The BPO industry association, Business Process enabling South Africa (BPeSA), has joined up with the Department of Trade & Industry (DTI), Business Trust and the Department of Labour to help make the BPO market more globally competitive.

The global BPO sector is expected to grow 10% to 15% globally over the next few years as businesses and private sector organisations face pressures to reduce costs and improve efficiencies and, in government’s case, service delivery.

This is according to Bulelwa Koyana, interim-CEO of BPeSA, who adds: "The BPO sector has massive potential to grow and create jobs over the next few years. BPO, especially in the financial services sector, provides our best opportunity to create a meaningful number of new skilled jobs." The World Economic Forum’s annual Global competitiveness Report highlights that South Africa is in a better position than many countries to benefit from changes in global conditions, especially in the financial services sector, where South Africa ranks fifth in the world in terms of financial services sophistication.

Call centre agents to be trained

BPO is a key component of the DTI's Industrial Policy Action Plan. The department has put together a four-year plan to train call centre agents and managers with the goal of creating 56 000 direct skilled jobs in the sector in the next 10 years, with a portion of that going towards the "exportable" services sector.

BPO&O incentive programme

South Africa also has some support programmes in place, but these programmes can only be described as a good start. The dti has launched a BPO&O incentive programme, made up of an investment grant and a training support grant. The investment grant ranges between R37 000.00 and R60 000.00 per employee and the training support grant is 50% of training costs up to a maximum of R12 000.00 per agent.

The Training Support Grant has accepted 20 705 learners into the BPO training programme since inception in 2007 for a total investment of R121,3-million to date. Since March 2007, 25 firms have been accepted into the programme for a value of R729-million, raising R1,7-billion in foreign and the creation 6 193 confirmed new direct jobs thus far. These incentives have been used to attract the likes of Virgin Money, British Gas and Budget Insurance, all from the UK.

Plans for BPO Park in cape Town

BPO Parks, working hand-in-hand with tax and other incentives, can further reduce the financial risk and improve the business case for offshoring to South Africa. Research shows that infrastructure is one of the most important components of their decision of where to offshore. The Coega Industrial Development Zone has a BPO Park in Port Elizabeth with 1 500 seats available for occupation. The City of Joburg, Tshwane, and Cape Town have solid plans that are now getting off the ground. Another important consideration – and one that people often underestimate – is the soft issues related to an executive decision to offshore to one destination or another. Crime and corruption,lifestyle, even enjoyment during trade visits are often determining factors.