BUSINESS PROCESS OUTSOURCING OPPORTUNITIES CAPE TOWN

South Africa is a robust democracy with good infrastructure that includes power, transport and telecommunications. Furthermore, intellectual property and data privacy legislation is up to date, the legal system provides robust protection and its mature insurance, banking and telecommunications sectors have strong legal and product similarities with the UK, Europe, Australia and the US. It’s really no wonder that South Africa is one of the fastest-growing BPO industries in the world.

The city of Cape Town has played a critical role in this strengthening African industry. Its rapid adoption of an omnichannel approach to delivering next-generation contact centres and digital services is unmatched. In fact, Cape Town enterprises continue to build advanced analytic capabilities, creating new digital solutions and even providing English-language training applications to other BPO industries in countries like China, Taiwan and Japan.

The Mother City truly has one of the fastest-growing BPO industries in the country and even the continent. This is in part due to the city offering good quality voice-driven contact centres but also to the fact that the BPO companies here are also increasingly providing services across a wide range of industries:

• Banking, financial services, and insurance – dealing with complex work.
• Legal process services – delivering work for the Forbes 2000 law firms.
• Healthcare – building data analytics, platform development, and business intelligence.
• IT infrastructure and App Development -providing back-end infrastructure services and solutions to various industry verticals.

This innovative offering is strengthened by 60 000 relevant degree holders available for hire at the entry-level every year. It’s really no surprise that South Africa was named ‘Offshoring Destination of the Year’ at the Global Sourcing Association (GSA) Awards in 2018, especially when considering the incredible impact of the Cape Town industry.

Despite these incredible offerings, Cape Town offers 65-70% lower costs than a tier-2 city in England for contact centre work and 20-30% lower than those in Central & Eastern Europe like  Poland (Everest Group Study:2018).

It is no wonder South Africa’s BPO industry grew by 22% year-on-year over the past four years. This is twice the global growth rate and three times faster than India and the Philippines. A truly competitive market that’s hard to ignore when considering offshore solutions.

Why Invest in Cape Town’s BPO Sector?

Cape Town’s natural appeal, with its beaches and mountains, provides for a quality enhanced lifestyle, a big drawcard for very mobile BPM investors in considering a business location. The city is also making it easier for companies to invest in BPO services here. The World Bank’s ‘Ease of Doing Business’ Report ranks the city highest in South Africa for dealing with construction permits and getting electricity to your business.

There is a vast pool of English-speaking talent here that also includes deep expertise in financial services. In fact, South Africa has more actuarial graduates than India and is ranked first in the world for auditing standards. Companies are aware of the significant social impact they can make with areas like impact sourcing while more employees are graduating from these government and sector funded programmes.

“The Western Cape has two important aspects that cannot be ignored by companies looking to offshore their call centres: an educated workforce and world-class technical infrastructure.” Jed Hewson (1 Stream Director)

The city has also been assisting with talent and skills development initiatives, it has also been expanding faster internet networks (fibre) and is facilitating access to incentives like the recently activated Global Business Services Incentive. In fact, South Africa offers investors an array of incentives aimed at creating more jobs, upskilling employees and impact sourcing programmes, these include:

• Business Process Services incentive – This provides a lump sum cash incentive per job created for a minimum number of jobs created. And a bonus incentive paid at the end of five years.
• Employment tax incentives – An initiative that encourages employers to hire young candidates through a cost-sharing mechanism with the government. This provides education and employment.
• Seda Technology Programme – Offers grants to provide technical support to small and women-owned enterprises.
• Work readiness and Tech Skills Development Programmes – These are hosted between the City of Cape Town, universities, training institutes, and the private sector. The most prominent amongst these is the Cape Innovation and Technology Initiative, which trains students in IT infrastructure, cloud, big data analytics, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence skills.
• Learnership Programmes – These are disbursed by SETAs and are work-based learning programmes related to a specific field of work, comprising both theoretical and practical training.
• Impact Sourcing – implementation of 200 call centre learnerships in the Western Cape through impact sourcing.

Read the full guide to the Global Business Services Incentive

Cape Town’s Global Business Presence

Cape Town is a low-risk, high-quality business process outsourcing and contact centre destination and it continues to attract business from top firms across Europe, the United States and Australia. The city’s sector has already 61, 036 jobs and services 61% of South Africa’s total international BPO market.

Globally recognised brands that are already outsourcing to South Africa include Amazon, American Express, Barclays, IAG, iSelect, iiNet, Old Mutual, Qantas, Simply Energy, Vodafone and WNS.

Impact Sourcing (IS) is also an integral component of Cape Town’s BPO industry. In fact, more than one-fourth of the global services market in South Africa is made up of impact sourcing. This is mainly driven by the contact centre industry.

Download Invest Cape Town’s quick guide into exploring the opportunities available in this city’s business process outsourcing sector. Contact us  for even more information.