BUSINESS SERVICES
These stakeholders include BPESA and its GBS community, various levels of government led by the dtic and several NGOs. The definition of GBS includes CX call centres, shared services outsourcing, IT outsourcing, finance and accounting outsourcing, back and front office offshoring services from overseas-based multinationals as well as entities operating within the African continent. Some of us may not be aware of the jobs that the GBS industry has imported into this country and its future potential. This recent accolade of surpassing India is a massive coup for the country. Many of us who have been aware of the criticality of the GBS industry’s contribution to the growth of the economy can be proud of this achievement. Our esteemed President of the Republic also reinforced that this recent recognition goes a long way towards solidifying the industry’s importance to the South African economic growth agenda. However, this is where it gets interesting. Just as Wayde is now expected to be the front-runner by most South Africans even whilst his competition focuses on extricating themselves from their positions in his rear flanks, so do South Africans now expect the GBS industry to drive home our newly found position, with our global rivals in hot pursuit. Ryan Advisory’s announcement of the results explains this best, indicating “It is also clear that buyer favourability is fluid… South African outsourcing stakeholders [sic] cannot rest on their laurels.” Whilst our clear communication of South Africa’s GBS Value Proposition should be applauded, it will be unwise to underestimate the effort it will take to maintain our newfound position, especially in the wake of a global pandemic that has created a hotbed for increased disruption in global industries.
WHAT SHOULD SOUTH AFRICAN GBS STAKEHOLDERS BE DOING TO AVOID “THE RISE AND FALL” SYNDROME? SoluGrowth (Pty) Ltd is one of the GBS players in South Africa. We founded the company in 2018 and we currently employ 230 employees, with the majority of our staff serving offshore clients in the US, UK,
Singapore and in various African countries. As one of the players in the sector, we believe avoiding the “rise and fall” syndrome should be approached in two ways: • Firstly, by constantly innovating in the GBS sector using technology enablers to strengthen the foundations built by our accent-neutral, empathetic and skilled workforce, which has made South Africa a firm favourite with international buyers. This requires continued investment in capabilities such as customer analytics, conversational artificial intelligence, and augmented platforms. • Secondly, by furthering our push towards being at the forefront in the nontraditional areas of the GBS that focus on the more complex back-office and niche domain services (e.g. data analytics, digital software testing, financial reporting and actuarial services). There are specific industries that South Africa has been one of the great leaders in globally, such as banking, insurance, retail, health, etc. GBS provides significant opportunities for these industries to continue offshoring their complex back-office services. This two-pronged approach has the potential to solidify South Africa’s foothold in the GBS arena, whilst creating significant opportunities to increase employment and enhance our skillsets as a nation. There is no reason why the reputation of our Chartered Accountants cannot vault us to the top Global F&A destination ranking within the next few years. The advantage of improving innovation and niche services does not replace the importance of new jobs and inclusive employment growth to bring the unemployed youth into the workplace. Instead, this provides an opportunity to attract more companies to offshore to SA through (i) Attracting more globallybased multinationals to offshore their services into South Africa, (ii) Attracting global GBS companies to select South Africa as one of their delivery locations around the world, (iii) Encouraging globally operating South African companies to relocate their GBS services to South Africa and (iv) Incentivising SA companies that were early adopters of offshoring to other
This recent recognition goes a long way towards solidifying the industry’s importance to the South African economic growth agenda competing locations, such as India, to return their GBS services back home. Innovation and digital economy are not a threat to inclusive job creation but are an integral part of attracting more new jobs into South Africa. The latest proof of concept conducted by Harambee – which develops the youth as new entrants into the digital economy, such as digital software testing – is proving very successful. Their proof of concept is already serving a Canadian client utilising previously unemployed youth and will soon be helping South Africa to increase the supply of the digital workforce. As President Ramaphosa wrote in his weekly newsletter on 12 April 2021 “… the economic recovery is not about a return to what was, but about transformation to what is next”. While we are celebrating this recent accolade, let us visualise the dream and focus on leveraging the sectors that will contribute towards attaining the required jobs growth for the next decades.
SANDILE GWALA Founder & CEO of SoluGrowth Questions? sgwala@solugrowth.com
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