As corporate competition rises companies are constantly looking for solutions to increase efficiency at manageable costs. Several companies have discovered that outsourcing certain operations of their business has provided these solutions and allowed them to leverage their competitive edge. The idea behind it is to outsource secondary operations that are not core skill areas of your company. This effectively allows your staff to focus on key, income generating areas of operations. Of course there are costs of outsourcing the secondary services, but they can be significantly offset by revenues generated from your staff spending more time on primary services.
Typically big companies have been able to take advantage of outsourcing and maximize their economies of scale. Safaricom recently joined the club with intentions to outsource their call center, which has been a weakness in servicing a rapidly growing clientele. However, it’s not just the big companies, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can also benefit from outsourcing.
In fact, AccessKenya has just announced their venture into outsourcing services for SMEs with plans to offer them similar opportunities to enhance operations. This is good news for SMEs in Kenya, as AccessKenya have proven their customer satisfaction, riding on a strong annual performance of Sh600 million in retained earnings and Sh127 million in profits. AccessKenya will offer a range of OutsourcingIT services including network server and backup support, email maintenance and antiviral management.[1]
With major players such as Safaricom and AccesKenya entering into Kenya’s BPO sector, other companies are bound to join. The Kenyan government is also committed to boost these types of ICT developments in efforts to facilitate economic growth. In fact, the government could soon become a major BPO client itself by outsourcing services for its e-Government project.[2] As BPO opportunities continue to emerge domestically, companies in Kenya may not have to look to far for clients or services.
1 response so far ↓
Isaac Oteyo // March 5, 2008 at 8:17 am
Great for Access Kenya and Safaricom in taking the lead. I hope to see other firms join the bandwagon in BPO soon.