ITIDA Participates at the global Financial Times Outsourcing and Offshoring Conference 2009

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Amin Kheir El Din highlights Egypt's competitiveness as a distinctive location for BPO

With the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) as a main sponsor, the global Financial Times Outsourcing and Offshoring Conference wrapped up its activities in London yesterday after a two-day event dedicated mostly to brainstorming, sharing expertise, and gaining insights into challenges and prospects of the BPO industry. The conference attracted a significant number of participants representing major companies working in the field, analysts, informed speakers, and policy advisors.

ITIDA's participation at the conference aims at exploring the main trends and best practices in the ICT industry and its related services in a world hit by a financial crisis. The conference also addressed how far the current economic turmoil is affecting the outsourcing industry – mainly the services' sector – and provided a better understanding of the ongoing challenges as well as the best cautious approaches applied by major ICT companies. .

During the conference, Amin Kheir El Din; ITIDA's Board Member and Strategy advisor, gave a speech highlighting Egypt's strategy to increase its ICT exports. He discussed Egypt's competitive advantages as a hot spot for global outsourcing, with competitive cost structures and abundance and sustainability of its talent pool being main traits. Kheir El Din also drew the attention of the attendees to recent international reports ranking and naming Egypt as an emerging hot spot for IT/BPO services. Egypt was awarded the title of Best Outsourcing Destination in 2008 by the National Outsourcing Association (NOA) in Britain.

The two-day-conference's agenda included several discussion topics such as the future expectations with regards to the current financial crisis, the risks and challenges posed by the second wave of globalization, and how the economic turmoil is affecting outsourcing and cross border services' providers. Cognizant- the leading global IT and business process outsourcing services provider which has 40 global delivery centers and approximately over 60,000 employees- was the conference's associate sponsor.

Michael Skapinker, editor, special reports at the Financial Times, co-chaired the conference that gathered BPO industry experts, services providers and consultants to discuss the main trends and vital issues that will influence the outsourcing industry in the coming years.

The conference included roundtable discussions that addressed specialized topics as legal process outsourcing, and knowledge process outsourcing, Information Technology Outsourcing and other forms of business constituting the higher end of the value chain.

It's worth mentioning that The Financial Times had previously issued a report about Egypt's ICT industry indicating its major developments, the growing number of Multi-National companies investing in the country, and the unequivocal support shown by the government to the sector.