BPO hub opens doors

Johannesburg, 10 Sept 2009

Bloemfontein`s R50 million international business process outsourcing and off-shoring (BPO&O) hub is now operational.

In March, the city of Bloemfontein, or Mangaung as it is also known, announced it would host the BPO&O hub within the next five months.

Titled the Re Hodisa Muruo project, the centre is aimed at improving service delivery, stimulating local economic development and accelerating the city`s readiness for the 2010 World Cup.

"We are looking forward to standardisation of service, service quality enhancement, efficiency and effectiveness, all at a high level of productivity provided by highly-skilled employees. This will also bring about transparency and accountability. In short, it will bring a high quality of services to the community within the community," says Amos Goliath, acting city manager of Mangaung.

The project is a partnership between the city, Fujitsu Services, UniNet Communications, Cisco and Microsoft.

The hub will be implemented in three phases. The first stage will be the improvement of the municipality`s telephony system between its two main buildings. The second phase will be the opening of a training centre for skills development. The final step will be the implementation of the call centre facility, which will be tasked with dealing with customer-related issues.

"The centralised contact centre will serve as a starting point for launching the BPO&O centre in the heart of Bloemfontein. From now on, citizens will have one number to call as a single point of contact to the municipality," notes Neil Claasen, acting MD of Fujitsu.

Skills initiative

The contact centre has the capacity to run two shifts of 24 agents each, with a target to expand to more than 400 positions in the BPO&O hub within the next four years. The city hopes new jobs will result in the creation of many indirect jobs in areas such as security services, cleaning, catering and other supporting services.

The project will also see the partners working to establish a training centre capable of producing skilled ICT staff for the Mangaung municipality and commercial environment.

Microsoft will support the initiative through its Student-to-Business programme and Cisco will provide support through its Networking Academy programme. UniNet will deliver broadband managed services using its locally developed converged services platform.

The programme is a skills-for-employability effort, where graduates are employed for the duration of their training and internship period, with the possibly of retaining them once qualified. It also strives to provide students with the key competencies needed in the industry.