UK-owned call centre company Dialogue Group expects to triple its staff complement over the next year as it starts supplying services to the pharmaceutical industry from the Western Cape.
Dialogue`s pharmaceutical arm, Branded Dialogue HealthCare Services, has a start-up team of 50 and the company expects to grow the number of staff to 150 by the middle of 2004.
Dialogue holds the contract for running the Western Cape provincial government`s Cape Gateway call centre.
Dialogue chairman Jason Drew says the new investment in staff is in addition to the R70 million originally allocated to develop the South African operation and was necessitated by the rapid increase in new business.
"Since the acquisition in March, Dialogue`s total staff complement in the country had grown more than threefold, with projections of 3 000 South Africans servicing international companies by 2005 from our Western Cape operations," he says.
Drew says the role of the new division is to provide proactive support to companies operating in the field of healthcare, ranging from multi-channel sales and marketing liaison with doctors, pharmacists and other healthcare practitioners, to consumer relationship management within SA. Services developed and tested in the country have already been sold into the UK and US markets.
"As far as we are aware, the new division offers the most comprehensive range of services in the healthcare field anywhere in SA. We are involved in product launches, consumer queries, business-to-business liaison, direct marketing, market research, data cleansing and segmentation, as well as event management support. Others we are developing are the areas of disease management, medication compliance and clinical trials communication."
Drew says an important service provided by the division will be the regular provision of market intelligence to carefully targeted audiences on a permission-only basis. Dialogue`s role will include the editing and distribution of news updates of relevant information to recipients by prior agreement.
Dialogue`s healthcare clients include Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, MedicAlert, Medimerge, Adcock Ingram and Parke-Med, and UK-based companies, Brackenrig Group HIUK (health insurance intermediary) and medical event organiser Galliard Health.
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