Kingston–Suther­land Glob­al Ser­vices (SGS), the largest for­eign in­vest­ment to date com­ing out of Jam­pro's in­au­gur­al Ja­maica In­vest­ment Fo­rum (JIF) in 2012, for­mal­ly opened its Glob­al De­liv­ery Cen­tre (GDC) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), Mona Cam­pus on De­cem­ber 4.

The GDC has been in op­er­a­tions on UWI's Mona cam­pus for al­most a year, em­ploy­ing more than 700 peo­ple, many of whom are UWI stu­dents. This ven­ture rep­re­sents the largest busi­ness process out­sourc­ing (BPO) in­vest­ment in Kingston, and is ex­pect­ed to ul­ti­mate­ly cre­ate 3,000 jobs at the UWI lo­ca­tion.

Speak­ing at the in­au­gu­ra­tion cer­e­mo­ny, Prime Min­is­ter Por­tia Simp­son Miller laud­ed the in­vest­ment, stat­ing: "Suther­land Glob­al Ser­vices Ja­maica is a qual­i­ty in­vest­ment for Ja­maica that is a di­rect fruit of the Ja­maica In­vest­ment Fo­rum of 2012."The Prime Min­is­ter not­ed that Suther­land was a "game-chang­ing in­vest­ment for Ja­maica", and ex­pressed her ex­pec­ta­tion that the com­pa­ny will rapid­ly ex­pand be­yond the bor­ders of UWI to be­come a house­hold name in Ja­maica.

Min­is­ter of In­dus­try, In­vest­ment and Com­merce An­tho­ny Hyl­ton, al­so praised the in­vest­ment."Suther­land Glob­al Ser­vices rep­re­sents one of the best BPO in­vest­ments to date in Ja­maica. Af­ter a near­ly a year of op­er­a­tions, this in­vest­ment is liv­ing up to our ex­pec­ta­tions in the In­vest­ment Min­istry. We hear of the many per­for­mance records be­ing bro­ken by your sales and cus­tomer ser­vice teams and how hap­py your many clients are. We con­grat­u­late you on this, and stand ready to sup­port your growth and ex­pan­sion," he said,.

Pres­i­dent of Jam­pro, Di­ane Ed­wards, not­ed that the agency con­tin­ues to pro­vide ad­vi­so­ry sup­port and fa­cil­i­ta­tion ser­vices to SGS, as the com­pa­ny ex­plores ad­di­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties Ja­maica.

"It is with­out a doubt that Suther­land Glob­al has fall­en in love with our coun­try. From the on­set when Mr Ku­mar at­tend­ed our Ja­maica In­vest­ment Fo­rum, he knew Ja­maica would be the right fit and im­me­di­ate­ly got the ball rolling, spot­ting the tal­ent and hir­ing coun­try man­ag­er, Odet­ta Rock­head, be­fore mak­ing a de­ci­sion to in­vest. SGS likes to be in­no­va­tors and were drawn to the larg­er tal­ent pool in Kingston," said Ed­wards.

Jam­pro, the na­tion­al in­vest­ment and trade pro­mo­tion agency, has worked very close­ly with SGS from the be­gin­ning to fa­cil­i­tate the com­pa­ny's in­vest­ment in the is­land. The agency strength­ened its ini­tial en­gage­ment with the mul­ti-na­tion­al com­pa­ny by meet­ing di­rect­ly with key ex­ec­u­tives at ma­jor in­dus­try fo­rums such as NASS­COM in In­dia, the IOAP Sum­mit 2012 in Flori­da and Nearshore Nexus in New York.

The deal was of­fi­cial­ly sealed when chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer for SGS, KS Ku­mar met with the prime min­is­ter Simp­son-Miller, at the Ja­maica In­vest­ment Fo­rum held in Mon­tego Bay last year.SGS, UWI and the Gov­ern­ment of Ja­maica recog­nise the 'win-win' mod­el that the GDC of­fers all par­ties in terms of job cre­ation and strength­en­ing the po­si­tion of Ja­maica in the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty as a lo­ca­tion for han­dling glob­al and multi­na­tion­al knowl­edge based busi­ness process­es.

SGS' in­vest­ment in Ja­maica's BPO sec­tor has been recog­nised by Lon­don-based fDi Mag­a­zine as one of the top for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment (FDI) projects of 2012, an ho­n­our that has earned it a joint run­ner-up award in the 'Best Out­sourc­ing Project' glob­al cat­e­go­ry. SGS al­so re­ceived the Unit­ed Na­tions Con­fer­ence on Trade and De­vel­op­ment (UNC­TAD) In­vest­ment Award for 2013, for a high qual­i­ty project in­vest­ment in Ja­maica.

Based in Rochester, New York, SGS is one of the world's lead­ing pri­vate­ly-held Busi­ness Process Out­sourc­ing (BPO) com­pa­nies. SGS cur­rent­ly em­ploys more than 30,000 pro­fes­sion­als across 35 de­liv­ery cen­tres across the world. Over 80 per cent of the com­pa­ny's clients are For­tune 1000 com­pa­nies, and it de­rives 40 per cent of its rev­enue from For­tune 50 com­pa­nies.

CMC