| August 2025 | How AI is Changing the Future of Work |
Welcome to the inaugural edition of UnBPO™ Quarterly – our thought leadership platform where we challenge conventional wisdom and chart the course for the future of business process services.
For over three decades, I’ve witnessed the evolution of our industry firsthand. From my early days as a management trainee at Citibank in the late ‘90s, helping write standard operating procedures for what would become one of the first captive BPO units, to leading Firstsource today as we fundamentally reshape how work gets done in the AI era.
The BPO industry has evolved through distinct phases – from the early outsourcing experiments of the 1990s, through the labor arbitrage boom of the 2000s, to the process improvement focus of the late 2000s, and the automation wave that began in 2015. But today, we stand at an inflection point unlike any before.
We live in a world of unprecedented complexity. With 72 conflicts raging globally, five generations in the workforce, economic nationalism on the rise, and AI fundamentally altering how we think about work itself, the old playbooks simply don’t apply. The traditional BPO model – built on labor arbitrage, location dispersion, and hierarchical structures – is not just outdated; it’s counterproductive.
That’s why we’re introducing UnBPO™ – our bold reimagining of what business process services can and should be. This isn’t about incremental improvement; it’s about complete transformation. We’re moving from shared services to deep domain expertise, from labor arbitrage to technology arbitrage, from rigid hierarchies to agile, network-based organizations.
At Firstsource, we’re not just adapting to change, we’re architecting the future of work. Our ten design principles challenge every assumption about how our industry operates, from who does the work (humans, AI agents, gig workers in seamless collaboration) to how we measure success (outcomes, not headcount).
This magazine will be your window into this transformation. Here, you’ll find our latest thinking on AI-first strategies, outcome-based commercial models, and the fundamental shifts reshaping client expectations. You’ll discover how we’re breaking down silos between front office, back office, IT, and BPO to create truly integrated “Services as Software” solutions.
The question isn’t whether our industry will evolve, it’s who will lead that evolution. At Firstsource, we’re ensuring the answer is us. And through UnBPO™ Quarterly, we invite you to be part of this journey.
The future of work is being written today. Let’s write it together.
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