Traditionally, the process of business process optimization (BPO) could place a huge demand on resources as it was a time-consuming and costly process. However, the tangible improvements in business operations made it a crucial exercise to undertake. Typically it would have involved the manual mapping out of a process, followed by a detailed analysis of opportunities for improvement. Depending on the scale of the business and complexity involved, this process could take anywhere from several months to many years to deliver.