The Western Cape`s rapidly growing call centre industry has provided great opportunities for new black-owned companies, says Calling the Cape executive director Luke Mills.
Speaking to ITWeb yesterday during the Calling the Cape BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) Showcase Event, Mills said some of the most successful companies were started by former corporate employees who spotted opportunities and used their experience and contacts as valuable assets in their new ventures.
However, Neville Naidoo, chairman of the Black IT Forum in the Western Cape and of yesterday`s event, says transformation in the province`s overall ICT sector has been slow.
"In order to bring normality to society, we have to do some abnormal things. This sector has a great opportunity and a great responsibility to bring about change," he says.
Raven Naidoo, CEO of ICT consultancy Radian, estimates that about 10 out of the 110 contact centre companies are fully black owned. He also says that no other industry offers the Western Cape the promise of growth that this sector has.
According to Radian`s research, SA now has more contact centres than Spain with a total of 80 000 job equivalents, with the Western Cape accounting for about 11 000 of those jobs.
"While foreign companies have been particularly keen to outsource, South African companies have been less so. It could be because of the historical trend of companies in this country to own the whole supply chain," he says.
Five black-owned companies gave five-minute presentations of their services and capabilities. They were OC2, Callconnexions, G326, Contac4, and Syntell.
OC2 is 100% owned by Nikki Hendricks who began her company in 2004 after working in the corporate arena for 22 years.
Callconnextions marketing director Shafick Hamdulay says his company has a blended call centre and offers fraud line services, debt collecting services and call centre outsourcing and re-engineering.
G326 is totally owned by black women and according to its CEO Luna Ntsume, it has call centre sites in Cape Town, East London and a Johannesburg office that does on-site project management.
Ashraf Allie, CEO for Contac4 says his company has grown its turnover by 62% from 2003 to 2004 and then by 77% from 2004 to 2005.
Syntell, which was bought by Hosken Consolidated Investments this year, has invested heavily in new technologies including voice over Internet protocol, voice recording and power diallers, says MD Saadiq Matthews.
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