BPO stirs Kingdom economy

The Saudi economy has the potential to accelerate in growth by utilizing the services of business process outsourcing (BPO) providers, Joe Tawfik, CEO of Dubai-based Kinetic BPO, a specialist business process outsourcing company.

An industry report by IDC places the worldwide BPO market to reach $202.6 billion in 2016, representing a five-year CAGR of 5.3 percent. The growth rate in Saudi Arabia is expected to be greater since the marketplace is underpenetrated. Kinetic BPO predicts the growth rate at closer to 30 percent in Saudi as opposed to the global average of 5 percent.

The BPO industry has a successful track record of providing a large and sustainable home worker workforce. This would be ideal for the employment of Saudi women. If the BPO industry is properly supported by private and public enterprise then we would expect that the industry could easily employ over 50,000 women in the next 5 years.

“There is ample business literature to confirm that companies who have a strong focus on their core competency tend to outperform those that have divided focus across various different areas. Instead of focusing their energies on doing one thing very well they dilute their performance by spreading their energies on multiple aspects of their business,” he said.

What BPO companies offer is the ability to take away the energy spent on some business processes to enable a company to have greater focus on its core business. Contact centers, for example, are very important in managing customer interaction.

“A best practice contact center delivers real value to a company because it makes it easier for a customer to buy goods and services from a company.”