Why South Africa Is A Business Process Outsourcing Hub

South Africa has been voted the second most attractive Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) location in the world for three years in a row, based on its reputation as a reliable, cost-effective, and high-quality destination for outsourced business services. In this article, we take a look at why so many international organisations are outsourcing to this country.

Covered In This Article

Why Outsource Consulting Implementation In The First Place?
World-Class Chartered Accountants
Affordability, Time Zone & Communication
A Growing Oasis For Business Process outsourcing
Why Velocity

Outsourcing business process development has grown in popularity as the post-pandemic world becomes more connected. Proverbial borders have been broken down thanks to technological advancement and more businesses adopting a work-from-anywhere policy. This has led to a spike in organisations from Europe, the Middle East and Asia outsourcing their business process reviews and automation to South Africa.

South Africa BPO Market Highlights

• The market has emerged as a leading global BPO hub and is still growing at a positive rate.
• The BPO sector in South Africa is powered by a tech-savvy and educated workforce and a business climate that is favourable for exceptional quality customer engagement BPOs.
• The regional government is strongly committed to the constant skills development of its BPO labour force to ensure the expansion and growth of the sector.
• The finance and accounting service segment is expected to grow.

Why Outsource Consulting Implementation In The First Place?

Structuring, implementing or even changing business processes can take up valuable time and resources not only from high-level executives but from team members across the entire company. Any delays in project roll-out and delivery could be as detrimental as missed revenue streams, further delaying any return on investment even before the new processes have been rolled out.

An External Auditor

It is necessary when auditing your current situation to look at each aspect of the business impartially. Not every organisation is lucky enough to have an individual who is completely unattached to the processes they are auditing or has the knowledge to do so. An auditor will examine all the different areas of the organisation from customer relations and production to human resources with complete impartiality. An Auditor may have their own niche – certain industries they specialise in assisting – but they will not know the exact processes and procedures used in each organisation.

Outsourced Training Leaders

Not only do outsourced auditors make the certification process quick and easy, but they also help train and coach an organisation to adapt to the new processes it will need to implement as part of the business processes it is adopting. As experts in the field, they will have ways which best suit your organisation. This will lead to efficiently training of employees. A good auditor will also have the expertise to identify any issues in your current procedures and improve them to make them more sustainable.

World-Class Chartered Accountants

For decades, South African chartered accountants have been known for their auditing, accounting, financial analysis, risk management and financial structure expertise. This is thanks to the governing body, the South African Institute of Charted Accountants (SAICA) which upholds the highest technical and ethical standards of the trade.

SAICA is recognised as one of the world’s leading accounting institutes. Recent research conducted by SAICA revealed that nearly a quarter of the CEOs of the 200 largest listed companies are CAs(SA) and in those companies, 78% of the CFOs also hold this prestigious designation.

Members of SAICA are subjected to a Code of Professional Conduct, which provides guidelines for ethical and professional behaviour. Fundamental ethical principles to which CAs(SA) are expected to achieve include:

Affordability, Time Zone & Communication

The South African BPO industry has been a strong performer for the past several years. On top of that, the local market size is projected to reach USD 3.6 billion by 2027, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.2% during the forecast period. 

As a BPO location, South Africa has a number of advantages that can be leveraged to attract new business from international markets. BPO providers are more cost competitive than their European and American counterparts, with a fully-loaded cost base approximately 11% below the global average – and in some cases up to 50% less. This is thanks to the low cost of living and favourable exchange rate  as well as support from the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition. 

Always On Time

South Africa’s time zone makes it a preferred outsourcing destination for European countries. South Africa is just two hours ahead of the UK and one hour ahead of most other European countries, like Germany and Sweden.

South Africa has a larger time difference for US (6 to 9 hours) and Australian companies (6 to 8 hours). This can be beneficial when it comes to turn-around times on tasks. In addition, South Africa’s time difference from the US is smaller than in Asian countries like India (9.5 to 12.5 hours) and China (12 to 15 hours).

Talk The Talk

English is the primary government and business language in South Africa. There are approximately 16.5 million English speakers in the country.

South Africa placed an impressive 12th in the 2021 EF English Proficiency Index. It outranked many other prominent outsourcing locations, including Poland (16th), Malaysia (28th), India (48th), and China (49th).

Besides English, many South Africans speak other internationally-spoken languages such as Portuguese, Spanish, and German – Velocity team members included. 

Communication

South Africa has a robust internet and telecommunications infrastructure. In recent years, the country has made a shift to fibre internet with the installation of the SEACOM fibre-optic network. This allows for fast and reliable internet connectivity.

A Growing Oasis For Business Process Outsourcing

According to the South Africa BPO Market Report highlights from 2020, South Africa’s BPO sector is expected to reach 3.6 billion USD by 2027.

By 2020, South Africa’s BPO sector employed over 270,000 people. The DTIC has set targets to increase this number by 250,000 to 500,000 by 2030.

In addition, South African BPO players provide higher-quality services owing to strength across five key areas: availability of skills, infrastructure, risk profile, business environment, and industry size.

Why Velocity

Velocity is a hybrid advisory, technology, and inbound marketing company, whose primary objective is to optimise the entire customer lifecycle, and ultimately, enhance business performance.

Our team of chartered accountants, internal auditors and business process engineers will conduct a thorough audit of your “As Is” processes with a viewpoint of identifying inherent risk as well as potential opportunities. Subsequent to that we will design the ideal “To Be” processes in order to optimise efficiency, mitigate the identified risks and maximise any opportunities.

We then use CRM technology to automate and align these processes enabling your business to reach its full potential while providing all relevant decision makers with full over the site through detailed dashboards of every process and function within the operation.

The Velocity BPO strategy consists of three steps: 

• Review: With surgical precision, we review processes and streamline departments to perform their best.
• Design: From the ground up, our auditors design new business processes that fit into your existing structures.
• Automate: Through our partnership with leading CRM platforms, we offer business automation across all departments.

To find out more about Velocity's Business Process Review, Design and Automation offerings, click here.