When referring to business processes in this paper we mean the essential back office services common to most organisations which typically include finance, human resources and payroll. Whilst critical to the operation of the organisation, such functions are usually unmeasured, disparate and rarely optimised.
We will compare the recent shift to BPO with the mature third party logistics (3PL) market, which has been providing outsourced process driven services for over twenty years. The correlation between the two markets is extremely strong, as they both:

• Grew out of a need to focus on cost reduction and service improvement
• Concentrate on essential processes not traditionally regarded as core
• Allow specialists in these processes to release the economies of scale
• Collate operations together for maximum efficiency
• Allow the organisation to focus on primary activity
• Enable better measurement of the process
• Provide opportunity for reductions in headcount and cost base
• Act as a focus and catalyst for improving the supporting IT systems used
• Demonstrate to investors the determination to improve.

The only significant difference between these two markets is that 3PL outsourcing has been active and developing for about 15 years longer than BPO.