Outsourcing or offshore and Nigerian business

Outsourcing is a process in which a company delegates some parts of its in-house operations to a third party. To explain this further, it is when a big business hires the services of another business to help them do services that they would have been able to do in-house. For example for so many years British Telecom (BT) has their customer service centre based in India. That means that when ever you call for inquiry or complain or any other customer service inquiries the phone will be picked up in India.
Question is, why will a company want to do this? is this method safe for the company when it comes to giving out information concerning its in-house running to a third party? how does the third party company benefit apart from the money they make? How can this be of benefit to a country like Nigeria? Has Nigeria jumped into outsourcing and how are they doing? What can we do to do more business in this field and create more jobs?

A company will embark in outsourcing as a strategy to cut labour cost. Take for example, if a customer service agent in London gets 1200 pounds (300,000 naira) per month for receiving calls and answering queries via the internet and phones and a Nigerian customer service agent will be happy to do the same job for less than 100,000 naira a month. If you were the UK based company which will you choose? Your guess is as good as mine. Remember that with outsourcing the parent company will not need to have a space to house the workers thereby saving more money. A lot of law binding papers are signed between the two companies to make sure the third party does not leak company information to anyone or make use of it themselves .

How an outsourcing company is set up

An outsourcing company is organised like a call centre, Its set up and networked to handle information services in and out of the centre. Individual computers are assigned to different agents who handle task or calls using the phones and internet services. Infrastructure and a good network system is a must for it to work.

Countries who want outsourcing will usually take their business to the Asian world but very recently Africa have seen a major increase in outsourcing business. This is a result of the following:
Improved infrastructure
Better telecommunication network
Large amount of university graduates
Cheap Labour
Ability to learn quick
Change in government policies helping call centres thrive
computer literacy
Good command of English and telephone manners

Nigeria has a lot going for it as a country that could see us become one of the best countries when it comes to outsourcing. We have  a cheap labour when you compare it against USA, UK and Australia which are the major countries that could employ us. A large amount of Nigerians can handle spoken English and most of them are computer literate, making it easy for them to work in call centres. Every year tens of thousands of Nigerians leave school and after serving there father land are ready for the job market. Outsourcing provided exciting employments for such people.

Nigeria has also improved on telecommunication grounds. The convention help in November last year in Dubai will see Nigeria have unlimited broadband before the end of the year. The GLO 1 fibre optics network is a promise of exciting times in Nigerian telecommunication industries. It will bridge the connectivity problems we have with overseas counties. It will see better targets reached and new grounds explored.

Companies doing well in outsourcing in Nigeria
Comek Resources Nigeria limited
Business processing outsourcing LLC
Fosad consulting limited
Phillips consulting limited
Right company consulting
Socialized Outsourcing
Verity contact centre
For a full list of companies doing well in outsourcing visit:
http://www.nigeriagalleria.com/Business_Services/Outsourcing.html

These are exciting times for doing business in Nigeria. We are at a time when infrastructure is being made available, when the government is doing real work to provide constant power supply, when the chasm between us and the outside world has been made closer due to telecommunication, a time when we are once again believed as a good source foroutsourcing companies and ideas. Let us embrace this new found idea and have more jobs created for many, and my people you now have a list of more companies to look for when looking to get a quick customer service jobs.

Please keep reading and commenting on this blog we will keep working until all our Nigerian dreams and rights are met and surpassed


For more on outsourcing see also 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNwkWNRJyp4