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”.

Minister of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining, Phillip Paulwell, witnessed the signing during a Breakfast Forum staged by the BPIAJ at the University of the West Indies, Western Jamaica Campus, last Friday.

Minister of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining, Phillip Paulwell (centre) and Executive Director of HEART/NTA, Dr Wayne Wesley (right) sign the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Business Process Industry Association of Jamaica (BPIAJ) and HEART /NTA, while BPIAJ President Yoni Epstein looks on. (PHOTO: PHILLIP LEMONTE)

Minister Paulwell noted that the potential in ICT, and in particular the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector, is vast. He pointed out that Jamaica has not as yet achieved the level of success that the Government in 1998 intended, but a lot more understanding and learning has taken place since then.

“What I am determined to do this time around is to ensure that rather than just a minister going out crusading, we really try to build an effective partnership. It is partnership that is going to enable Jamaicans and this country to move forward, especially in relation to some of the new areas and industries,” he stated.

He said that the Government, through his ministry, has been at pains to try to get the necessary partnerships going. These partnerships involve the Ministries of Finance; Industry, Investment and Commerce; Education and all their respective agencies.

He described the BPIAJ as a very important aspect of the partnership, adding that the organisation is a most welcome development in the ICT and BPO industry because of its effective lobbying strategies.

Minister Paulwell said that he was particularly pleased at the development of the MOU between HEART/NTA and the BPIAJ, adding that it will take the nation “to that layer of the matrix that we have not been able to satisfactorily fulfil over the years.”

YONI Epstein has been recognised among the 50 most influential executives in nearshore outsourcing in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Jamaican businessman, who is the principal of Island Outsourcers in the Montego Bay Free Zone, 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.

Yoni Epstein, CEO of Island Outsourcers

Nearshore Americas noted on its website that the ranking is 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”.

Epstein, in a press release, said he was “ecstatic” to be amongst the selectees.

Island Outsourcers offers inbound and outbound solutions, contact centre and back office operations, customer service and sales. The firm employs some 50 persons.

Epstein also serves as president of the Business Process Industry Association of Jamaica (BPIAJ), which he helped formed last year to act as the premier national entity geared towards improving the operating and regulatory business environment, to assist member companies as a group in positioning the interest of the industry, and to help promote and enhance the image of the sector in Jamaica, the region and globally.

Prior to his achievement, Epstein served 12 years in contact centre management at Sandals and Beaches contact centre — Unique Vacations Limited — where he managed over 400 employees in five countries simultaneously.

As the head of the BPIAJ, Epstein has been a strong voice calling for the development of space on the island to support the BPO sector.

Along with sufficient space to accommodate call centre seats, Epstein said a drive to attract more local investment and a better training model are strategies needed to accelerate ICT activity.

Epstein has suggested that state promotion agency Jampro can contribute to the BPO sector by not solely looking at foreign investors, and having more local investor involvement. According to the businessman, if Jampro went on a campaign to find 50 additional seats for each of the 26 BPO players in Jamaica, approximately 1,300 new jobs would be created.

This, he said would significantly contribute to the Jamaican ICT industry which employs some 12,000 persons and generates $3.1 billion in payroll and consumption taxes annually for the Government.

 Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/business/Jamaican-among–Power-50–outsourcing-players-in-Americas_13955332#ixzz2ParLhn8x

” For this sector to grow — and the ministers (of government) are talking 40,000 jobs in the sector and growing the sector by about 2,500 jobs a year — you need a pool of people to pull from in order to be able to hire and provide trainable staff for the companies that are coming into Jamaica,” he argued.

EPSTEIN… you need a pool of people to pull from in order to be able to hire and provide trainable staff for the companies that are coming into Jamaica

Junior Minister of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining (STEM) Julian Robinson

” We are willing as an administration to sit down with the Business Process Industry Association and discuss how we can achieve these things because it is important. It (IT) is a sector that we have targeted for growth. We believe we have competitive advantages in it and the major differentiator is the quality of the labour. So to the extent that we can ensure that our labour is best prepared through training it is something we would support and encourage,” Robinson told the Observer West.

Contending that the level of IT training offered by some institutions now is below the standard which is desired for persons to commence working in call centres, Epstein stressed that valuable production time is lost when companies have to train new workers.

” The employees are hired and given general customer service and sales training and computer training and then they are given a client specific training. So depending on what the client’s prerequisites are, it could be two, three, five weeks of training. Now if you had that general customer service and sales training, that could cut it down by a third,” the BPIAJ head explained.

According to Epstein, in 2005 the Dominican Republic was “neck and neck” with Jamaica in terms of the number of persons employed in the sector. However, the Spanish speaking Caribbean country currently employs close to 30,000 persons in the sector “because they have developed a world class training facility that provides people who are trained and ready to work”.

“If we don’t do that, we will be up a creek without a paddle” Epstein declared.

He argued that the lack of adequately trained labour force has resulted in the poaching of employees from companies.

” When companies come in they want trained personnel so you have to go to other companies in the Free Zone and it causes a bit of rattle on the industry. Whereas, if you had vocational schools, the high schools playing a part, and the universities playing a part in truly training persons for this sector in basic call centre skills, and not only the line level, but the middle management and the management levels, you can have one hub. And most likely that hub should be HEART Trust where they are just pumping people into the industry”.

There are about 26 call centres in the Montego Bay Freezone.