World Cup the Perfect Opportunity for South Africa to Display Its BPO Capabilities: Frost & Sullivan

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, February 3 - The financial turmoil of 2009 led a number of companies to increase their
focus on BPO services. This is due to the significant savings they offered,
as a means to control spending.

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Frost & Sullivan (www.frost.com) believes that this heightened
interest in BPO will continue into the coming year. Specifically, South
Africa is in a position to capitalise on its expertise within the call centre
market and to develop high-end knowledge intensive call centres.

"South Africa, as the host nation of the FIFA World Cup, is in a good
position to communicate its BPO capabilities to the World," says Frost &
Sullivan ICT analyst Mpho Moyo. "Emphasis should be put on South Africa's
superior infrastructure and its ability to deliver high quality services by
showcasing the successful services provided to both international and
domestic clients."

South Africa has built a world class International Broadcast Centre for
the 2010 World Cup and Moyo believes that the excess capacity that will exist
after the event can be used to provide high-end, high quality call centre
services. Government education initiatives will, however, be imperative in
order to increase the country's skills base in these areas.

"The slow development of specialised skills sets has limited South
Africa's ability to take advantage of the accelerated global growth in
financial & accounting outsourcing, human resources outsourcing, knowledge
process outsourcing and outsourcing of other vertical specific services," she
says. "Another challenge relates to creating a unified national BPO marketing
strategy in order to attract international clients."

The South African government has however increasingly focused on BPO as a
key driver for growth and employment creation. This has resulted in the
growth in the number of players in the BPO market, especially in offshore
outsourcing, which has increased the revenue potential of the industry.

"In addition, the landing of the undersea cable and availability of
redundant bandwidth is expected to significantly reduce telecommunications
costs," Moyo adds. "This will remove a major barrier to foreign investment
within South Africa."

If you are interested in more information on Frost & Sullivan's analysis
of the South African BPO industry, then send an e-mail to Patrick Cairns,
Corporate Communications, at patrick.cairns@frost.com, with your full name,
company name, title, telephone number, company e-mail address, company
website and country.

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    Contact:
    Patrick Cairns
    Corporate Communications
    Frost & Sullivan
    P: +27-18-464-2402
    E: patrick.cairns@frost.com

www.frost.com

Patrick Cairns, Corporate Communications of Frost & Sullivan, +27-18-464-2402, patrick.cairns at frost.com