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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Firms calling on Winnipeg

City builds international reputation for strong IT customer support

By: Martin Cash

Posted: 03/13/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

Skilled employees like Cathy Nieroda and Hal Ryckman are part of the reason why EDS Canada chose Winnipeg for an $18-million high-tech service call centre. ( BORIS MINKEVICH / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS)

Winnipeg has been flagged as one of the most attractive emerging locations in the world for the next wave of business process outsourcing.

In a recent report called Exploring Global Frontiers, KPMG identified Winnipeg as one of 31 international cities with attributes attractive to firms seeking information technology and business process outsourcing (BPO) services.

The intent of the KPMG report was to identify the cities that can provide the next stage of high-tech evolutionary growth in the outsourcing business from Indian cities like Bangalore and Chennai and other saturated call-centre locations.

"Each city was explored against a number of different criteria," said Mark Finkelstein, director of information technology advisory for KPMG in Vancouver. "Winnipeg scored quite strongly on a number of different criteria, which together make a compelling case for the city, but only when these factors are taken in tandem."

Among other key drivers for the IT-BPO business, KPMG highlighted the city's education system, sizable bilingual workforce, availability of quality office space, government support and the city's overall business competitiveness.

Hal Ryckman, executive vice- president of EDS Canada's western Canadian division, said these were exactly the kinds of attributes that persuaded EDS Canada to invest about $18 million in Winnipeg to build a high-tech service centre.

"The KPMG report validates a lot of what we said that convinced the company to build the centre in Winnipeg," he said.

EDS considered other locations for the centre, including jurisdictions that offered more attractive incentives.

"Winnipeg is cost-competitive enough, but the main thing is the labour force," said Ryckman.

"Winnipeg has a large, well-educated, well-diversified labour force partly because of the diversified economy."

Since last summer, EDS has hired more than 100 people for the new Manitoba centre, which will provide a variety of services to national and international customers including hardware and software support, financial services, back-office customer support, document processing and accounting and administrative services.

Over the next five years, the centre could employ up to more than 600 people.

The labour-force characteristics in Winnipeg are starting to become noteworthy, even on an international scale.

"Skills and reliability are very important." Finkelstein said. "What is really fascinating with Winnipeg is the super-strong retention rate averaging more than 100 months. That is exceptional."

The city's customer-contact centre business peaked at about 12,000 employees earlier this decade and has declined a bit to a level of about 10,000.

But Stuart Duncan, CEO of Destination Winnipeg, said the key factors in the growth of that industry are still relevant today -- the Central time zone, low operating costs, an affordable and accessible skilled labour pool and low employee turnover rates.

"Now the effort is to get the focus on higher-end, technical and BPO centres and Winnipeg has the skill levels and labour pool to meet those opportunities," said Duncan.

The growth of the customer-contact centre business in Winnipeg has led to curriculum development at Red River College and more industry-led training.

"All these are advantages have made the conditions right in Winnipeg for growing that industry here," he said.

In particular, Duncan said information-technology companies are an attractive sector in and of themselves, but they are especially attractive because they represent enabling technology that is relevant across a broad business sector.

"Every industry needs information technology support," said Duncan.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 13, 2009 B3

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