Bangladeshi BPO Industry: Trends & Trendsetters 2021
Bangladesh has been experiencing the blessing of having more than half of the population in prime working ages from 15 to 54. This opens up a great opportunity for the Bangladeshi ICT industry to grow tremendously & contribute to the economical growth of the country. The ICT sector in Bangladesh has grown by 40% annually from 2010 to 2020.
We have now a high number of young IT entrepreneurs who are driving the ‘Digital Bangladesh’ vision with enthusiasm and courage where the government’s goodwill & ICT focus initiatives cemented an extra edge to take the vision to the next level.
In 2020, the domestic IT and Information Technology Enabled Service (IT-ITeS) industry in Bangladesh was valued at close to USD 1.1 billion. Where over 4500 registered software and ITES companies in Bangladesh were addressed. And among these companies, 43% are going for both local and global markets, 48% are focused on the local market and 9% are solely focused on the global market only.
Country-wise Bangladeshi IT companies are currently exporting to over 60 countries. Where major exporting is taking place in the USA, Canada, UK, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, UAE, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Malaysia, Singapore, and Japan.
By 2030 World Economic Forum is saying -
Bangladesh will be the 24th largest economy. And ICT sector is driving that growth for that.
ITES or Information Technology Enabled Services is defined as outsourcing of processes. Outsourcing of processes that can be enabled with information technology covers diverse areas like finance, HR, administration, health care, telecommunication, manufacturing, etc. ITES is known as web-enabled services or remote services, or Tele-working to some countries.
The service category that ITES services offer includes irrespective of industry verticles are-
- Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), also known as BPM
- Enterprise risk management (ERM)
- Information system audits
- Corporate advisory
- Consultancy services
- System integration services
- Financial due diligence and structuring services
- Tax and regulatory services
- Internal and management audits
- Multimedia and Design Services
- Document Management Services
- Software Testing Services
- Health Care Services
- Call Centers
- Electronic Publishing
- Medical Transcription Services
- Data Centers
- GIS Mapping
- Knowledge Portals
- ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)
- Knowledge Management & Archiving etc.
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Often people got confused with IT services, Software Outsourcing services, and ITES services. IT brings a broad term that covers the use of technology, computers, and software to achieve operational efficiency. Whereas Software outsourcing services create products that take the form of various types of software and work on technology, distribution, and product development. And ITES services include a large variety of different operations that uses information technology to upgrade the workability of an organization.
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Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) falls under the ITES category and many people can’t even understand the great potential BPO industry has in any country and especially in Bangladesh where the population is huge & companies are struggling to deliver standard customer service or efficient operation management. Companies who go after business process outsourcing (BPO) contract a specific work process or processes to an external service provider. The common services that companies outsource often include payroll, accounting, telemarketing, data recording, social media marketing, customer support, and many more.
If you are an Enterprise or SMB hiring the right fit for BPO services, it may take a toll on you if can’t choose the right partner. But a good partnership with the right BPO service provider can make your life easier to utilize the resources, tools & technologies, and licenses easily instead of buying the same. Experts from the BPO service industry in Bangladesh are trained and qualified to use the latest tools & technologies to serve companies for various activities. Hence, saves time and energy in training employees or even extending a wing of business processes for their partner companies. Bangladeshi BPO firms even help companies to manage & generate leads and turn them into prospective clients. Nowadays BPM too has become a buzzword besides BPO and between these two BPO is more focused on outsourcing, whereas, BPM is more focused on management-related tasks and helps organizations to enable business agility via process automation and optimization.
BPO BPM Services Includes-
🔹Intelligent finance operations
🔹Sourcing, Procurement
🔹Supply chain
🔹Compliance as a service
🔹Intelligent global business services
🔹Sales & customer operation
🔹Digital sales
🔹Marketing
🔹HR
🔹Banking & Insurance
🔹Healthcare etc.
Business Process Management Solution (BPMS) brings & offers technology solutions within a single platform & offers modeling, managing, optimizing, and rapidly adjusting business processes for better automation, collaboration, and visibility into an organization.
