This article was contributed by Pumela Salela, consultant with the World Bank on ICT enabled services
The Buzz
A new buzzword has emerged in the Business Process Outsourcing circles and its called “Socially Responsible Outsourcing”. “Triple S” (SSS) or Sustainable Socially Responsible Sourcing, Fair Trade for Outsourcing , Rural Outsourcing and ITES 3.0 ( The third wave of ICT Enabled Services) are some of the terms used to describe this new phenomenon.
The Benefits
Socially responsible outsourcing is seen as “taking jobs to the people” so that those who benefit are those who need jobs the most. It replaces the notion of people living in disadvantaged areas as aid dependent, and replaces it with the idea that those people are trade worthy. It can be likened to the ‘fair trade” principle that was introduced in other sectors of the economy in the past. In addition, other benefits include generating direct employment for skilled workers in developing and under developed regions, generating indirect employment for semi-skilled and unskilled workers, reducing labor movement, resolving issues of immigration, reducing brain-drain and eventually, strengthening communities.
International Examples
A few companies have started practicing socially responsible outsourcing. In the lead is Samasource whose employees consist of marginalized workers who offer their customers lower costs and longer-term value than traditional business process outsourcing solutions. Source For Change is an all-women rural Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) company based in Bagar, Rajasthan empowering women through employment opportunities and providing quality dedication and best practices to the BPO industry. Source For Change aims to present rural women a platform to be financially independent and to achieve greater social standing. Other companies in the game include Byrraju , If People, Gamm Communications, Tata Consultancy Services and Digital Divide Data amongst others.
What next?
In South Africa, the government had the foresight to give additional benefits to BPO companies that set up operations in what is referred to as “the designated areas”. These are areas in South Africa which are disadvantaged, some of which fall under what used to be referred to as ‘presidential poverty nodes’. BPO SMMEs need to take advantage of the available BPO incentives in the identified designated areas and locate their operations in such areas. This would allow them to benefit financially whilst serving the overall country objective of reducing unemployment and ending poverty in South Africa.
PS, for those who are interested there are triple S awards running on www.gsc3Sawards.com
Thursday, November 4, 2010
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At the moment it would probably be a lot harder for smaller firms to do social outsourcing. Larger organizations can take a look into this option but resources within these areas must be examined carefully.
ReplyDeletePumela Salela: Another way of looking at it is for the smaller firms to see themselves as beneficiaries of Socially Responsible Outsourcing by establishing themselves in rural areas so that they can gain the benefits either from an incentive point of view or the bigger firms outsourcing to them ( smaller firms) because they are based in rural areas. The bigger firms would thus be fulfilling their socially responsible outsourcing mandate by giving the work to the smaller firms in these locations.
ReplyDeleteHaben Berhe: I think your competitive adv. is your specialization. If you are an SMME you can’t afford to do and be everything to everyone hoping to get business immediately. You can easily tarnish your reputation before you even get off the ground. Once you build your reputation in certain tasks, you either expand that specific specialization or add new complimentary elements that differentiate you from your current competitors (Apple Video Chat in the smartphone arena, for example. Then it is on to the next level specialization once your competitors catch up).
ReplyDeleteIf you are a service provider, as Pumela described, you can go to rural areas to benefit from government incentives to grow your business. Eventually if you are successful enough, you can also spin off your rural division as your “SSS” and expand somewhere else. Yes, scale is a factor in that the losses that come from disastrous outsourcing relationship in the “SSS” arena might be too costly to an SMME service provider than a larger one.