A Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Service usually means an existing service being outsourced to a provider typically located in the Philippines, India or any of the other major hubs for Business Process Outsourcing.
Sometimes the BPO center will try to develop a better mousetrap to accomplish the business goals...so rather than just completing the task as specified a new product innovation is born.
These product innovations then have the potential to become its own defined product which can be sold or cross marketed. By doing so BPO centers go up the value chain. Rather than just being the executioner of a business process...they become the driving force behind it.
A great example of this strategy is what Intelenet has done. Intelenet is an Indian based BPO company acquired by Blackstone in 2015.
Intelinet developed an application named Radius which will effectively allow a user of nursing/home-care services to summon a nurse via an Uber like application.
The application tracks the entire process, from accepting and recording the request, to delivery and completion.
It is not uncommon for a bigger retirement or assisted living facility to have more than a 100 (sometimes a few hundred) healthcare professionals on the premises. Scheduling and routing the staff which is often times provided by outside agencies is a major logistical challenge.
An application which would allow a flexible and immediate summons of healthcare staff if and when needed without going through an extensive scheduling operation should in theory generate tremendous efficiencies.
What used to be a phone heavy scheduling operation has effectively become a decentralized network with Uber like characteristics.
Time will tell if the market place adopts it but it is certainly a great example of what can happen when a BPO provider goes upstream.