Dear Stakeholders,

It is with pride that I warmly greet all our stakeholders across South Africa and within the broader international business community. Having recently been appointed as CEO of BPeSA on an interim basis in September, it with a sense of passion and purpose that I take on the task to lead BPeSA. I am especially encouraged about my role, as we now have an aligned and united industry organisation of regional chapters in BPeSA. As we move forward, I commit to maintain a policy of transparency and open dialogue with you to ensure that you feel as much a part of our vision and mission as we do. To this end, we will establish a strong basis for communication and engagement with all our BPeSA members and stakeholders. We will be keeping you informed through our existing communication channels: our website, newsletters, and our national print publication, Knowledge Executive. Keep a look out for these.

From a business perspective, my immediate objective is to deliver a level of service and value to meet the needs of you, our members. We will shortly be undertaking initiatives to establish how we can better understand and meet your specific interests and needs. On a strategic level, we have already fostered closer working relationships with our government and business partners to determine a higher level of cooperation and collaboration.

At the same time, we acknowledge that there are areas that BPeSA needs to address going forward. I am committed and will strive to lead BPeSA to achieve our goal of representing the best interests of you, our stakeholders and members. Equally, I appeal to you to support us in our endeavours to fulfill our mandate to add value and support the growth and development of BPO & O in South Africa. I call on you to partner with us and support BPeSA in what we strive to accomplish.

Together we will achieve more!

Regards,
Bulelwa Koyana
CEO

The SANS 990 BPO&O standards, launched in 2008, are available for companies wanting to ensure that they become certified in best practice service delivery. The three parts of SANS 990 BPO&O standards provide an effective quality management for three processes:
Part 1 : Outbound contact centre operations (including the process of making calls to customers, typically in telesales)
Part 2 : Inbound Contact Centre Operations (focus on the process receiving calls, in a form of customer enquiries or complaints)
Part 3 : Back-office processing operations (the process of all non-call based activities by the central processing department, typically payroll processing and accounts receivables/payable)
These standards provide guidance to new market entrance and SMME’s on operational best practices. For more information about and/or to purchase the SANS 990 BPO&O standards visit the SABS website www.sabs.co.za  or contact them on email: sales@sabs.co.za .

The Code of Good Practice (CGP) is a guide for the professional and ethical conduct of the Business Process Outsourcing & Offshoring industry. The purpose of the CGP is to ensure that a level of professional business conduct is maintained across the industry. The CGP applies to 3rd party service providers “outsourcers” and “captives”, and all BPeSA members (including those of the BPeSA Regional Chapters), are obliged to comply. The CGP encourages members to, amongst others:

• always act within the boundaries of fair competitive practice
• refrain from disparaging, derogatory or other negative public statements about competitors
• declare any conflict of interest that might be perceived to compromise the ability to deal equitably with customers and stakeholders.

The CGP also encourages members to maintain sufficient capacity to meet both the requirements of our customers relating to service levels and the legitimate expectations of our employees relating to working conditions, in compliance with the LRA, and the BCEA.

One of our high priorities is to ensure that we add value to our members. We will be embarking on several initiatives to improve our customer service delivery to you in the forthcoming months. We encourage you to retain your BPeSA membership so that we can continue to implement our development programmes and substantially grow the BPO & O industry in South Africa.

We encourage you to contact us to provide us with feedback and any queries you may have. It is only with your input that we can continuously improve and develop on what we have achieved so far.

BPeSA and the SSETA are also investigating mechanisms to assist companies that are in financial distress. This assistance will be in the form of a training scheme, with details still to be finalised.

For more information on the above two initiatives, contact our National Project Manager for Skills Development, Gizelle Hutchinson gizelle@bpesa.org.za.

If you have any queries regarding this newsletter or suggestions to improve or would like to contribute information, contact Mabel Nhlabathi on mabel@bpesa.org.za