Read 2000 outlines (in the American context) the following strategies are suggested for selecting sites for call centres:
Look at rural communities and smaller cities with populations under 200,000, but make sure they have suitable real estate and the telecom infrastructure to support your call centers.
Consultants recommend this approach because such locations often have higher than average unemployment rates, significant underemployment and a loyal workforce with a strong work ethic. Many of these places will be able to make even stronger cases for themselves as call center locations when high-speed telecom and data services become available to them.
The Netherlands have been pursuing companies with call centres through The Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency. In a question and answer session in 1999, Onno Ponfoort, Area Director of NFIA gave the following response when asked "What criteria would you use to select a site? How would you weigh this criterion?":
The most important areas to look for when selecting a site are:
- Quantity and quality to staff your call
center for now and in the future;
- Are there supportive and flexible labor
laws, allowing '7*24' operations and part time labor?
- Are the operating costs of the center competitive?
- Are the local authorities geared toward
attracting centralized service operations?
- Do the local rules and regulations allow
flexible inbound and outbound call handling?
- Is there a telecom and data communications
infrastructure available capable of handling your communications requirements?
As part of a broader report (Florio1999) on call centres in the Asia-Pacific region, the following provided specific reference to the Australian market and the potential for regional areas of Australia to provide call centre services.
While the majority of developing Asia-Pacific countries continue a policy of actively encouraging economic development, including attracting call centers, the study finds that the majority of call center investment in the region is focused on Australia, especially along the country's eastern seaboard.
"Over 80% of call centers in Australia are located in Sydney, Melbourne
and Brisbane," explains Mr. Conboy. "Australian unemployment appears
to be trending downwards and the types of people who traditionally populate
call centers are being sought after by many different sectors of the
economy. Thus we see increasing concern about access to a trained and
available workforce in an increasingly crowded arena. Consequently we
are now seeing about one quarter of Australian call centers actively
looking at non-urban relocation strategies. Access to an experienced
and available workforce is a universal problem facing the call center
industry in all mature call center environments."
Moll 1999 lists of some of the "desirables" businesses looked at when relocating to the Greater Seattle area.
In addition to the strength of diverse industry sectors in the greater Seattle regional economy, other factors such as the high quality of life, educational institutions, and a highly skilled workforce have contributed to the region’s success. A majority of company representatives interviewed mentioned the high quality of life as a primary reason why they, and their company, chose to locate there. The greater Seattle region has been consistently ranked as one of the best US cities in which to live and work, and to locate a business. Quality of life factors such as the region’s highly skilled workforce, education and research, quality transportation and infrastructure, access to domestic and international markets, and cultural diversity have attracted "high quality" people and businesses to the region.
Bonnor 2000 provides a case-study of a town in regional NSW, which attracted information technology jobs (in this case, data entry) away from the cities using a "telecottage" model.
One nearby example of how regional Australia can embrace the information economy is the Telecottage in Walcha, 70kms to the south of Tamworth[...]The Telecottage is run by a local cooperative whose primary objectives are to improve opportunities for employment, economic and social growth for the local rural community. One way in which it sought to do so was by attracting data entry work away from the major cities.
While progress was initially slow, the Telecottage has now been successful in obtaining substantial income from the provision of data entry, secretarial, survey and other services, with data entry work coming from Sydney, Melbourne and even New Zealand. The Telecottage also provides secretarial, desktop publishing and image processing to regional clients. The Telecottage uses the Internet extensively for communications, research, training and data transfer. Throughout, the Telecottage has also provided low cost Internet access, secretarial services and training to the local community. The realisation that rural teleworkers can offer a competitive alternative to city based workers, by virtue of significantly lower overhead costs and the trade off of income against lifestyle, has now led to the formation of TeleTask, a non profit company to recruit rural teleworkers, assess and certify their capabilities and find regular work. TeleTask’s establishment is being supported through the Federal Government’s Networking the Nation program.
A paper by McGregor et al 1997 specifically about rural WA and information technology outlines the business/employment potential in information technology industries for the state, as well as giving an indication of the types of businesses which should be targetted for location/relocation in the state.
One of the major opportunities that telecommunications infrastructure provision
and use gives to rural communities is the ability to diversify their
income earning capacity but also the ability to attract back and retain their
youth and attract teleworkers into their communities (Schoeffel et al, 1993).
The direct employment opportunity that is created by telecommunication
infrastructure is very important to rural areas. Opportunities exist for the
development (or location) of service and value-added components of enterprises
which are not location specific. Examples include design and marketing of products,
provision of service facilities for multinational corporation through ‘call
centres’ and the possibility of ‘virtual corporations’ ie businesses have no
bricks and mortar in much the same way AMWAY works (QIB pers com., 1997).
A strategy paper from the ACT Government 1996 listed Canberra's advantages and disadvantages in attracting information technology and "advanced technology" companies, and an acknowledgement that many of the companies need not be located in the area to achieve their business aims, meaning the ACT needs to play up its "good points" to attract and keep advanced technology businesses.
Advanced technology industries
Canberra has a number of advantages to offer advanced technology (AT) industries:
However, many AT industries are "footloose", being able to operate from any location. This could be as much to Canberra's disadvantage as to its advantage. For example, a recent survey showed that over half of all IT and AT businesses do not consider it essential for them to be located in Canberra/Queanbeyan (BASAT 1996b).
[...]One factor militating decisions by AT firms to locate in Canberra appears to be its perceived isolation, despite frequent air services and a road journey time of only three hours to Sydney. The construction of a high-speed rail link, internationalisation of Canberra Airport and the completion of the duplication of the Federal Highway would all help to offset this perception.
Other factors which have been shown to influence decisions by AT and IT
firms to locate in Canberra include the negative image of the ACT as
a business location, the low awareness of assistance programs and lifestyle
advantages offered by the ACT (BASAT 1996b)