Human resources business process outsourcing (HR BPO) will emerge as the largest segment with nearly 32% share and drive the overall BPO market in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region by 2023, says GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

According to GlobalData’s Market Opportunity Forecasts Model, HR BPO segment in the APAC region is set to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15% between 2018 and 2023 to reach US$38.4bn.

Sunil Kumar Verma, Lead ICT Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “HR BPO will witness relative higher growth rate as compared to others, owing to the increased requirement of resources across different sub-segments.

“With the HR outsourcing market in the developed economies of Americas and Europe becoming mature and growth slowing down, APAC is set to emerge as the new destination for the global business process outsourcing (BPO) industry.”

IMAGE FOR PUBLICATION – Please click this link for the chart

Verma continues: “APAC represents the largest population in the world along with availability of both skilled and semi-skilled human resources personnel. Being a heterogenous market between the developed and emerging markets, the region will witness significant growth.”

Vertical-specific BPO will grow at a CAGR of 6.9% during the forecast period, owing to increased focus of the enterprises to partner with specialized suppliers and for specific geographies. Verticals like banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) will drive the growth as they continue to invest in emerging technology and services with an aim to serve the growing base of connected smart device customers, whereas telcos might leverage partner capabilities to reduce costs.

Increased inclination by enterprises to focus on their core capabilities and rely on trusted partners to fetch market intelligence data, project management capabilities, data management capabilities, coupled with availability of relatively low-cost talent pool available in the region will result in knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) to grow at a CAGR of 9.9% during the forecast period.

Sunil concludes: “Though the region has some of the leading BPO providers on global and regional scale, growing attrition level, rising employee costs, exceeding customer expectations, changing regulations (such as GDPR in the European Union) are some of the challenges which the BPO service providers need to overcome.”