The first wave of IT revolution was when Back Office Process Outsourcing was off-shored to countries on the other side of the hemisphere. Armed with IT, the offshore BPO companies would provide the services at a fraction of the cost to the business client. A second wave of IT revolution is imminent as there are millions of Freelancers, armed with a PC and internet connection, who are now individually performing the tasks of BPO for businesses, again at a fraction of the cost. There are millions who are enrolled for freelancing on websites like elance.com or oDesk.com and taking up projects individually.

The outflow of projects to these individuals or ‘micro-entrepreneurs’ as they are referred to is impacting the quantity of work which gets outsourced to institutional BPO vendors. But the commercial outsourcing is here to stay according to industry pundits. Individual freelancers can typically cater to small businesses only. The limitation of infrastructure and additional human resource means that freelancers can only take small amount of work. Therefore larger companies and organisations, which require gargantuan support for their back-office, will always choose the commercial BPO or call center outsourcing vendors which have reliable infrastructure and employ qualified human resource.

Other big concerns with Freelancers are their skill as well as their credibility. Freelancers often tend to be free-spirited and easygoing as they aren’t bound by workplace discipline. They work typically from home, and mostly in leisure. It is difficult to gauge the reliability of a freelancer, as you can never be sure whether they are dependable or not. If a freelancer doesn’t adhere to the deadline, then there is not much you can do as there is no enforceable Service Level Agreement. So despite the large number of Freelancers globally, the major BPO outsourcing is here to stay with the established offshore BPO and Call Center vendors only.