Cape call centres on BEE drive

By Paul Vecchiatto, ITWeb Cape Town correspondent

Cape Town, 08 Sept 2005

Calling the Cape and the City of Cape Town are to encourage broad-based black economic empowerment (BEE) in the Western Cape call centre industry, which currently has only 10% black ownership.

As part of the overall strategy to encourage BEE participation in the industry, Calling the Cape and the City of Cape Town will co-host an "Empowerment Showcase" in the city on 13 October. The showcase will introduce selected black-owned companies that are potential call centre service suppliers to corporations and government bodies.

The city has provided funding of R50 000 for Calling the Cape to identify outsourcing opportunities for black-owned call centres and to host the showcase event.

The call centre industry is one of the highest growth employers within the Western Cape, providing jobs to 12 000 people in 130 centres, the majority of which are domestically owned.

Calling the Cape executive director Luke Mills says the showcase has two purposes. "Firstly, we want to show that South African companies can use the call centre outsourcing industry a lot more, and, secondly, there are benefits in broad-based BEE."

He says transformation within the industry, as with the rest of the ICT sector, is not nearly as far advanced as it should be.

"Most government departments and large companies have to meet challenging affirmative procurement targets in the next few years. Outsourcing some of their call centre functions is a great opportunity to meet their targets and also to make some efficiency gains," Mills says.

He says the South African call centre industry remains fairly immature when compared with international trends.

"South African companies are still doing things that could be outsourced. This includes telemarketing, appointment making and customer relationship management. Many local companies are still doing this themselves rather than outsourcing."