By Babajide Komolafe &  William Jimoh

One of the fall-outs of globalization is the rising status of Outsourcing. It is a business practice whereby a company contracts  out an internal business process  to a third-party organization.  In Nigeria, though not yet as prominent as in other countries, more companies are embracing the practice in their bid to cut cost and focus operations on their core objectives.

Outsourcing Professionals Association of Nigeria (AOPN), the umbrella body of outsourcing practitioners in its bid to promote the practice and correct misconceptions, decided to organize an annually event tagged ‘Outsourcing Expo’. The second edition is scheduled to hold next month. In this interview, Mr. Ade Awonaike, Chairman Organizing Committee for the Expo, explains the rationale for the event, and other related issues. Excerpts

What is the difference between outsourcing and contracting?

Contracting is a totally deferent phenomenon from management practice of outsourcing. When you are a contractor, your engagement is limited and restricted meaning when you are given an employment it will be said in your letter that you have been engaged to work for a particular number of months, and after the end of the period, your relationship with the organization comes to an end.

But in outsourcing, your engagement with an organization is not fixed, even though the outsourcing company engaged you fully as their staff, they will attach you to a client and when you are with a client and the client needs to downsize, you will not lose your job the client will only have to send you back to your outsourcing company, who is your employer and with whom as an outsourcing staff, you enjoy all the benefits that staff enjoys.

You pay tax, you have health insurance, your personal accident insurance, life insurance policy and every other service that a company staff enjoys, you have the company ID card, and you also go for training. So outsourcing management practices is very different from what contracting is.

Outsourcing is perceived in some quarters as an exploitative practice?

I will not agree with that because outsourcing really is meant for none core staff of an organization. Ask people that work in the HR department about the categories of workers outsourced. They are factory workers, drivers, cleaners etc. those are the people that are none core to you. And mainly in Nigeria these categories of people are usually hired on contract basis but we are promoting it as a management practice.

We have quite a large number of staff in the bank today who are bank tellers. So you see a bank teller that is a graduate, you see a bank teller that has a master degree doing bank tellering and by the way what is bank tellering?  It is something an OND or a school certificate holder can do if well trained.

So we are telling you that you don’t need to employ graduates to handle those kinds of jobs, graduates should be more challenged with other things. Most banks are realizing this right now and they are outsourcing their tellering functions.

What is the outsourcing expo all about?

Outsourcing Expo is an initiative of Resource Intermediaries Limited. The   company was founded in Nigeria in 2006 and after  few years of operation, it discovered that outsourcing companies are not together, the outsourcing profession was not know as it should be and that many  people usually mixed-up what outsourcing is to what contracting is.

So the company thought of a way to come up with a programme that will bring the different participants in the outsourcing arrangement who are the providers, the users and the advisors together to brainstorm on a yearly basis to fine tune what outsourcing should be, what are the new trends in outsourcing, what does the global practices of outsourcing entails?

The first programme like that which was spearheaded by Resource Intermediaries Limited came up last year June, 27. The keynote address was delivered by the MD/CEO of  The Coca Cola Company and after that it was decided that umbrella body of Outsourcing Professionals Association of Nigeria (AOPN) should anchor subsequent events.  So this year, the (AOPN) in partnership with Resource Intermediaries are putting the programme together and the programme will be coming up on June 19 in Lagos.

The keynote address for this year will be delivered by Seni Adetu the MD/CEO of Guinness Nigeria Plc and the Special Guest of Honour is Professor Pat Utomi and he will be declaring the exhibition open. The theme for this year is “Outsourcing and the need for the outsourcing professionals.”

It is going to be an all day event which will attract 200 attendees from all walks of life majorly providers and users of outsourcing as a management  practice and also advisors with new trend  in outsourcing. All participants will divided into  smaller groups where they are going to brainstorm on the theme, and  the speech delivered by the keynote speaker, and  there will be a communiqué.

After the seminar, we are going to have an exhibition that will feature providers, users and advisors of outsourcing management.

Do we have this kind of initiative outside Nigeria ?

Outside Nigeria we have this kind of initiative and in fact, Resource Intermediaries Limited, which is partner with the AOPN in this year’s event, is a corporate member of the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP), which is a US based organization. The organization controls outsourcing world-wide, vis-à-vis new trends and what outsourcing practitioners should be doing.

Apart from the Resource Intermediaries, few other Nigerian outsourcing companies are also corporate members. They  work together to carry out the objectives of the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals,  which is to ensure that practitioners of outsourcing are certified accountants, certified lawyers. Therefore for you to be a practicing outsourcing person, you must be certified and we usually have that acronym COP, which means Certified Outsourcing Professionals.

What was the outcome of the 2012 Expo?

We did not issue any communiqué at the end of last year’s event which was very well attended; we had over a 150 participants at the seminar. And these are participants at management level from different organizations, HR directors, HR heads of banks, oil and gas, insurance, manufacturing.

They  were all there and it was a very big occasion but just like I  said, we did not issue any communiqué and that is why at the end of this year’s event, we are going to issue a communiqué. And that is because the kind of responses we are getting from both those who attended and those that did not but have heard about it have been very encouraging. As we speak; we already have seats for over 100 participants booked for the seminar.

And what we are always trying to do is to bring a keynote speaker, somebody who is a leader in a company that utilizes outsourcing as a management practice. That is what we did last year and we are going to repeat the same thing this year.