Prospects of outsourcing business in Bangladesh; experience of ServicEngine Limited

Abstract

Outsourcing industry in Bangladesh is flourishing day by day. According to the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), about 5,00,000 active freelancers are working regularly in Bangladesh, out of 6,50,000 registered freelancers. Bangladesh supplies 16% of the total online workers worldwide, the second highest after India. Currently, Bangladesh has 103.253 million internet users. In the last few years, BPO (Businesses process outsourcing) sector has gone through massive expansion and it has achieved 24 percent year growth and it shows signs of more expansion. This rapid growth has inspired me to write my internship report on prospects of outsourcing business in Bangladesh. This is the internship report based on my full-time job at ServicEngine Ltd as an Analyst under Risk and Compliance division from 18th October, 2016 to till date as a requirement of my MBA program at BRAC Business School, BRAC University. My job experience in outsourcing industry has given me the opportunity to explore this sector. In the first part of the report, I have described my company contributions, the benefits I have earned, the challenges I have faced and my suggestions. ServicEngine Ltd is a leading IT enabled outsourcing firm in Bangladesh. This job has given me the opportunity to explore the outsourcing industry and find its prospects. Outsourcing projects are very unique and the number of projects is infinite. I analyze financial risk data like fraud, corruption, bribery, money laundering etc. There is a separate data capture team that captures crime type, criminal’s personal details from authentic daily newspapers published worldwide. Thus, we develop our huge crime database. Our clients are global and they send us their queries and we analyze our database to send them possible risk alerts from our database. It has demand in financial security sector. 6 In the second part of the report, I included general details and description of the company, management and marketing strategies, technology procedures, challenges and suggestions. ServicEngine Ltd is the largest outsourcing firm in Bangladesh in terms of revenue and number of employees. It has joint venture with Abdul Monem Ltd, country’s one of the largest conglomerates. The final part is about the outsourcing industry in Bangladesh. I have analyzed the contribution of this industry in our economy and golden opportunities for this sector to solve the problem of unemployment. I have also discussed about the challenges and my findings, recommendations regarding that. Freelancers of Bangladesh are generating $100 million annually, according to the ICT Division of Bangladesh. The wage rate in Bangladesh in IT industry is over 50% cheaper than other countries. Labor cost is around $8 per hour than other BPO countries like Philippines ($20) and India ($15). Office set up and infrastructure development costs are also cheap in Bangladesh. Power crisis, low internet speed, money transaction problem, political crisis, lack of technical skills, poor English language knowledge, lack of intellectual property rights are the main problems for the growth of outsourcing industry in Bangladesh. If Government can take immediate actions to solve these issues, thousands of job opportunities can be created in outsourcing industry. More training institutes can help to improve skills. Outsourcing can provide more employment opportunities than many other sectors.