Middle East as Outsourcing Hot Spot
We’ll just go out on a limb and guess that the Middle East is not the first part of the world that comes to readers’ minds as an up-and-coming hot spot for outsourcing. Middle East these days is likely to make U.S. readers think first of war in Iraq or Afghanistan or fighting in Israel and Lebanon. But an article written on August 21, 2007 in The Wall Street Journal suggests that some major outsourcing services companies Satyam Computer Services, Wipro, Tata Consultancy Services, are beginning to set up centers in the Middle East and North Africa, and that the trend is serious.
What’s up? The WSJ article cites rising costs in India, increasing need in the Middle East and Europe, and the flow of oil money in the region as some of the reasons for the shift in resources. Advantages of the new locations also include a more central time zone relative to North America, Europe, and Asia; geographic proximity to Europe; a multilingual labor force; and greater demand for Arabic speakers.
The Middle East and Africa Group of the technical and customer support professional association HDI hosted a regional conference in Cairo in May. The group is predicting a 30% annual increase in call center jobs in the regions it covers. Just this week (August 26-29) the 13th Middle East Technology Show, hosted by the Jordan Computer Society, with the support of the Jordanian Ministry of Information and Communications Technology took place in Amman, with initial estimates of 30,000 attendees. That’s a lot of interest in technology.
And consider the Global Peace Index study recently released by the Economist Intelligence Unit (May 2007). The study used two dozen separate data indicators to describe the stability of the countries surveyed in terms of the potential for violence to occur in each:
“The 24 indicators include internal and external factors such as levels of violence within a country, organized crime, the number of people in prison, and military expenditure.”
Using those criteria, Norway is number one of the 121 countries surveyed, with the highest stability index. The United States ranks 96th, just ahead of Iran but below Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, Ghana, Kuwait, Libya, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Yemen.
Thinking out of the box is usually touted as a positive, creative activity. Thinking in stereotypes basically obliterates your capacity to think creatively. So here’s a creative proposition: Maybe the Middle East and North Africa aren’t so unstable after all. Maybe those areas will provide attractive opportunities for investment over the next few years.
No matter what the trend may be, or who’s doing business where, what do you think?
–
Curt Barry is president of F. Curtis Barry & Co., a fulfillment consulting company assisting multichannel businesses with order management and inventory management systems evaluation and implementation; online at: http://www.fcbco.com.
Tweet This 
Delicious 
Digg 
Facebook 
StumbleUpon
Related posts
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
