1. Scope of Knowledge Process
Outsourcing (KPO) in
Pharmaceutical Sector
Presented by
VANDANA JATAV

2. Introduction
 They are firms that provide services based on
specialised knowledge of a certain industry.
 Knowledge process can be defined as high added
value processes chain where the achievement of
objectives is highly dependent on the skills, domain
knowledge and experience of the people carrying
out the activity. And when this activity gets
outsourced a new business activity emerges, which
is generally known as Knowledge Process
Outsourcing.
 The KPO typically involves a component of
• Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO),
• Research Process Outsourcing (RPO) and
• Analysis Process Outsourcing (APO)

3. Overview on KPO
 The central theme of KPO is to create value for
the client by providing business expertise rather
than process expertise.
 The profile of people being hired to serve within
KPO service companies are more diverse than
just being drawn from technical IT services.
 KPO is a continuation of BPO, with more business
complexity.
 KPO is emphasizes on business expertise.
 Training is an essential component of the KPO
industry.
 Hourly charge rates for KPO services are
significantly higher.

4. Evolution of KPO in India
 The evolutionary phases of the Indian KPO
industry are very similar to that of the Indian IT
industry. Activities related to IT outsourcing
commenced in India in the late 1980s.
 During this period, foreign companies such as IBM,
Texas Instrument, Motorola, HP, etc preferred
establishing captive centres in India. The Nascent
KPO industry is following the footsteps of the IT
industry.
 India leads in KPO services. Countries such as the
Philippines, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary,
China and South Africa are fast catching up.

6.  The following table provides an indicative list of
services that are being offered by KPOs.
KPO segments Country
Animation Philippines, India, China
Engineering Services Philippines, India
Content Development India, Philippines
Financial Services India, China
Healthcare Russia, India
R&D India, China, Russia
Legal New Zealand, India
Pharma India, Russia

7. KPO Delivery
 Indian KPO vendors operate mainly through three
business models, i.e.,
 captives,
 third-party and
 virtual.
 The selection of a business model depends on
many parameters such as
 the complexity of the work,
 internal competency levels,
 nature of business (core or non-core) and
 costs involved.

8. KPO Delivery
1. Captive Centers
 In a captive centre set-up, a multinational company
establishes its dedicated operations in countries
offering high talent availability and low cost of
operations.
 Moreover, the scalability of the captive centre is
dependent on the amount of work, which is generally
low as the centre caters solely to the requirements of
the parent company.
 Examples of prominent captives in India include
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, McKinsey, JP
Morgan, UBS, Deutsche Bank, etc.

9. 2. Third-party Service Providers
 The cost associated with captive centers is high,
especially if the volume of work is not large, third-party
service providers offer a viable option to companies.
 One of the key benefits of third-party service vendors
is that operations can be ramped up as and when
required.
 Third-party service providers address these concerns
by formulating service-level agreements with clients
and certifying their process under quality audits such
as ISO 27001.
 Example -Evalueserve, Irevna, Aranca, etc

10. 3.Virtual captives
 Virtual captive centers have both the functionality of
captives and third party service providers. It is a hybrid
business model.
 There is no upfront investment undertaken by the
parent company in establishing the centre as in a
captive centre. This centre acts as an overseas
resource centre for a client in the third-party service
provider setup.
 The major advantage of virtual captive is that, it
provides higher quality of services involving higher
transparency, control and security.

11. Major Segments of KPO Industry
 The seven largest segments of the KPO industry in
terms of revenue are ;
1. Data Management, Search and Analytics
2. Contract research and biotech
3. Remote Education
and Publishing
4. Engineering design
5. Animation simulation
services
6. Market Research
7. Banking, security and
insurance

12. Another are-
 Scientific and medical content publishing,
 Business and consulting research,
 Network optimization and analysis,
 Legal research and IP,
 Translation and localization,
 Remote logistics services and procurement,
 Human resource research and analytics,
 Marketing and sales support.

13. BPO v/s KPO
 In the BPO sector, the
vendor acquires a
process from the end
client and runs it at its
site until the process
reaches its logical
conclusion, after which
the results, if any, are
then sent to the client.
 KPO focuses on
delivering value-added
services to the clients.
Its prime objective is to
provide clients with
useful insights that may
assist them in their
strategic decision
making process.

14. PHARMA KPO
 Pharma KPO is provides its partners with a broad
range of solutions that are aimed at reducing costs
while optimizing business performance.
 Pharma KPO focuses in the field of pharmaceutical
and medical knowledge process outsourcing (KPO).
 Services that require general or specialized
knowledge in the pharmaceutical, pharmacological,
and medical science.

15. Contract Research
 The growth of the global healthcare and pharma
industry has been hindered by high development costs,
lower number of unique molecules discovered,
increased development timelines and dynamic market
conditions.
 Currently, the outsourcing of research and
development work seems to be a viable option
available to mitigate the risks involved.
 India offers a strong advantage in clinical research and
trials due to the following factors:
 - Availability of a large and diverse patient pool
 - Reduced time for data analysis
 - Availability of large skilled workforce

16. Pharma companies that are working
with KPO’S
 Pharmaceutical giants like Astra Zeneca and GlaxoSmithKli
have set up drug discovery centers in India for R&D work.
 Presently, global pharma companies and consultancies l
MarketRx, Frost & Sullivan, TNS and ZS Associates, have s
up their KPOs in India.
 Beside Pharma companies, Law firms such as Patent Metr
Cantor-Colburn and Schwegman, Lundberg, and Woessn
& Kluth have already set up offices in India.
 Pharma KPO is a joint venture between Zuellig Pharma,
leading healthcare distribution company in Asia, and ADE
Solutions to provide business process / knowledge proce
outsourcing services to the life sciences industry.

