Service Cops took the BPO/ITES Company of the Year award in the just-ended E-Government Excellence Awards by National Information Technology Authority -Uganda (NITA-U)
The company CEO Mathias Kamugasho talks to CEO about the award, the significance of the BPO/ITES industry to the Ugandan economy and what this sector is all about..’
BPO/ITES is an Acronym, BPO stands for Business Process Outsourcing while ITES stands for IT enabled Services.
Outsourcing means one entity (the client) decides to use services of another (the contractor) to manage one or many of their business processes. It can be on its premises or on the contractor’s premises for specific business benefits; cost reduction, value addition and specialized skills among others.
This is a relatively new industry and it proliferated during the 2000s during the economic meltdown of big economies in Europe and the United States of America (USA). Global Corporate Companies started looking for destinations where they could manufacture or export services in order to cut costs and stay afloat. That is how American giants started setting up manufacturing plants in Mexico, Taiwan and exporting services to the Philippines and India. The countries that benefited deliberately created incentives to these global giants because it was a game changer in terms of employment and economic recovery of their own countries. The major incentives were largely supportive government policy (tax regime), availability of cheap but skilled man power which translated into low cost of production, technological advancement and infrastructure.
This Industry (BPO/ITES) is a very critical sector in tackling the youth unemployment and contributing to economic growth. Globally, the total BPO revenue in 2020 exceeded US$300 Billion despite the COVID-19 Pandemic. India’s BPO revenues alone are poised to exceed US$8.8 Billion by 2025 and the situation is not different in Philippines where the BPO revenue has hit US$25Billion representing 10% of the country’s revenue. In Uganda the BPO/ITES industry according to NITA U is estimated to be employing directly over 8000 employees in Uganda. This figure is projected to increase given the deliberate initiatives by government to grow the sector.
Business Processes Outsourcing and IT enabled Services (BPO/ITES) seeks to tap into the opportunities that are opening up as a result of economic and demographic changes in other continents in the world. As a result of aging populations in Europe and parts of Asia, there is a growing demand for the labor in these destinations. Leveraging on technology, Uganda can export services and tap into this labor gap. The jobs in this sector range from complex tasks like systems and applications development, machine learning and Artificial intelligence to simpler tasks that require a human face like customer experience management, data processing, surveys, bookings and schedules management for the tourism, book keeping among others.
On the Service Cops BPO/ITES offering, the MD explained they are engaged in a number of projects ranging from customer experience management to IT related projects. Their Customer experience management includes developing and supporting customer experience strategies for the Banking and Financial sector through their state of art technology and contact center set up at their Kololo premises. He further mentions that their approach to outsourcing is to create extra value and as such they engage in developing and delivering sales projects to generate revenue for the clients. Given the changes in the customer experience landscape, Service Cops has pioneered the use of chat bots over conversational messaging platforms like Whatsapp to ease the way customers interact with the products.
The company is currently engaged in designing, developing and delivering technology solutions and systems on behalf of her clients across different sectors in Uganda and beyond.
On why Service Cops was nominated and eventually selected, the MD explained that Service Cops has been positioning itself for the last ten years and has since invested heavily in developing systems to ensure international level of Service; ISO 9001, ISO 27001 certification, necessary business continuity initiatives in addition to setting up an effective corporate governance structure to drive its plans.
He further explained that the Government has developed a deliberate strategy to develop this sector because of this its potential to employ the youth, generation of foreign exchange and contribution to the government revenue basket through taxes. The sector employs a workforce in excess of 8000 employees directly and is poised to employ more people with the new initiatives.
It is my belief, that the labour export industry which contributes over US$ 1.2 Billion annually in remittances should be complemented by adding exported services that can be done from here leveraging on technology without physically moving the youth to these destinations.
How Stanbic Bank CFO Ronald Makata Blends Governance, Technology and Human Leadership to Drive PerformanceThe relatively low cost of labour, Ugandans good command of English, youth with high literacy and easy to train, relatively good IT skills coupled with the traditional Uganda hospitality present a competitive advantage compared to the traditional BPO/ITES destinations whose cost of labour has been gradually increasing.
In terms of how important the award is, Kamugasho says: “We believe this opens us opportunities for us beyond the sectors that we have been serving and creates opportunities for collaboration to enable deliver bigger projects.
Kamugasho says the award is a vote of confidence from our customers and sets new challenge for us to even serve them better.
Who is Service Cops?
Service Cops is a regional Financial Technology and Business Processes Outsourcing solutions provider. Incorporated over 10 years ago, the company has grown to be one of the leading FinTechs in the region. Service Cops partners with over 16 commercial banks, 5 major telecoms, over 10,000 education institutions and several payment aggregators to deliver a stack of solutions in the banking and financial services, insurance and education sectors across the region. Over three million customers in the banking and financial services sector alone use Service Cops services monthly.
Service Cops has headquarters in Uganda and has subsidiaries in Zambia, Kenya, Rwanda, Ethiopia with Ghana and DRC being the latest additions.
It is a gold member of the Financial Technology Association of Uganda (FITSPA) and a member of the Private Sector Foundation (PSFU).
Contacts
Plot 1-3, Coral Crescent, Lower Kololo Terrace
Websites: https://servicecops.com, https://schoolpay.co.ug, https://schoolsuite.co.ug
Email:info@servicecops.com
