Johannesburg, South Africa, 8 October 2007 - Although many would see the government’s current incentive programme as a step in the right direction for furthering the investment in the local contact centre industry, there is nothing within the incentive structure that offers benefits to the local domestic organisations that have put and continue to put money and effort into developing the local industry – the industry that arguably established SA as an attractive outsourcing destination in the first place.

The current incentives appear to support larger operations and, whilst this may be the end result, many international companies looking to SA are more likely to start inward investment by testing the waters first i.e. with much smaller operations.

They expect to qualify for incentives from the start. Admittedly, the incentive structure does take this into account and allows operations to scale up over a 3 year period; however, not all offshore operations may be of the required size.

What this means, for example, is that a 50-seat, quality-based customer services operation, which offers a lot in the way of complicated customer support to an international market is not likely to benefit from the incentives because of its size, albeit a prime proof-point in the very reasons for selecting SA as an offshore destination – from a quality and capability perspective.

The main concern around the current incentives revolves around the complementary strategies and structures surrounding them and their ability to create sustainable demand and deliver sustainable benefits.

There is also a need for incentives for South African companies to outsource BPO functions. International companies will not outsource their BPO operations if local companies are not doing so. A robust local BPO industry is an essential prerequisite for the development of an off-shore industry

The fundamental issue we have here in SA is the development of an appropriate skills pool. In other words, we need to attract more people into the contact centre industry and we also need to ensure that it is firmly established as an industry that offers a distinct and stable career path.

To do this, the correct training and support structures need to be in place to ensure that the appropriate levels of training and skills development are attained to create a quality-based pool of labour. Simply churning out volumes of marginally-trained people will not help the industry, or SA, from an international perspective.

The pressing need is for a skilled pool of operational management from team managers to senior operations managers, the layers that are the most critical in the effective management of a contact centre.

Incentive schemes are generally complex. They play an important and necessary role in creating demand but the links of the chain need to be in place for them to deliver the value that they set out to achieve. They communication plan around the essentials of the scheme also need to be very well communicated and well understood.

For further information please contact:

Vanda Dickson, Marketing & Strategy Development, Merchants
Tel: +27 11 575 2479
Email: vanda.dickson@za.didata.com

Lee-Anne Poon, Tribeca Public Relations
Tel: +27 11 208 5500
Mobile: +27 82 818 4041
Email: lee-annep@tribecapr.co.za

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