Choose an alternative with good English and low cost

SOUTH Africa is one of the few alternative locations that can provide sizeable, good quality English skills at a low cost.   This is based on a study of South Africa's BPO capability in the financial services sector carried out by the Everest Group in November last year.

If you are look to diversify out of established locations, consider South Africa as an alternative.  South Africa has a mature domestic BPO environment employing more than 170,000 agents.  And another 13,000 agents service UK and European clients, including Carphone Warehouse, Virgin Mobile, British Gas and IBM.

Culture and language Many international companies selected South Africa due to the ability of agents to truly connect with callers, thus offering customer service that completes favourably with calls made in the UK.  This claim was validated by the Insight Now Survey presented at the National Outsourcing Association (NOA) conference in London, July 2007.

Decreasing telecoms costs International call prices from South Africa into Europe have dropped by almost 70 per cent in the last four years and are set to decrease even further as new undersea cables go live in time for the FIFA World Cup in 2010.  The first of these is the Seacom cable, which will be up and running in July 2009, thus significantly increasing bandwidth and bringing additional competition.

Workforce South Africa has a population of almost 48m with an unemployment at around 30 per cent.  According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, South Africa has a literacy rate of almost 94 per cent.  Each year, there are more than 400,000 school leavers (12 years of schooling) and 140,0000 university graduates.  In addition 350,000 students are enrolled at further education and training facilities.

John Lambrou, International Marketing, Business Process Enabling South Africa (BPeSA), Gauteng; john@bpesagauteng.co.za