The Global BPO sector was worth $ 1.6 trillion in 2011 showing no growth from 2010. Top BPO sectors include customer service at 53 per cent of the sector, finance and accounting at 22 per cent, human resource at 16 per cent and training at 7 per cent.
Presenting data from India’s National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), Anil says that India’s BPO sector last year made US $14.5 billion from exports and US $3.1 billion from imports. India employs 850,000 people directly in the BPO sector and 4.5 million indirectly. India's BPO sector grew 7.1 per cent in 2010 and 7.5 per cent in 2011.
Meanwhile, Africa’s IT market is expected to be worth over $ 22 billion by 2020. Anil lists key growth sectors as telecoms, banking and Government. The telecommunication sector does a lot of outsourcing . Africa currently has 650 million subscribers who are slated to hit 1 billion by 2016.
At the moment, Spanco handles over 300,000 voice calls per day in call centre outsourcing for its African unit. Banking is expected to grow from 11 per cent of Africa’s Gross Domestic Product by 2009. Anil says low margin and capital intensive retail banking will account for 40 per cent of the continent’s banking revenue by 2020.
Government outsourcing will be driven by eGovernment and embracing of IT in various government services. Factors contributing to outsourcing are sheer volumes of transaction, differentiation in terms of quality of service, regulatory environment where the law requires businesses to implement some common functions and the costs per transaction such as in telecommunications and banking.
Paul Kukubo, Kenya ICT Board CEO, says the board has been supporting the industry from when it was formulated. While there are no concrete statistics on Kenya’s BPO industry, Kukubo estimates that Kenya’s BPo industry currently directly employs 9,000 people, way below a target of 15,000 that the board had set . The sector has lost some firms along the way, including a few that had previously received ICT Board subsidies.
“We had hoped for one or two Tier 1 BPO providers in the industry by now, though this has not happened. However, we had not planned for the many developers that we have," he said. He further states that Kenya has no hope replicating India's BPO success model, as its dynamics are different. The ICT Board CEO estimates that the country has about eight large IT firms and about 400 other IT firms spread across various sectors.
Kukubo advises the outsourcing sector to use local businesses to develop competency, which can then be used used to serve other firms abroad. “Other firms have partnered with foreign firms in areas where they aren’t experts, or brought Kenyans who are experts in those areas from abroad, “ he says.
The Board will be supporting the outsourcing industry through the establishment of a centre for excellence for outsourcing businesses. The centre is expected to train 5000 people annually. In addition, The Board plans to establish an incubation unit that will cater for about 10 “high performance” firms.
Source: CIO East Africa
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