Business Process Outsourcing and Contact Centres

Unique and highly competitive characteristics position Botswana and its International Financial Services Centre as an attractive destination for locating offshore Business Process Outsourcing entities and Contact Centres. The following are factors which contribute to Botswana’s competitive investment climate;

• Political stability, a strong record of democracy, perceived by Transparency International to be the least corrupt country in Africa and respect for the rule of law.
• A high safety index and one of the best education systems in Africa in which all pupils in secondary schools receive personal computer training.
• The highest investment grade sovereign credit rating in Africa awarded by international rating agencies Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s.
• World Class Outsourcing and Consultancy companies, Accenture and Merchants South Africa have affirmed Botswana’s suitability as an Outsourcing destination.

Click here to download the Business Process Outsourcing and Contact Centres Brochure.

Why Outsource to Botswana

Location:

• Botswana’s central location in Southern Africa is ideal for the establishment of regional Business Process Outsourcing entities or Contact Centre to serve the southern African region.

BPO and Contact Centre Skills

• Botswana has a well educated, English speaking labour pool ready to be employed by Business Process Outsourcing companies and Contact Centres that serve clients in English speaking countries.
• Companies in Botswana have access to this labour pool through www.Botsjobs.com ; the Botswana IFSC’s job portal which aims to expose investors to the range of skills available within the country.
• To ensure world class customer service and high quality standards, a Botswana government sponsored, UK accredited Edexcel Contact Centre Management Diploma is offered through the Botswana Accountancy College; one of Botswana’s reputable business schools.
• Relative to worldwide industry trends, attrition rates are low in the Botswana BPO and Contact Centre industry. A Botswana BPO and Contact Centre report done by Merchants South Africa in 2008 states that, “attrition within the Contact Centre sector in Botswana is much lower than Outsource Contact Centre Industry norms”.
• Labour costs in the Botswana and Contact Centre industry are relatively low compared to regional trends.

Time Zone:

• Botswana falls within the Central African Time (CAT) zone which is GMT + 2 and this along with other factors, makes Botswana a convenient offshoring location for African and European firms to name a few.
• The time difference with other countries such as the USA allows for the timely processing and completion of BPO tasks such as Data Mining, Data Cleaning and Salary Processing.

Telecommunications

• A vast array of telecommunications services such as; International Private Leased Circuits, IP VPN and other voice, data and Multimedia services essential to the BPO and Contact Centre Industry are available at competitve rates through licensed Public Telecommunications Operators and providers of Value Added Network Services.
• Licensed service providers are permitted to provide Voice over IP services. The further liberalization of the Botswana Telecommunications sector has lead to service providers offering services at competitive rates and high standards of quality.
• The Government of Botswana is participating in the following international connectivity projects to ensure that the cost and quality of telecommunications services meets international standards;
• West African Festoon Cable System (WAFS): The planned project consists of an optic fibre cable that will run along the western seaboard from Luanda in Angola landing at Congo, DRC, Gabon, Togo, Equatorial-Guinea and through to Bonny in Nigeria. From Nigeria, onward connectivity to the rest of the world will be achieved through the existing submarine cables terminating there.
• East African Submarine System (EASSY): The system consists of a fibre cable that will run from Mtunzini in South Africa, and will continue Northwards, branching out to Mozambique, Madagascar, Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti, and terminating at Port Sudan in Sudan.
• West African Cable System (WACS) connecting Cape town in South Africa with landing stations in Namibia, Angola, the Democratic Republic Of Congo, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Portugal and terminating in London in the United Kingdom.
• The completion of the SEACOM project will see bandwidth costs being reduced considerably by the last quarter of 2009.

Infrastructure

• The Botswana Innovation Hub which is a technology park offers state of the art, world-class infrastructure.
• Botswana boasts a highly capable pool of certified telecommunications equipment and software suppliers with qualified Engineers across all facets of Information Communications Technology. The Botswana ICT Skills base is proficient in Microsoft, Cisco, Avaya etc.

Success Stories

PTA Solutions, a flagship Offshore Call Centre has been accredited with the Botswana IFSC to provide among other services customer service expertise and telemarketing across various industries including Insurance and Financial Services and Telecommunications and Information Technology.

PTA Solutions is a 24 hour, 365 days Call Centre that will ultimately seat 500 agents with more than 90% of these agents being citizens of Botswana. The operation will be an Inbound and Outbound Call Centre situated in Gaborone. PTA Solutions will also handle Data Processing work and will manage Call Centre customer contracts for Fortune 500 companies in the United States of America and other parts of the world.