This IDC study represents a comprehensive overview of the market opportunities and forecasts for business process outsourcing (BPO) in the Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) or APEJ region. This BPO overview covers qualitative as well as quantitative insights across 12 APEJ countries for 2006 up until 2011. This study is of value to BPO service providers (SPs) as well as enterprises in answering questions such as, what is the size of the BPO market in APEJ; how big was it a few years ago, how big will it get in five years' time and how fast is it growing; what are the unique characteristics and the trends for BPO across business horizontals (human resources [HR], training, finance and accounting [F&A], procurement, customer care) and by country in APEJ; and finally what is needed to clinch deals, what are enterprises demanding, and are vendors meeting those needs.

"As more decision making for BPO get pushed to regional stakeholders, more unique characteristics that are particular to APEJ become the key focus over the next few years," says Conrad Chang, senior analyst, BPO, IDC Asia/Pacific.