Business service provider

A business service provider (BSP) is one of several categories of service provider in the business world. As opposed to an application service provider which provides application components over a computer network, the services provided by a BSP are more in the area of infrastructure: mail delivery, building security, finance, administration, and human resources.^[2] Unlike an ASP, a BSP provides business processes as services, providing partial or full business process outsourcing.^[3] They are often subdivided into two types: "back office" and "front office" BSPs.^[4]

Types of business service providers

Back Office BSPs

Back office operations are the off-site delivery of a range of non-core service functions, including routine administration tasks, customer service and technical support. Offshore back office operations involve the ongoing use of an outsourcing base in another country.^[5]

Front Office BSPs

The front office is the part of a company that comes in contact with clients, such as the marketing, sales, and service departments. In the hotel industry, the front office (also known as front desk) welcomes guests to the accommodation section: meeting and greeting them, taking and organizing reservations, allocating check in and out of rooms, organizing porter service, issuing keys and other security arrangements, passing on messages to customers and settling the accounts.^[6]

Examples

• Front Office Solutions Provider ^[7]

References

1. Wilkinson 2005, p. 53.
2. Umar 2003, p. 8—15.
3. Seidl 2007, p. 14.
4. Seidl 2007, p. 13.
5. "Back Office Operations". Trade Forum. Retrieved 2015-04-14.
6. "The role of the service provider in the community". psawa.com. Retrieved 2015-04-14.
7. "The Probe Group". Retrieved 2015-04-14.

General

• Seidl, Roman (2007). Business process outsourcing relationships in Swiss banking: an exploratory study. Cuvillier Verlag. ISBN 978-3-86727-364-0.
• Umar, Amjad (2003). Information Security and Auditing in the Digital Age: A Practical and Managerial Perspective. nge solutions, inc. ISBN 978-0-9727414-7-7.
• Wilkinson, Paul (2005). Construction collaboration technologies: the extranet evolution. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-415-35858-3.

Further reading

• Axelsson, Björn; Wynstra, Finn (2002). "Business Services, their Providers and Customers". Companies buy services — don't they?. Chichester: Wiley. ISBN 978-0-470-84302-4.
• Ochel, W. (2002). "The International Competitiveness of Business Service Firms: The Case of Germany". The Service Industries Journal. 22 (2): 1–16. doi:10.1080/714005075.