Branham to create Canadian outsourcing guide

A directory of Canadian outsourcing companies published by Ottawa-based research firm Branham Group Inc. should help raise global awareness of the outsourcing capabilities available in this country.

Available at the end of February, the Directory of Outsourcing Companies and Capabilities in Canada is a compendium of around 250 companies offering outsourcing services, ranging from call centre to technical support.

Companies listed aren’t necessarily home-grown businesses, but do have locally-based facilities. There is a fee to being part of the Directory.

Branham Group’s director of sales, Peter Kuske, said he hopes the publication will raise the country’s profile and, specifically, make U.S.-based companies realize the breadth of services available here. “They don’t know who’s available to them. They don’t have a who’s who,” he said.

The Branham Group estimates the global market for outsourcing services to be greater than US$1.5 trillion.

The poor level of awareness around what Canada has to offer is largely a cultural issue, said Kuske, in that Canadians generally don’t trumpet their successes and abilities.

He sees the directory as falling within the scope of what he’s amicably coined the “bureau of unCanadian activities” – the chest thumping that Canada’s IT industry lacks due to an engrained “inferiority complex.”

Canada needs to consider its competitiveness and position in the globalized world, and this Directory will help polish that national brand, said Bernard Courtois, president & CEO of Ottawa-based Information Technology Association of Canada (ITAC).

The country has very strong attractions in the area of outsourcing services, said Courtois, “but the biggest problem is that we’re not visible enough and that capacity is not top of mind enough in the world generally.”

Although the Canadian IT sector is beginning to pay attention to its international image, the fact that the country is relatively small in terms of population size means “we have to find ways of making ourselves more visible,” he said.