Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is dying. Here’s what’s replacing it.

Around 2004, a whole generation of telecom companies and banks made the same decision. Printing statements, putting mail in envelopes, answering billing questions… it all seemed like plumbing work. So, they outsourced everything to a BPO, tallied the savings, and moved on.

I understand the logic. Labor was cheaper elsewhere, and nobody gets promoted for managing a mailroom.

But look what actually came out the door. The invoice. The statement. The payment reminder. The collection call. Every message a customer reads thinking about money was sent in the same inbox as the plumbing. And then, it sat there for twenty years, priced per document and per user, while the rest of the customer experience was rebuilt three times.

That model is falling apart now. Faster than most contracts anticipate.

The Numbers Behind the Obituary

The BPO sector surpassed $300 billion in 2024, with customer support accounting for over $100 billion of that total. Andreessen Horowitz published an article titled “Disassembling BPO” which explains why this enormous revenue has suddenly become contestable, and the central point of the publication revolves around the business model. A BPO charges for time and materials, with a 20% to 30% profit margin on labor. AI-native platforms sell results. These two pricing models cannot coexist in the same contract for long.

Gartner has set a date. Its March 2025 forecast indicates that generative AI will solve 80% of common customer service problems on its own by 2029.

And the operators themselves are not contesting this trend. Portage, a fintech investment firm, interviewed BPO operators for a March 2026 report and found that 80% of operations now incorporate generative AI into agent workflows, a significant increase from the roughly 5% recorded three years prior. These same operators expect that one-third to one-half of all call center work will be automated within five years. It’s the people running the model who are dictating where it’s headed.

Perhaps these timelines will be delayed. Predictions like this often are. But the direction is no longer in doubt, just like what will happen to the price per position when positions start to become vacant.

The part that should concern a CMO more than a CFO

Here’s my real problem with the BPO model, and this was true long before AI emerged: the incentives point in the wrong direction.

A vendor paid per document has no reason to send fewer, albeit better, documents. A pay-per-call vendor has no reason to make the invoice clear enough that nobody calls. The entire business structure rewards volume, and it’s precisely volume that your customers are over-absorbing. Aspire’s 2025 research found that one in five consumers worldwide switched vendors that year due to poor communication. Among young people aged 18-43, one in four.

So, the most open messages your company sends, those about money, have been managed for two decades by a third-party company whose revenue increases as the experience worsens. Nobody planned this on purpose. It’s simply what happens when you put customer conversation in the “operations” category and outsource it on a large scale.

I’ve mentioned this in a few articles: the invoice is a company’s most underrated touchpoint. And when the work was outsourced, the customer relationship silently went along with it.

What’s replacing it?

The replacement is a platform, and I say this specifically because the obvious alternative (reinternalizing everything and hiring more employees) usually doesn’t happen and, most of the time, shouldn’t.

Look at how it works in Brazil. Banco Carrefour sends five million personalized messages per month to its customers, and these messages are generated from the billing flow, with each invoice validated by hyperValidation before being sent, and then compiled and distributed across various channels by hyperCCM. There’s no army of agents behind it. Nor is there a BPO invoice that adjusts to the volume. The data is verified by software, the message is generated by software, and Carrefour employees dedicate their time to customers who need human assistance.

Observe what remained within the company: the relationship. Carrefour decides how its revenue will be generated because the platform is integrated into its infrastructure, instead of being in a supplier’s data center. That’s the real difference between outsourcing a process and implementing it internally, and I believe that difference will be crucial in the next five years. The era of BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) answered the question “who should do this work?”. The era of platforms questions “why is this work still manual?”.

A caveat, because I’m not here to say that software solves everything. A platform focused on incorrect data only automates its errors. Validation should come first, and that’s why we build in that order.

What I would do before your renewal:

If you are a business unit manager in a second-tier telecommunications company or a mid-sized financial institution, there is likely a BPO contract somewhere in your building, covering statements, collection letters, or the call center. Probably signed before you even had your current phone.

Simply cancel. Analyze what you pay per document and per call, and then ask the uncomfortable question: what is this provider’s incentive to reduce either of these costs? Then, ask yourself what it would mean to regain control of this conversation, with the software handling the repetitive parts and your team the human part.

Fast Movn is a Canadian technology company based in British Columbia. hyperValidation audits billing data before customers even see it. hyperCCM transforms the billing moment into a relationship channel that you truly control. Together, they replaced the BPO model for companies like Carrefour, and we believe that mid-sized Canadian companies will be the next to adopt this practice.

Your BPO contract has a renewal date. What are you going to do with it?

Request a demo: https://fastmovn.com/en/home/#request-a-demo

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Sources cited in this article

– Andreessen Horowitz, “Deconstructing BPO: How AI Will Revolutionize Outsourced Work”: BPO market over $300 billion in 2024, customer support over $100 billion, profit margins of 20-30% on labor in time and materials billing
– Gartner press release, March 5, 2025: Generative AI will autonomously solve 80% of common customer service problems by 2029
– Portage, “AI Innovation in Business Process Outsourcing” (March 2026): 80% of operations incorporate generative AI into agent processes (up from ~5% three years prior); Operators expect that one-third to one-half of call center operations will be automated within five years.
– Aspire 2025 research (cited in Quadient’s CCM statistics summary): one in five consumers switched providers in 2025 due to poor communication; one in four between the ages of 18 and 43.
– Carrefour Bank case study (Fast Movn/hyperstream): five million personalized messages per month, invoice validation in 100% of cases via hyperValidation, delivery via hyperCCM.