KPO firms offering KM such as investment and legal research services offer focussed, provide high end services and engage in higher QoS, expertise and management benefits. Equity research comes to my mind asap.

• why equity research is distinct from BPO: "About 80% of all BPO is call centre work, which is ancillary to the day-to-day lives of the professionals they are servicing."
  
• Core skills for Investment research?
  
• financial analytics - quantitative info, balance sheets, model creation, modulation, analysis, forescasting, cash flow, waterfall models are few of the base capabilities for investment banking. The resources conduct behind the scene work and provide hands-on support through the deal cycle.
• The modus operandi changes drastically
• Quality of workforce? savvier and smarter SPs know it all; senior and middle level management.
  
• SLA's? oh, much more structured, negotiable, flexible
• Attrition? backups, rotational groups, training and mentorship
  
• Fresh graduates? nah! unless with a captive route there is an incentive to hire, train, prune and grow a dedicated team model. can't assign high-end tasks immedtly..
• Body shopping? not anymore, i guess...nobody likes the term; vendors hate to even admit staffing service.
• engagement model? attaining efficient ---remember "KAIZEN"!
  
• Pricing? a mindful, though a key differentiator...
  
• Captive operations like those of HSBC, JP Morgan, Lehman Brothers and Citicorp have been recruiting MBAs to do equity research tasks.
• Investment banks globally target to halve $8 billion spent on research, says Deloitte Research.

Notes:

• Amba hires young accountants or MBAs in Sri Lanka and India, puts them through a five-week equity analysis course and then subcontracts its staff on a one-year basis to clients. Firms like Amba pay their analysts US$10,000 (HK$78,000) to US$25,000 per year and charge their clients upwards of US$50,000 per year. That compares with a total cost of US$150,000 to US$250,000 for a junior analyst on Wall Street or in the City of London, West said.
• PSi has a monthly analysis report on business, strategy and transactions. It has 100 clients and sells the reports at an annual subscription of $510. Evalueserve offers equity research in telecom, IT, pharma, biotech, financial services, energy, oil and gas and chemicals. The billing rates vary between $45,000 to $55,000 a year. While the work itself could take two days or two months.
  

• The head of research at a European bank that makes extensive use of firms like Amba said that outsourced analysts typically don't work on deal research, communicate with clients or corporates, or publish under their own name. Amba says it works for more than half of the world's top 15 investment banks and a string of hedge funds. But the banks are not eager to admit they outsource research, as they worry about perceptions of research quality. "They would rather admit to income tax evasion than to outsourcing," West quipped. The secrecy works both ways. Amba clients have code names, and "to talk about who your client is a firing offence," he said.

• Analysts estimate there are only about 1,000 to 1,500 people working in equities research in India and Sri Lanka; half of them for so-called "captive" units of global investment firms. The other half works for specialized outsourcing firms like Amba, Delhi- based Evalueserve and Chennai-based Irevna, a unit of Indian rating agency Crisil, itself owned by Standard & Poor's.