Egypt still hot for contact centre outsourcing - but concerns lie ahead

Egypt's explosion on the CRM outsourcing scene five years ago continues to attract attention and foreign investment, but could be slowed by concerns over security and stability according to Ovum's latest research.

The Future of CRM Outsourcing in Egypt, indicates that over the coming five years, Ovum predicts a sizable expansion of Egyptian outsourced contact centre deployments, growing from around 9,000 workstations in 2009 to approximately 15,000 in 2015. According to report author Peter Ryan, there are several reasons for this.

"Foremost driving Egyptian CRM outsourcing growth is aggressive pricing coupled with extensive scalability", said Ryan. "Egypt is one of the few locations that outsourcers can use for the delivery of multiple European languages, including English, French, German and Italian. The key is Egypt's addressable agent pool, which is one of the largest in the world, which is important in ensuring cost stability over the long term"

Ryan also indicated that these attributes have been helped by extensive government cooperation with the private sector in terms of creating the atmosphere conducive to foreign investment, including tax cuts, training subsidies and incentives.

"Over the past five years, the Egyptian CRM outsourcing space has grown from a few locally-owned firms to including some of the largest names in the global industry, including Sykes, Teleperformance, Stream Global Services and most recently Sutherland. This will instill confidence in Egypt among clients, and other vendors that may be uncertain if setting up in that country is viable".

However, according to Ryan, an Egyptian delivery strategy is still a tough sell in some quarters. Most notably, many prospective clients are still uncertain if Egypt is politically and economically stable enough to house contact centre services for Western end-users.

In addition, worries about transparency in business dealings are also question for concern. Ryan indicates that there is work already happening on the part of both public sector officials and private sector executives to allay these fears. But, if Egypt is to continue to prosper to the extent it already has, these efforts will need to be maintained, if not augmented.