business destination for corporate and business processes. Costa Rica has 16 different free trade agreements, while we are working on three more in order to expand our country’s alliances. In fact, our country delivers 100 different business functions in more than 12 different languages. Furthermore, the quality of nearshore providers of finance and consulting services has never been higher while Costa Rica has a great business ecosystem with language skills, proximity, and price. All of these factors make this country an increasingly popular nearshore destination for BPO.

Auditoría Valeria Peña Sequeira, International Business and Commerce Expert