BPO stands for Business Process Outsourcing, and essentially translates into taking a portion of your company that would be done in-house or on-site and instead outsourcing it to another company, usually overseas. In the call center realm, this is done commonly by using call center agents that are hired by a third party firm and then connecting them with companies all over the world from a remote office or headquarters.
This prevents companies from having to hire tens, or possibly hundreds of staff and equip them with costly equipment and call center software. By using BPO, a company can pay other company to make calls for them, and instead focus on more critical or profitable parts of the business such as marketing and business development.
Currently, the Philippines holds the title for the largest BPO industry, which surpassed India in 2010. Diamond Management and Technology Consultants Inc. (recently acquired by PwC) performed an independent poll in 2007 and found that the BPO industry in the Philippines account for $3.5 Billion dollars. Participants of the poll included hundreds of top-level executives based in the US and Europe.