Guyana has been largely contributing to the fast growing operations of a multi-billion-dollar foreign company through Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), with a significant amount of Guyanese falling under its employ.
Wayfair, a Boston-based online furniture purveyor that generated over US$2.25 billion in revenue in 2015, reported that the company is relying on a BPO provider in Georgetown to support its back-office operations.
BPO is the contracting of the operations and responsibilities of a specific business process to a third-party service provider. BPO services include payroll, human resources (HR), accounting and customer/call centre relations.
The two leading global BPO providers in Guyana are Qualfon and Teleperformance.
Wayfair’s team in Guyana handles merchandising and the back-office type of work.
“We have been very pleased with our team in Guyana. The country offers a strong talent pool of well-educated, native English speakers who are very familiar with American culture,” said the Vice President of the Merchandising Operations Dave Raymond in a prepared statement published on Nearshore Americas.
In the case of Wayfair, the company is partnering with Emerge BPO, founded by Adrian Collins, who was born in Guyana and educated largely in the United States.
Emerge employs more than 400 employees, the bulk of whom are based in Guyana. The company also employs at-home workers in the US and Canada.
According to the World Bank, the unemployment rate for female youths in Guyana is 32 per cent while for male youths, it is 20 per cent.
If willing to commit to a career in BPO, many Guyanese can find meaningful employment since there appears to be a developing trend to contract smaller countries, particularly in the English-speaking Caribbean.
This will in turn put its populace in a better position to score more lucrative, digital opportunities if they equip themselves to chase after that business.
These jobs, according to reports, bring not just income, but crucially needed stability for the country, which ranked third poorest in South America with a per capita income of US$3700 per annum per household.
The BPO sector is rapidly expanding on the global landscape and is estimated to increase tenfold by 2020.
In neighbouring Jamaica, Cabinet approved several multimillion-dollar contracts for expansion of the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector, and for infrastructural work across the island.
Government officials had noted that the transformation will ensure Jamaica’s prime positioning for transition to a digital society.
(Guyana Times)
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