Kenya BPO should approach scholarship with caution

Kenya’s Business Process Outsourcing industry may be celebrating after last week’s launch of the “LiveBean Scholarship Program” valued at US$300,000, but there is need to ask deeper questions.

The scholarship may be a good idea, but the BPO society and the ICT Board need to scrutinize the source of the funds and whether there are any strings attached. The society and ICT Board officials need to read the fine print and establish whether the scholarship ties any of the society members or scholars in any way.

While LiveBean is said to be a leading company with a track record of revamping customer service functions for leading organizations and setting up highly successful customer contact centers in India, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Europe, it may be important to tread carefully on the training credentials.

In a brief to members, James Ochola an executive officer at the BPO society, said that the LiveBean team had experience in business combinations comprising mergers/acquisitions and strategic alliances for specific units like contact centers.

From the Web site, LiveBean officials look very experienced, but their training credentials do not say much about success of trained BPO professionals. LiveBean Consulting & Training Private Limited was founded in July 2007 to operate in consulting, training, and customer experience research and management.

With such a young company, Kenya may be used as a starting ground for the company, and it does not mean that the BPO professionals will get high quality training compared to that offered by established companies such as Call Center Industry Advisory Council (CIAC).

There is nothing wrong with a new company setting up a training base in Kenya with the view of expanding its market, but the sector will win the international legitimacy battle by also engaging the more established trainers.

While the course will cover basics in finance, contract negotiations and management, customer relationship, and outsourcing, it will also describe the process of managing the relationship between client and service provider.