Houston: Despite the furore in US over sending jobs to countries like India, business process outsourcing (BPO) has gained corporate acceptance, with offshoring of human resources alongwith finance and accounting tending to eclipse IT over the next five years, a study has said.

As businesses move beyond cost reduction and toward a growth agenda in 2004, IDC, a market research firm and CapGemini, a consultancy service provider, have together found that BPO is increasingly enabling corporate strategy.

According to a CapGemini/IDC pulse survey of more than 200 participants attending the IDC Outsourcing Forum, "Improving Corporate Effectiveness Through Results-Driven BPO", conference on April 20, nearly 71 per cent respondents said they have already outsourced some of their IT function.

In addition, almost 31 per cent of respondents are involved in outsourcing a portion of their human resources with 24 per cent already offshoring part of their Finance and Accounting (F&A).

The survey also found that over the next five years, Information Technology outsourcing will slip to the third most popular business function outsourced, behind HR and F&A, but still in front of global procurement and customer care outsourcing.