Empowering Local Companies in BPO will Address Unemployment – Adebayo

Gbenga Adebayo, group chief executive officer, Communications Network Support Services, has called on federal government and regulatory bodies in the different sectors of the economy to promulgate and implement policies that will encourage local companies in Business Process Outsource (BPO) to create jobs in the country.

Adebayo stated this at the unveiling of CNSSL third Contact centre in Lagos. He noted that his company has employed over 6,000 Nigerians most of which are employed in its contact centre division.

He explained that the main advantage of BPO is the way in which it helps increase a company's flexibility. “In early 2000s BPO was all about cost efficiency, which allowed a certain level of flexibility at the time. Business process outsourcing enhances the flexibility of an organization in different ways:

Most services provided by BPO vendors are offered on a fee-for-service basis, this can help a company to become more flexible by transforming fixed into variable costs.

A variable cost structure helps a company responding to changes in required capacity and does not require a company to invest in assets, thereby making the company more flexible. Outsourcing may provide a firm with increased flexibility in its resource management and may reduce response times to major environmental challenges”.

BPO he said, contributes to a company’s flexibility is that a company is able to focus on its core competencies, without being burdened by the demands of bureaucratic restraints. “Key employees are herewith released from performing non-core or administrative processes and can invest more time and energy in building the firm’s core businesses.


A third way in which BPO increases organizational flexibility is by increasing the speed of business processes.  BPO therefore allows firms to retain their entrepreneurial speed and agility, which they would otherwise sacrifice in order to become efficient as they expanded
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According to him, ‘India has revenues of US$10.9 billion from offshore BPO and over US$30 billion from IT and total BPO. India thus has some 7% share of the total BPO Industry, but a commanding 63% share of the offshore component. Other locations like Philippines, and South Africa have emerged to take a share of the market.

The South African call center industry has grown and directly employs about 74 000 people, contributing over 0.92% to South Africa's gross domestic product (GDP).

However, while the BPO industry is expected to continue to grow in India, its market share of the offshore piece is expected to decline.  The Philippines has overtaken India as the largest call center industry in the world in 2010.

He said that studies have shown that Nigeria is the next major destination for BPO after India and the Philippines who currently have the highest number of Contact center operators.

“We have a high number of Graduates and the quality of training they receive is adequate for BPO service for needing industries across the world. But our policy and regulatory environment must be right, in order to win the confidence of the service providers and industries that may be willing to use Nigeria as a BPO destination.”

Adebayo who is also chairman of Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) decried a situation where all the good of the industry is been accessed from QoS. “This has seen the rating of all players going down south: no one is talking about the impact of employment creating again, no one is talking about the FDI of telecoms, no one is talking about the development of our national economy, for an industry that is contributing over 8% to our GDP. The banking sector is doing 4% but they have been able to manage public perception better.

 There is no body in this room who does not use the banking service and there is no one who does not have poor costumer service related experience with the banks, but as an industry the banking sector is still well respected, because they manage better their public perception”.