GBS WORLD NEWS | WEEK 5 | AUGUST 2023

The results of the 2023/24 GBS World Competitiveness Index and rankings, drawn from extensive survey data from the Global Voice of the Buyer Survey, have been released. A total of 380 interviews were conducted with global enterprise executives – many of whom outsource and offshore customer experience (CX) and back office services. Egypt, India, Jamaica, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, the Philippines, and South Africa all featured strongly among the rankings across the five key CX and back office categories. However, countries such as Nigeria, Colombia, Czechia, Guyana, Bulgaria, Romania and Morocco also performed well. See the Top 5 Country Rankings below.

Thousands of Americans have fallen victim to a fraudulent and unverified call center operation in Noida, India. The cyber fraud operation, currently unidentified in the press, was raided and 84 people were arrested for using and leaking American social security numbers by pretending to be from the US Social Security Administration. The young group handling the operation were said to be highly experienced, and even received training to master American accents.

Meanwhile, over 15,000 Indian tech workers have immigrated to Canada over the last year, making use of Canada’s immigration-friendly national policy. The large talent pool of skilled workers has supported the country in tackling the global talent shortage, with hopes to further develop Canada’s tech occupation workforce.

Over in South Africa, CapeBPO recently organized an event through partnership with the City of Cape Town. The event was aimed at supporting 1,000 unemployed youth with access to job opportunities in the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector. Over 10 BPO companies were present at the event to interview and select prospective students for training, which has the potential to lead to a full-time job.

Google DeepMind, the AI research laboratory headquartered in London, has launched a watermarking tool for AI-generated images. The tool, named SynthID, will be able to label images to mark that they have been generated using AI. The organization hopes that this new tool will help to counter misinformation and copyright issues.

Another Google operation is being undertaken in Central America through a 7-year partnership with the Government of El Salvador. Google Cloud has plans to establish an office to deliver Google Distributed Cloud services. These services are intended to support the country’s digital transformation, advance the government’s efforts to modernize, and drive improvements in the healthcare and education industries.

Spanish headquartered, Santander,  has been named the Most Innovative Bank in the world by The Banker. The magazine has given the bank its highest recognition at their Innovation in Digital Banking Awards because of the bank’s successful deployment of Gravity, a platform that will boost CX and operational efficiencies.

A new report produced by market-research organization Technavio, has determined that India is expected to experience exponential growth in the IT and BPO sectors over the next few years. The research identified that the potential growth will be valued at approximately US$116.01 billion. This would be a CAGR of 9.19%.

Top 5 Country Rankings – GBS World Competitiveness Index: CX and Back Office