Galdon Data positions itself for SA call centre boom

Local IT services company Galdon Data has announced that it is experiencing an increased demand for call centre solutions and services in Cape Town.

The company strongly believes the call centre industry is set for major growth over the next few years as South Africa becomes the preferred call centre hub in Africa.

London-based market analysis firm Datamonitor expects the number of call centre agent positions in South Africa, which is favoured by British companies for its cultural affinity with Europe, to more than triple by 2010.

According to Calling the Cape, a body that promotes call centre development in the province, call centres are crucial for economic development in the Western Cape. Nationally, the number of jobs is expected to grow to 100 000 by 2009.

Galdon Data CEO Garry Ackerman says this growth is mainly as a result of the cheap labour, good language skills and time zones that chime with Western Europe.

"There has been a sharp rise in offshore investors, local companies developing customers' contact facilities for the first time and new outsourcing businesses, many of them black-owned.

"South Africa is an appealing option for investors because it shares a time zone with Western Europe, and the high levels of education and familiarity with European culture means it is often seen as a high-quality niche market. However, some investors are deterred by high telecom tariffs," he explains.

Galdon Data is a Gold Certified Microsoft Partner, AmVia Platinum Partner and a national AmVia service partner in South Africa. This places the company in the enviable position of being the largest CallXpress and RightFax Service Company, with the largest service market share in this arena in southern Africa.

Uwin Young, Galdon Data regional manager for the Cape, says Galdon Data provides services and solutions for call centres especially in the areas of business process automation and unified messaging. "This encompasses information capture, business information delivery, convergence and document solutions using the Microsoft, Captaris and Autonomy (Cardiff) range of products."

BPA solutions bridge the analogue (paper) world with the digital world and is made up of three phases, namely automated information capture, process and business information delivery.

The 'input' component of Galdon Data's solutions offering refers particularly to the large-scale automation of the primary data capture process, including both physical forms and eForms solutions. This addresses offline information like paper or faxes and online information like Web-based (intranet and/or extranet), e-mails with attachments and mobility (cellular phone and PDAs).

"This phase has a massive cost saving for paper, telecommunication and manual data capturing. We often experience a cost saving in excess of 75%percent of the operational budget. We also address the critical business requirements for reducing information capture time, improving accuracy, security, eliminating loss of documents, process automation, immediate access to information and documents, and reduced cost," concludes Young.