How iSON Fosters Outsourcing Culture in Africa

Enterprises in Africa are constantly looking at digitization strategies to drive operational excellence, improve customer satisfaction and expand operations to play a greater part in the global economy.

To achieve this, most of these companies have embraced outsourcing of some of their services. Consequently, in the last few years, outsourcing has become a common trend in information technology and other industries across Africa.

The emerging Africa outsourcing stories filled with endless opportunities cannot be told without iSON BPO as a flag bearer in the journey to birth Africa’s dreams.

Today, iSON Group has pioneered the reverse trend in current BPO services by taking “Knowledge to Work”, rather than the economically draining norm of taking work to known knowledge bases, as obtains in other climes. By marrying the best practices of India’s BPO industry with the available resource pool in Africa, iSON Group is charting a whole new pathway in developing Africa’s business ecosystem.

As a truly multi-cultural organisation, iSON’s unique approach to service delivery in IT and BPO combines building and managing call and data centre infrastructure, as well as global manpower outsourcing and call centre operations.

It helps clients with experience-centric solutions that empower them in enhancing business efficiencies, streamlining operations and reducing cost. It offers enterprise customers systems integration, managed services, BPO and strategic outsourcing solutions using end-to-end Information Technology (IT) services to numerous clients around the globe.

iSON caters to several industry verticals such as Telecoms, BFSI, Utilities, Government, Oil and Gas with a growing portfolio in several niches such as Property & Real Estates. An integral part of iSON’s growth is its work ideology; on-shoring as opposed to the more popular but less advantageous offshoring practice.

On-shoring as practiced by iSON, is employing and upskilling local capacity to handle the work which is available within the specific country of operation.

iSON Group’s strong presence in Africa dots the landscapes of big economies like Nigeria, South Africa, Morocco and Kenya.

For iSON, Information Technology is a platform to bring in the latest technology to clients in Africa through its “Partner Enablement” Program.

The big blue chip IT companies like AVAYA, Oracle, Huawei, Cisco, IBM, Dell are benefitting through iSON Technologies skillsets in 25 countries in the region. iSON as a system integrator has enabled these companies to offer their world- class products to clients in the region.  

Some of its marquee clients on the IT side are: MTN, Etisalat, Airtel, GT Bank, AXA Mansard, Kenya Tourism Board, Ministry of Kenya, Crown Beverages, Uganda, Standard Chartered Bank Kenya, Tanzania & Botswana.

Ramesh Awtaney, the founder and chairman of iSON Group, is executing his own vision of 'Digital Africa' inspired by the Indian government's digital drive. With over 28 years of experience in global technology, market development and business process outsourcing (BPO), he is working on moving Africa up the value chain towards Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO), which is more cerebral and offers a better price.

According to Ramesh, "Unlike most BPO and Tech services companies which take work and jobs to IP, ISON has pioneered reversing the trend by taking IP to the work without compromising on world-class quality.

As part of our core strategy, we have invested in developing local systems and empowering local talent to foster a better future for the African continent. We do not outsource local work outside of Africa", he said.

Ramesh further stated that Third Party Outsourcing Industry is getting established in Africa and iSON has emerged as Market Leader. The region has started catching the attention of the leading outsourcing countries like USA and Europe.

“We have been able to get some assignments from some of the largest US companies which are being executed from African countries.  iSON as an On-shoring partner in Africa, for Africa is not only dominating the market but redefining business processes and how they are offered and also improving the market, defining its niche, while offering the best of superior services to the end- customers.”

As such, 99.5% of the iSON workforce comprises nationals in all African footprints, affording the twin benefits of long term employment generation and capacity development. This unique work practice not only accounts for iSON Group’s phenomenal growth since inception in 2011, to become a pace-setter in IT and ITes services but also an evolving driver  of employment generation across Africa and beyond.

Ramesh believes that Africa can replicate India's growth story in IT/ITeS in just 10 years.

According to him, “We saw this opportunity early and have been investing in new centres across Sub-Saharan Africa over the past seven years, which have helped catalyse the ecosystems for growth in these countries".

In less than 8 years of operation, Ramesh’s led iSON Group has rapidly grown to become Africa’s leading IT and ITeS organization. The company which is present in 25 African countries, operating with over 10,000 employees all over the continent.

The company has been on an expansion spree and has invested over 20 million dollars in Africa in the last seven years and plans to invest an additional 20 million dollars to set up four new centres across Africa which will create additional 4,000 jobs.

On the future outsourcing business in Africa, Ramesh said he is optimistic of its growth. “It is not a business trend, it is more of something that is fast becoming a staple in ensuring that organizations conduct their business in the best way possible. More of our clients have come to the realization that outsourcing is really the best way to go in terms of building capacity in their business,” he said.