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Key Partners
xx
Status
Start year of the initiative:
2013 – still ongoing.
Next steps of initiative:
Modification of scope: Steps include creating a second centre in a non-major Saudi city and developing a concept for a Women’s Business Park on the Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University campus.
Impact
Country(ies) of impact:
Directly: Saudi Arabia. Indirectly: Countries in Africa, Europe, Middle East, United States
Number of people impacted annually:
30,000 beneficiaries
Time to intended impact:
More than 5 years
Metrics:
- Number of female jobs created
- Number of competitors
- Number of customers
- Revenue
Benefit to organization:
- Direct benefit to organization
- Indirect benefit to organization
Key Partners
xx
Status
Start year of the initiative:
2013 – still ongoing.
Next steps of initiative:
Modification of scope: Steps include creating a second centre in a non-major Saudi city and developing a concept for a Women’s Business Park on the Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University campus.
Impact
Country(ies) of impact:
Directly: Saudi Arabia. Indirectly: Countries in Africa, Europe, Middle East, United States
Number of people impacted annually:
30,000 beneficiaries
Time to intended impact:
More than 5 years
Metrics:
- Number of female jobs created
- Number of competitors
- Number of customers
- Revenue
Benefit to organization:
- Direct benefit to organization
- Indirect benefit to organization
Localizing a Business Process Outsourcing Industry
Submitted by Saudi Aramco
Objective
To create a seed to localize a Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry in Saudi Arabia to target job creation for Saudi women.
Overview and Main Activities
Saudi Aramco and General Electric (GE) jointly opened an all-female BPO centre in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Aramco’s interest stems from a strategy that sees an opportunity to localize a BPO industry to target significant job creation for Saudi women that would close the unemployment rate gap between males and females. The initiative is also an enabler to create a business environment to support other localization efforts. GE, on the other hand, is committed to a shared services model to help the company achieve a competitive selling, general and administrative (SG&A) target. The centre in Saudi Arabia would be one of five GE Global Operations centres, allowing GE to have a streamlined, consolidated centre of operations and experts who connect with additional teams, or sites, across the globe.
Saudi Aramco and GE agreed that a three-year target to create 3,000 female jobs is sizeable to pursue the initiative. Furthermore, benchmarking with the BPO industry growth rate in other countries, the potential exists for a local industry to create 30,000 jobs in 10 years.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) was chosen among four BPO global leaders to establish and operate the centre where Saudi Aramco and GE will be anchor clients. TCS decided to establish the centre in Riyadh, where most of the major women’s universities are located, to provide a supply of talent and where most of TCS’ major clients are located.
Announced in September 2013, the all-female business process services centre in Riyadh is an initiative that demonstrates the commitment of the three partner companies to supporting Saudi Arabia’s socio-economic development strategy to explore new business opportunities that drive the country’s growth vision particularly nurturing local talent, employment generation and economic diversification. The centre was inaugurated in September 2014, with 265 female employees who have gone through more than 80,000 hours of training in various disciplines. By December 2014, the centre had grown to 485 employees. The Saudization rate at the centre stands at more than 75% and the centre serves over 40 countries in the Middle East, Africa, the United States and Europe, primarily for GE operations.
The centre now provides a rich training ground for building new capabilities and skills for women in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Aramco extended its role: in addition to being an anchor client, it also helped to promote the concept to localize an industry by approaching government ministries to put in place supporting policies and incentives, and it marketed it to Saudi Aramco joint ventures as well as other external clients, such as banks.
Success Factors and Challenges
Most critical success factors:
- Top management/leadership team support
- Partner support (external support/partnership)
- Brand/reputation of the partners
Main challenges:
- Policy support
- Incentives
- Economics of the initiative
Recommendations for Others
Having a government agency to adopt and champion the concept from the beginning can significantly help in setting up policies and incentives. In addition, when there is significant offering by anchor clients, splitting the opportunities between two competitors can help accelerate the growth of an industry as well as support the economics of the initiative.
Replicability and Scalability
How easily could other organizations implement this initiative?
Difficult: The initiative requires buy-in from different stakeholders who are willing to prioritize citizenship value over economics. Clients will also need to overcome an organizational culture against outsourcing.
How easily can this initiative be expanded to include a larger number of participants?
Difficult: A lack of policies, incentives and the economics to support the initiative makes it difficult to attract other players. The initiative must be backed up with strong promotional efforts.
About the Organization
Website: www.saudiaramco.com
Sector: Oil and Gas
Size (number of employees): 50,000 – 100,000
Headquarters: Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
For Further Engagement
Contact name: Zuhair Abussaud
Contact position: Business Development Specialist
Email: [email protected]