By Ronnie Wonder
Many firms and organizations in the world today are choosing to externally source the execution and management of facilities, customer care and logistics, human resource, legal and financial research, employee development and finance, among others.
It is Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), which is the strategic use of third-party service providers to perform activities traditionally handled by internal staff and resources.
This trend is primarily due to the drive to cut operational costs and the emerging economies of specialization enabled by application of information and communications technologies. The intervention presupposes the availability of low cost Internet bandwidth.
Though Uganda is just now trying to catch up to the trend, it is emerging as an important BPO hub in Africa. As African nations are embracing outsourcing operations, the demand for skilled workers is on the rise and the country has set in motion several measures to enable trained employees work in this sector, but there are challenges.
The BPO program is premised on the strategic objectives of Government which emphasize the use of ICT to create jobs and improve livelihoods in order to reduce poverty in the country.
The other objectives include; increase in government revenue, increase in investment in infrastructure and skills development among others. To realise this, way back in 2011, a BPO program was initiated in Uganda for the purpose of establishing call centers on a large scale in the country. This agenda aimed at creating job opportunities for more than 3,000 aspirants. Government invested in the training of 500 graduates to start working in BPOs so as to compete with the likes of India. An incubation centre was set up.
Case for Uganda
Uganda aspires to become one of the most sought after destination for companies wanting to outsource their business, knowledge, research, legal and related high-end processes. This will not only boost exports, increase national income and create greater employment avenues, but also increase tax revenues, cater to the growth of other related industries like infrastructure, catering, etc. Thus, companies involved in outsourcing activities will earn huge profits out of this and be in a position to offer their employees competitive pay packages, hence improving their livelihoods. Industry players will have to make remarkable investments in Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), to earn high export revenues.
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Taking India as an example, its IT-BPO sector has built a strong reputation for its high standards of service quality and information security, which has been acknowledged worldwide and also helped to enhance buyer’s confidence.
The industry is continuing this trend by combining provider and industry-level initiatives as well as by generating greater awareness and facilitating wider adoption of standards and best practices. It is moving to provide high-value services to its clients rather than just minimizing/ saving costs. This should be the way to go for industry players in Uganda as well.
The success of off-shoring BPO sector in India has led to the emergence of Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) sector there, which deals with off-shoring of knowledge intensive business processes requiring specialized domain-based expertise.
India is well endowed with large pools of skilled manpower, like, chartered accountants, doctors, MBAs, lawyers, research analysts, etc., which would help to add value to the global KPO business and its high-end processes like valuation research, investment research, patent filing, legal and insurance claims processing, online teaching, media content supply, etc.
This advantage, along with multi-lingual capabilities and advantages of lower costs, can help the country to emerge as a front-runner in KPO on the global platform. To realise this dream Uganda has to address a number of challenges.
That said, “matching India would be overstating our ambitions. It took India over 20 years to build their industry to become a global leader and that was achieved with good government support,
