(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) There is a strong need to engage and involve the local population into working in the services sector, according to Tiger Tyagarajan, chief executive officer and president of Genpact, a business process management services provider that opened office in Dubai, its first in the Middle East, in October 2011.
The comments by the CEO of Genpact - a $1.9 billion company that opened its first Middle East office in Dubai in October 2011 - assumes importance in light of the efforts made by the UAE Federal Government to increase the participation of local population in the service industry through its Emiratisation programme.
Although at a nascent stage, Genpact is already in talks with its sponsor, Dubai Outsource Zone, to identify and implement ways to boost the participation of the home-grown populace.
"It is important to find ways to inject a number of courses and capabilities into the workforce and to make the nationals find this work exciting, otherwise there will be a serious lack in supply of workforce going forward and eventually an imbalance in demand and supply," said Tyagarajan.
He said that it is not only the prerogative of the companies or the government to work on this front, but of the social eco-system in general.
"Genpact has worked with the government, colleges and universities to come together and create excitement and opportunities for people. We have taught and trained people to be capable of joining companies. We believe that there should be more conducive policies to tap into more talent, if necessary, change the content that is taught in the universities to help people to be readily employable in the markets that we are present in," he added.
Talking about the other big challenge on the supply side, aside from the limited talent pool of local population, is the cost of telecoms.
"Dubai as a service-delivery destination comes into the conversation when companies want high-quality skills, high-end customer service in Arabic and other languages. Infrastructure in Dubai is fantastic and the cost is competitive. Telecoms, however, is expensive. In fact, it is one of the more expensive places for telecoms in the world when we use international telecom bandwidth," Tyagarajan said.
"In Genpact's global strategy of hub and spoke, Dubai fits in well wherein processes that require specific skills and language requirements remain onshore and customers seeking lower cost with high transactional volumes move their processes to low cost delivery centers globally."
Genpact's Dubai centre is catering to 14 companies spread across the region and is part of the strategic plan of managing Genpact's shift from a business process outsourcing company to a consulting firm with capabilities across business services, IT, analytics and many more.
In the region, Genpact provides services like the processing of finance, procurement, customer service, back-office support for financial services, insurance companies, oil and gas firms, hospitality, redesigning and re-engineering of processes, aside from designing shared services.
Genpact is quite optimistic about growth in the region and expects to double its business every year for the next five years.
"The region will undergo a pretty dramatic change over the next three to five years. There are a number of corporations that are either headquartered here or have big regional hubs, offices or are part of global corporations. A lot of such companies are talking about expanding in the Middle East region, Egypt, parts of Africa especially North Africa, and are creating a road map to manage their growth, without commensurate increase in costs - by looking at the best in class options being used globally," Tyagarajan said.
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