Conexus gathers momentum in the global call centre outsourcing industry

If the November/December pilot is successful, this project will bring in $2.1 million (approximately R15 million) into South Africa in 2007 - no small feat for the call centre industry! The pilot itself is worth R1.4 million. This will be completed before the end of this year.

"Conexus is showing evidence of its capability in acquiring and handling call centre and customer management projects outside of the boundaries of South Africa," states Jake Orpen, Managing Director of Conexus. "This fits in nicely with the objectives of SACCCOM, CiG and GEDA to attract off-shore work to SA. A lot of time and effort has been put into promoting South Africa and Gauteng as a credible off-shore destination for out-sourcing of call centre projects. Finally momentum is picking up and there are more and more examples of successful outsourced call centres showing that they can market themselves successfully outside of South Africa."

The government's focus on Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) has strengthened since Government identified the sector as a priority for the delivery of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa - which aims to address the high unemployment rate and economic divide between the rich and poor economies in South Africa.

This is becoming more feasible as South Africa's information and communication technology improves. The challenges traditionally faced by the industry have been high telecommunication costs, which are set to decrease in the future, opening up a huge opportunity for our call centre industry.

The challenges that Conexus face on this project include different time zones, various new market dynamics as well as product names and foreign accents. The big technical challenge is cost effectively routing almost 50 000 telephone calls monthly to the USA. Add to this the tight deadlines and near real-time data that needs to be processed.

"We are confident that we will be able to deal with these problems without any major setbacks," states Orpen. "Our call centre agents are highly skilled and receive extensive training on an ongoing basis. They are also incentivised with promotions and our interviewers therefore display very high levels of ambition and enthusiasm for their jobs."

The pilot alone will add another 25 call centre agents to the 120 that Conexus already employ. Should the pilot be successful and the project rolled-out full-time from January, more agents will join Conexus.

The call centre industry offers enormous opportunity for untrained and underdeveloped workers in South Africa. With the right training, the call centre industry has the chance to create a massive workforce of motivated, professional and enthusiastic agents who will play a large role in South Africa's movement into the global call centre scene.

Conexus' vision is to be a top 5 outsourced call centre in SA by 2007. Already the industry employs over 80 000 call centre agents in its 410 call centres. With the advent of increased international business, this figure is set to increase dramatically.

Orpen adds that the challenges this project will bring about are more manageable due to Conexus' in-house built systems which are web-based, making it easier to import raw data and export leads and reports. "Conexus has always had international aspirations," he states. "This project follows two other international projects we have recently won, including a follow up service for an automotive distributor in Central Africa and a multi-country multi-language project in Northern Africa for a US-based Automotive Manufacturer."

"We are very proud that Conexus is able to play this role in making South Africa a major call centre player," concludes Orpen, "and very excited at the prospect of having our vision of being one of the top outsourced call centres in the country fulfilled."