An Information Technol
ogy (IT) expert, Mr Gbenga Adebayo, on Thursday called for appropriate policy to grow the Business Process Outsource (BPO) industry in the country.
Adebayo, who is the Group Chief Executive Officer, Communications Network Support Services Ltd. (CNSSL), made the call during a media tour of CNSSL Contact Centre in Lagos.
He said that growing BPO operations would ensure that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country increased.
According to him, BPO involves the contracting of the operations and responsibilities of specific business functions or processes to a third-party service provider.
“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 centre 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,’’ he said.
Adebayo said that such policy should be one that would protect local BPO, so that companies would not sort outsourcing services from other countries.
He said that the main advantage of BPO was the way in which it helped increase a company’s flexibility.
The IT expert said that outsourcing might provide a firm with increased flexibility in its resource management and could reduce response time to major environmental changes.
“Another way in which BPO 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,’’ he said.
Adebayo said that CNSSL planned being a destination of choice for BPO, hence developing the right knowledge and human capital to position the company for the great future opportunity as a business.
He said that the company had six centres, with three located in Lagos, one each in Ilorin, Kano and Kaduna.
“We are one of the highest employers of labour in the telecom industry today, with over 6000 graduate employees.
“We saw an early opportunity in BPO and over the past seven years, we have developed capacity and human capital to support the telecom industry in Nigeria and other sectors requiring our type of services in the economy,’’ Adebayo said.
He said that the company planned to have 20,000 call centre representatives in the next five years.
The Tide source reports that the CNSSL offers outsourcing service for MTN Nigeria, receiving an average of 500,000 customer calls in its Lagos centre daily.
The company also receives an average of 2 million calls from six centres daily.