Global BPO trends augur well for Sri Lanka’s BPO industry growth
Tuesday, 6 January 2015 00:15
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The Ministry of Youth Affairs and Skills Development in collaboration with the National Youth Corps (NYC) recently established the Institute of Business Process Outsourcing (IBPO) in Colombo.
Being the only Government institute that awards an international certification for entry level, specialist/managerial level and team leaders in the BPO industry, they are set to aim at higher levels in the industry.
While the BPO certification Institute (BCI) in USA functions as its international certification body, BCI has a worldwide network of 50 nations and 500 locations and it awards 18 international certifications for IT-BPO.
Outsourcing involves the contracting of business processes to third parties in order for businesses to avoid certain costs, such as taxes. In 2012, business process outsourcing contributed a much larger proportion of the industry’s global revenue than information technology outsourcing, generating 62.6 billion and $ 36.5 billion respectively. Financial services and manufacturing generally constitute a great share of the global outsourcing market.
Advancing from the 29th position in 2007 to 16th position in 2009, Sri Lanka has shown great promise in technical knowledge for the BPO industry to be in line with the international standard.
The consulting giant, A.T. Kerney’s Global Services Location Index (GSLI) index identifies the top 50 countries for outsourcing globally as the best destinations for providing outsourcing services, including IT services and support, contact centers, and back-office support.
As Sri Lanka is currently trying to match the global BPO trend, the Sri Lankan Association of Software and Service Companies (SLASSCOM) have extended its invaluable support in achieving it.
“Sri Lanka is ranked among the top eight countries that has a flexible labour market and has more advanced infrastructure quality and network readiness. In this era where the country is moving towards economic development, the Government is focusing on transforming the country into a dynamic global hub in multiple sectors. One of the key areas among these is the creation of a Knowledge Hub. It is no secret that the growth of the ICT/BPO sector will be a huge contributing factor to this effort. Both in the development of the Business Process Outsourcing industry and transforming Sri Lanka into a knowledge hub, the KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) activity will take centre-stage. This is an area that all the focus has been placed on. Looking at the high-end nature of the work, the proficiency of the workforce and the well developed and robust infrastructure, this is the niche of Sri Lanka in this sector,” stated Nalinda Ilangakoon, Chairman/Director of NYC.
The emergence of BPO industries has had an enormous impact on the country’s unemployment rate. Sri Lanka is emerging as among the lowest risk markets, both in terms of personal safety and business security and offers a unique mix of extremely low costs among the lowest anywhere, combined with a highly educated English speaking population (91% adult literacy and 90% secondary school enrolment) with sophisticated technical skills and a business environment and infrastructure that is superior to most low cost countries.
The sector generates more than $ 400 million in exports. According to a scientific research found in Statista, the future target for this industry in Sri Lanka is to reach $ 1 billion by 2015 and $ 5 billion by 2020 and at some point become the largest foreign exchange earner for the country. Driving the ICT/BPO industry growth is something that cannot be done in isolation but needs to be part of a much wider initiative where the success of all components are intrinsically linked together.
The Institute of Business Process Outsourcing (IBPO) is Sri Lanka’s first fully-fledged training institute for Business Process Outsourcing, which is planned to spread its network all around the country within the next two years and is on the mission of attracting many youth to the BPO industry.
The IBPO program focuses on building employability in functions like back office operations, customer care, finance and technical support in industries such as hotels, travel, telecom, BPO, call centres and financial services and the courses it offers come with the assurance of 100% job placements in reputed BPO companies.
