Business Process as a Service (BPaaS): What is it and How it is used?

Business Process as a Service or BPaaS is another interesting development of the recent years. It was not long back that small and medium enterprises were encouraged to introduce software into their businesses. Affordability was a big problem with the available type of ERPs which cost as much as the SME’s entire capital investment !

The complex infrastructure and other resources were far beyond the reach of SMEs until the concept of shared services came into the picture. Some of the millennial entrepreneurs started developing internet-based ERPs that could be subscribed annually at a much affordable cost by the SMEs. The timing was perfect as the internet was well catching up and the concept of start-ups were also getting popular in the developed countries. They started with offering software subscriptions as a service. Software as a Service or SaaS was a huge hit among the SMEs since they could now afford an ERP without any capital investment and enjoy the benefits of digital data and analysis it offered.

The success of SaaS encouraged the innovative entrepreneurs to extend the possibilities of other subsidiary services such as offshore data entry services. This ultimately led to developing Business Process as a Service or BPaaS. The idea is to make available the data entry services that are outsourced over the cloud or the internet. The intention was to make sure that the SMEs benefit from being able to engage the right outsourced resources who have the expertise and experience required and are willing to offer the services for a lesser cost which would benefit the company greatly. Resource-rich countries like India, where intelligent and educated resources are abundantly available, benefit greatly from BPaaS.

BPaaS works such that offshore outsourcing is done to find the right resources that can render
the task without compromising on the quality and integrity. They are then given limited access
to the software used by the organization to complete their services by way of data entry or processing or any other specialized services. SMEs find this service highly beneficial as they can find the right resources that can help them out completing the specialized requirements. The rates are usually affordable since they are not recruiting someone to work at their premises, rather getting their services from the resources’ comfort zone. By way of BPaaS, SMEs can avoid the rather expensive recruitment process, which also invites unnecessary emotional and morale repercussions in case they are required only temporarily. Getting expertise service at an affordable cost is definitely the biggest plus point with BPaaS.

Currently, offshore outsourcing in India does not confine to data entry services. More complicated services such as the HR, Payroll, Accounting and Marketing are also successfully outsourced this way. Organizations make use of the Cloud Computing services to implement BPaaS model. This way, the investment is reduced since instead of a heavy one-time capital investment, monthly, semi-annual or annual payment subscriptions can be opted by the company which is quite negligible and affordable by SMEs when compared to the huge capital investments.

BPaaS is a very lucrative business model, which is expected to make around 5 billion US dollars by 2020. Many technology vendors are seriously considering the prospects of expanding their services around this area too considering its usefulness and demand apart
from the profitability. BPaaS has become so popular that we all are using it in one way or the other without even knowing how it has been implemented. To give you a better idea, Paypal offers BPaaS services by providing an online payment gateway and LinkedIn offers business contacts and networking for other businesses.