Dubai-headquartered iSON Xperiences says it has witnessed steady growth in SA since it acquired business process outsourcing (BPO) firm Altron People Solutions.

In October 2021, JSE-listed Altron announced the sale of its BPO and customer experience technology unit, Altron People Solutions, which was held for sale for over one year.

The learning solutions part of the business was acquired by South African management consultancy LRMG.

According to Altron, a decision was taken to split the business and sell it to two buyers, both of which are ideally positioned to provide exciting new growth opportunities in an environment where they can flourish.

Following the acquisition, global customer experience management firm iSON Xperiences says it has significantly strengthened its presence in the South African market, garnering more corporate clients that want to meet the growing demand for specialist customer services.

“We were looking to gain a foothold in the country and make more jobs available to South Africans in ways that made the most strategic sense for us,” says Pravin Kumar, global CEO of iSON Xperiences.

“At the end of 2018, iSON Xperiences secured the MultiChoice business to deliver customer experience services. Within six months, we were made their exclusive partner for providing inbound customer services and focused on strengthening the three call centre facilities we developed for them. At the time, we had 1 200 agents serving MultiChoice customers.”

To build on its expansion, the company needed to focus on more than only organic growth, adds Kumar.

It is currently looking to bring its outsourcing international intellectual property to SA, to ensure a foundation is in place to harness local talent and create hundreds of job opportunities.

This is a critical move, as many of the large multinationals operating out of SA have been focused on outsourcing services to other countries instead of developing the potential of the market here, he points out.

iSON Xperiences says it has a vision to become one of the largest BPO and business process management organisations in SA and a significant player globally.

With Altron People Solutions bringing a team of more than 1 100 experienced employees, the company says it is looking to deliver good customer experiences for all the local on-shoring needs of customers though its more than 2 300 local customer agents.

BPO industry body Business Process Enabling South Africa says over the past four years, the BPO sector created more than 50 000 cumulative new jobs in SA. The majority of these were for young people, contributing towards reducing SA's high youth unemployment rate.

“The timing of the Altron deal could not have been better for us. It presented iSON Xperiences with the ideal way to build its base in South Africa, especially in the telecommunications space, with Vodacom being an anchor client of Altron People Solutions.

“The country presents us with significant opportunities in this segment to build on the 75% pan-African market share we have in telecoms. Discussions with our global partner Vodafone gave us further impetus to pursue the acquisition,” adds Kumar.