You are definately out of your league here. Your technical proficiency in such matters is zilch. Say something useful and maybe you’ll earn some recognition. I dont entertain Rush Limbaugh mentality. Since you are obviously looking for a fight I will not dignify you with one. I will very wisely ignore future comments from you. If you feel you want to let out some steam look for me elsewhere.

When the price of sending a text message was high people used to complain that its hard on business. Now that the price of sms and calling is down how come the economy does not show any robust changes.

Please refer to Bankelele for an answer as to how the cost of doing business has come down because of mobile phone usage. Here is the link http://bankelele.blogspot.com/

The BPO business is like any other. Do you know the way when you are a doctor you find you have alot of friends who are doctors or people involved in medicine? Stockbrokers usually know other stockbrokers and so do bankers, lawyers, accountants e.t.c.

Well the first thing you do is register for all the myriad IT conferences dealing with BPO or the niche market you are looking for. Today with the web this is relatively easy to find. You also look to other folks who are in the buss. Infact much of Kenya’s BPO buss could originate from India. India is quickly upskilling and it’s turnover is now very high. They are now looking to outsource the more mundane tasks of their outsourcing jobs.

However the normal marketing techniques still hold for the BPO sector i.e. Advertising online and in the relevant IT publications and good social and business professional networking. Creating a media presence is also a good strategy. Check out how SEACOM has risen from relative obscurity to an almost household name. They used even their environmental impact assessments study to endear themselves to the local fishermen. Now imagine a guy who has never heard of fibre-optics telling you how SEACOM will bring changes to his village and help him sell his fish to distant markets. That means you have to seize every opportunity to sell yourself.

Once the landbased infrastructure is done and the fibres are lit, the software firms will begin to seize the opportunities. The govt too has started offering incentives through the budget. The tax incentives offered to the film board and ISP’s will begin to have an effect. We should however give it two to three years to begin seeing results.

People said said the same thing about cell phones when cell phones arrived. People said business will thrive.

When the price of sending a text message was high people used to complain that its hard on business. Now that the price of sms and calling is down how come the economy does not show any robust changes.

I mean common guys think for a minute…. Teams cable by itself will reduce internet costs same as the price of a sms reduced when the prices got cheaper. Way much more needs to be done with infrastructure.

Need I say more… I’m I talking to people that been to school ????

KE,

KE I told you before…. You need to be conscious when someone says the truth.

This is an interesting point you raise because I was just listening to Marc Faber talk about this issue. i.e. The millions of young people in India and China who can now work over the internet and who are hungrier for money and success. These guys (he said) will work 18 hours a day and as he put it, “they won’t be taking time off to go skiing”. That’s your competition.

Ahem:
I”m sure they’re some qualified software engineers, but the problem, as everyone has said, is the number of people, especially when you think of countries like India and China. So, in that respect, an aspiring entrepreneur should not be going after contracts from large corporations, which may need thousands of qualified people. Go for the small businesses that don’t have that much work in terms of volume, but who are still looking to save costs on labor and other operations.

The question then becomes: how do you get these small businesses to move their back office work to a BPO center in Kenya? If you can figure that out, the money will come, but what do you do? pick up the yellow pages and just start cold calling people? advertise your services online? what?

That’s the hard part: figuring out your niche, then trying to convince them to move their work to Kenya. I like Jellyfish’s accounting example.

What are you guys smoking ?

Where are the engineers, students being turned out by our few, badly run universities. A mobile-phone repair man does not make a software engineer.

“local pool of software workers” ?? have you checked out some of the recent email threads in the nation’s premier technology mailing list – a.k.a skunkworks. Do you see anything remotely intellectually challenging there ????

I agree with your sentiments and would very much like to keep a civil and constructive dialogue. The above sentiments were a digression which I thought was necessary to prevent unconstructive cynicism, nevertheless I am normally coolheaded and civil.

Yes it wont be easy to take the BPO industry from India and China. What Kenya should do is concentrate on niche markets within BPO and introduce value addition. For example we have a number of young people trained as accountants with various levels of CPA certifications we could specialize in some of those back office accountancy tasks. We also have quite a good community of Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) developers.

With this group we could begin to write apps for clients in developed markets depending on their specifications. We also could develope quite abit of domestic outsourcing jobs from the govt. Imagine converting the judicial case law and processes into a digital database. Think also of the ministry of lands registry. Converting all their files into digital databases will ensure that our infant BPO sector will develope the necessary experience for handling huge international jobs. Our universities too could begin taking on scientific projects like the WolframAlpha project which is a huge consumer of bandwidth. Actually this BPO thing has unlimited possibilities which is why I cant understand people who predict failure because it just isn’t an option for us. Nevertheless I am not naive to imagine that everyone has such a rosy picture of the future but Kenya does have brilliant people like you for one who is already involved in the buss. Kenya Yes We Can.