Components of BPM thus includes-
✔️Process Repository
✔️Workflow Engine
✔️System Integration
✔️Process Matrics
✔️Human Interfaces (End-User Portal)
✔️Mobile Access
✔️Collaboration (or Social Media Management)
✔️Process Modeling
✔️Analytics/Reporting Engine (Business Data Management)
✔️Business Rules
✔️Simulation & Optimization
✔️Event Monitoring etc.
In Bangladesh, there are a few leading BPO BPM-focused companies that are providing great services to the local market & have spread their wings in global outreach as well.
In Bangladesh, the top companies are Genex Infosys Limited, Digicon Technologies Ltd, Synesis IT, ServicEngineBPO (SEBPO), ISSL, etc.
Opportunities & Challenges in BPO Industry in Bangladesh
In 2009, only some 300 people used to work in the BPO industry. Now, after 12 years, 50,000+ people are working in around 200 companies in the BPO sector in Bangladesh.
In the 2016 BPO Summit Prime Minister’s Information and Communication Technology Affairs Adviser Sajeeb Wazed Joy today expressed his confidence that the country would be able to create two lakh jobs every year from 2016 in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector. He said-
“Today’s BPO industries require high number of employees every year. Both public sector as well as private sector could put their best efforts to take opportunity . . . The goal is by 2021, we will be producing 200,000 BPO jobs in Bangladesh every year.”
Lightcastle Partners in one of their Market Insight articles stated-
The Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry started its journey in Bangladesh in 2009 and maintained a 20% growth year-on-year to about USD 300 million in 2017, uptill 2020 employed over 40,000 employees.
The Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Division has launched a program to create 20,000 BPO professionals through online training to college and university students in the next 5 years in partnership with the private sector. The BPO skill development training will fulfill the skill gap in non-native languages required to get work in the global BPO market.
Now when I look at the BPO & BPM industry in Bangladesh before 2012 there was no BPO company that had the proper infrastructure that could see the bigger picture of BPO BPM becoming an industry in Bangladesh. In 2012 Genex Infosys rightly identified the huge potential for the industry and they are the frontrunner who showed the way for many other companies to come forward in the BPO BPM industry in Bangladesh who are now making a mark nationally & internationally.
Some challenges the industry faces are-
- Frequent Disruptions
- Rise in Un-employability
- New Entrants in the BPO Field
- Growth in Opposition Against Outsourcing
- Lack of Talented Workforce
- High Attrition Rates
In 2021, the industry matured and become competitive where the companies who are meeting the industry standard for the service are contributing to a great extent to the country’s economy.
I’m always a hopeless optimist for the Bangladeshi IT ITES industry that it is going to be even bigger if we can work rightly towards that growth by facilitating different training opportunities & upskilling our resources for making them future-ready.
With this note, I’ll put closure for today’s blog. Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any queries or have any points for discussion.
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References:
- unctad.org | Bangladesh creates fertile ground for e-commerce growth — UNCTAD
- Betting on the Future, The Bangladesh IT-ITeS Industry is Poised for Growth — Everest Group
- Software & IT Services Catalog 2017 — BASIS
- COMPREHENSIVE PRIVATE SECTOR ASSESSMENT– USAID
- Freelancers turn Bangladesh into a hub for ICT outsourcing | Dhaka Tribune — Dhaka Tribune
- Where are online workers located? The international division of digital gig work | The labor Project — Oxford Internet Institute
- BPO showing great promise | The Daily Star — The Daily Star
- Opportunities galore in BPO sector | theindependentbd.com — The Independent bd
- The 2019 Kearney Global Services Location Index — Kearney — AT Kearney
- Slow Internet Speed: Blame game is all they can offer | Daily Star — The Daily Star
- IT-ITES INDUSTRY STATISTICS OF BANGLADESH 2019- A Research of Leveraging ICT for Growth, Employment & Governance (LICT) Project
- Two lakh jobs every year in the BPO sector from 2021: Joy- Prothom Alo English
- Government to create 20,000 BPO professionals in 5 years- The Financial Express
