Plans to grow outsourcing sector

By Itumeleng Mogaki, ITWeb junior journalist

Johannesburg, 12 Dec 2005

The national initiative between government, businesses and industry stakeholders plans to have 35 000 skilled agents and 5 000 managers trained in the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector, in the "next few years".

The BPO sector is growing significantly in SA and there are plans to grow globally by 2009, according to Contact in Gauteng CEO Keryn House, who was speaking at the International Trade Centre conference last week.

Nationally, there are plans to create 100 000 jobs through BPO, of which 25 000 would be direct and 75 000 indirect, she said.

"This target has been spoken about before, but now the environment is right as the institutions, business and government are working together towards this goal of job creation," she added.

The major BPO challenge in Africa is a shortage of skills to meet the rapid demand, House said. "There`s a need to mobilise and unite the industry, train and get people employed so as to create more jobs, even if it`s in the form of internship opportunities."

She said training was done mostly by big corporations. Skills development, as well as government and industry partnerships were key to ensuring that the South African business BPO sector experienced significant growth.

"In order to achieve that, there`s a need to take a cross-sector approach and to develop national and regional partnerships towards developing skills so as to build strong BPO operations," she added.

House also highlighted the Barclays and Absa bank deal, which she described as, "an illustration of Gauteng`s strength in the banking sector, one of the key verticals in SA`s BPO offering.

"We have the required BPO customer service skills latent in Africa and in SA and the ability to create multiple jobs in our country if we can up-skill fast enough to meet demand for investors."

House added that small and medium enterprises were also a part of the BPO sector growth.

"I have received calls weekly from entrepreneurs and managers who have call centre experience, and who want to start their own call centre businesses. This is an illustration of the true empowerment opportunity in this sector," she said.