17. Challenges for pharma sector
 Managing clients' expectations.
 Extensive interaction between the client teams and
the delivery teams.
 A good report needs to have rich insights; good
amount of depth.
 Working under the pressure of steep deadlines.

18. Job Profile
 KPOs mainly offer research and backend work.
 KPOs use their employees' expertise to carry out
high-end processes like
 Valuation
 Research
 investment researches
 patent filing
 legal and insurance claims
 medical diagnoses and reports
 Clinical trial
and many other profiles depending on the industry the
KPO caters to.

19. Jobs in Pharma KPO
1.Pharma Sector Analyst:
 As the name KPO suggest, the focus is on knowledge
processes which require adequate knowledge of the
sector.
 We might be a great help to a financial analyst by giving
meaningful information .
 We can do a data mining job and do a lot of analysis on a
given set of data.
2.Medical Transcription (MT):
 We need to undergo small session on Medical Transcription
which may be a class room based training or an online
training.
 The work involves taking narration from a recorded voice
which normally comes from a healthcare practitioner
(doctor) and documenting in a systematic and error free

20. 3.Telecaller (Marketing Executive) of Pharma
Products:
 There are lot of KPO/ BPOs who are involved in
promoting products of Pharma Companies through
Telecalling.
 Some of these products are highly specialized and
promotional calls can be handled through qualified
medical professionals only.
 It may be due to facts that the target audiences of such
products are Doctors or health practitioners.
4. KPO - Pharma and Health care Division – Customer
Care Supervisor:
 The customer care supervisor or an executive is
required in any pharma company or health care division
in dealing with inbound and outbound calls.
 These customer care supervisor or an executive need to
handle calls, market the pharmaceutical products.

21. 5. KPO - Pharma Division – Co-Vigilance Executive:
 In this KPO Job, the desired candidate should
demonstrate high level of proficiency in the field of
product quality complaints.
 He should actively audit the entire product.
 he should handle queries pertaining to product.
 he should bring awareness of any changes and
regulations of new products.
6.KPO - Pharma Division – Medical Reviewer or
Analyst:
 Here the main responsibility will be review of reports
pertaining to product, and also thorough review and
preparation of clinical trial safety assessments and
reporting any weakness, before giving a green signal
for the product to be sold in the market.

22. 7. KPO - Pharma Division – Medical Representative /
Technical Sales Executive or Officer:
 The foremost objective to ensure the availability of
the product range in Hospitals.
 Another objective is to know whether they are
shortfall of any products in Hospitals or Shops.
8. KPO - Pharma Division –Hospital Administration:
 Here the main responsibility will be
administration, mapping the products and
should be aware of product specification and
its techniques.

23. Scope and future of KPO
 A report predicts that India will capture more than
70 percent of the KPO sector. Apart from India,
countries such as Russia, China, the Czech
Republic, Ireland, and Israel are also expected to
join the KPO industry.
 According to a recent study by “Evalueserve, a
Gurgaon based outsourcing company having
service chart for global world”, the global KPO
market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 46 per
cent.
 In the Indian context, KPO salaries could be 25-
50 per cent higher than those offered to the
same domain experts such as Engineer, Doctor,
CA, Lawyer, Architect, Biotechnologist,
Economist, Statistician and MBAs.

24.  In the future, it is envisaged that KPO has a high
potential as it is not restricted only to Information
Technology (IT) or Information Technology Enabled
Services (ITES) sectors, and includes other sectors
like Intellectual Property related services, Business
Research and Analytics, Legal Research, Clinical
Research, Publishing, Market Research (Market
research KPO), etc.
 Various research organizations-
1. National Association of Software and Services
Companies (NASSCOM)
2. Evalueserve
3. Rocsearch, a UK-based research services company

25. Benefits
 Cost reduction - companies can save significantly –
as much as 40-50% – by outsourcing work to low
wage countries.
 Provide a large pool of engineers and even PhDs at a
substantially lower cost.
 Boost employment and help their economies.
 Provide flexibility in terms of HRM & time
management.
 KPOs charge their international clients much more
than BPOs.
 Salaries are three to four times higher than BPO
companies because the qualifications required are
higher.
 The biggest advantage of working for a KPO is that it
exposes you to the global industry.

26. Risks
 Security - confidential company data, intellectual
property and knowledge.
 The quality of personnel and work cannot be
guaranteed.
 Idealized expectations regarding the return on
investment and time.
 Legal, language and culture barriers can be
serious problems.

27. TOP 5 KPO COMPANIES IN INDIA
2013-
1. Genpact: Genpact’s KPO specializes in competitive
intelligence, campaign management, program
tracking, customer relationship management etc.
2. Evalueserve: It has 650 people engaged in market
research and business intelligence.
3. Ugam Solutions: Ugam Solutions entered the area
of market research analytics in 2001.
4. 24/7 Customer:. Its KPO focuses on customer
analytics, where it studies consumer behaviour and
analyses data pertaining to related activities such as
campaigns and marketing activities.
5. WNS: Web Notification Service is a Mumbai-based
BPO, WNS has just started its KPO division for
market research with 300 people. It operates in the
knowledge services business segment and offers
high-end services such as market, investment and
business research.

28. References
 http://www.kpoexperts.com/scope-future-of-
kpo/scope-future-kpo.htm
 http://www.pharma-kpo.com/about-company.php
 http://www.pharmainfo.net/zarrinfaria/kpo-new-
opportunity-pharmacy-graduates-part-3
 http://www.kpmg.com/LU/en/IssuesAndInsights/Arti
clespublications/Documents/Knowledge-Process-
Outsourcing.pdf
 http://www.scribd.com/doc/48050231/Knowledge-
Process-Outsourcing-170708

29. Thank you