ISLAND Outsourcers, a leading business process outsourcing (BPO) company in Jamaica, has restructured into two separate brands in a strategic move to facilitate an expanded portfolio, the firm has announced.

What’s more is that the BPO service provider has hired industry veteran Troy Cotton as chief operating officer to help lead the company along an aggressive growth path.

(L-R) Yoni Epstein and Troy Cotton

Island Outsourcers offers inbound and outbound solutions, contact centre, back-office operations, customer service and sales. The firm launched a new brand, ITEL BPO Solutions, to handle support services for, among others, the telecoms, online retail, utilities, health insurance, and medical industries — markets that the company has diversified into since setting up almost two years ago in the Montego Bay Free Zone with one client and five employees.

Today, the company has 10 clients and over 100 employees, according to Island Outsourcers CEO Yoni Epstein.

“We were (initially) solely looking at the travel business, and as we have grown our client base and employee base we have also grown and diversified the industries that we support,” Epstein told the Business Observer yesterday.

“We felt it fit to separate the brands and have them focus on their core competencies,” he added.

The Island Outsourcers brand will specifically focus on the travel and tourist industry, including rent-a-cars, airlines, hotels, sales and reservations, Epstein said.

The company did not disclose the name of clients.

Meanwhile, the firm looks to benefit tremendously from the experience of Cotton, a past senior executive of indigenous outsourcing company e-Services and later Xerox.

“Troy has extensive experience in the contact centre industry from a business development perspective, as well as an operations perspective,” Epstein said.

“Troy comes with a background of working with e-Services from the early days through its acquisition, and was with Xerox up to November of last year. With the expanded growth that we are currently going through, his expertise and knowledge that he brings to the table is a true asset,” he said.

ICT service provider Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) acquired e-Services in 2009 for US$85 million. A few months later, Xerox took over ACS’s businesses for US$6.4 billion in cash and stock.

Epstein was earlier this year recognised among the 50 most influential executives in nearshore outsourcing in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Jamaican businessman was ranked 23 on the list compiled by Nearshore Americas, a news source that describes itself as the “ultimate authority” for the emerging Americas’ offshoring industry.

Nearshore Americas noted on its website that the ranking was the result of a five-month nomination and review process that aims to highlight “the spark and inspiration” behind the nearshore business community. The selection came from 16 different countries in the region, including the Dominican Republic, Barbados, Brazil, Costa Rica, Mexico, United States of America, Canada, amongst others. Awardees were dubbed “Power 50: Architects, Advocates and Visionaries for the Business Process Outsourcing Industry in the Americas”.