Durrant Pate/ Contributor

Jamaica has opened another Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) incubator wooing foreign firms to set up shop locally.

This new plug-and-play facility is refining the old business model of drawing overseas BPO firms to the island over the past decade. The new facility, called the Informatics Park Incubator, sees foreign BPOs moving in, connecting to ready-made infrastructure, and starting to work almost immediately without spending months on set-up.

Located in the sunshine city of Portmore, St. Catherine, the incubator set-up is straightforward. Once a company completes registration at the Companies Office of Jamaica, it can move into the incubator to set up operations.

Set up details

During this interim process, the Port Authority of Jamaica (PAJ), which owns the facility, will help interested companies obtain a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) license and find permanent office space. We provide everything except the people,” explains PAJ’s vice president of BPO, Gloria Henry. The incubator comes fully equipped with technology, furniture, equipment, high-level security systems, Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance for payment processing, and employee amenities.

Gloria Henry reports that one company is already operating in the facility, with discussions underway with another potential tenant. Companies can stay in the incubator for as short as 90 days or as long as 18 months with the goal of not keeping them there permanently but to help them transition smoothly to a long-term location, usually inside one of Jamaica’s SEZs.

This incubator model is not entirely new to Jamaica, with the country first experimenting with similar facilities in the late 1990s through a partnership between Jamaica Digiport International and the Montego Bay Free Zone. That early incubator closed in 2004, with the concept being refined more successfully in 2015 with support from the Inter-American Development Bank and the Global Services Association of Jamaica.

Learning from experience

Since 2015, about 15 companies have used the incubator system, and nearly all of them have successfully moved on to permanent facilities. The Montego Bay incubator is much larger, with 220 seats, while the new Portmore facility is smaller, offering 84 seats.

The model also benefits existing BPO companies. They can use the incubator to test new campaigns or services without committing to long-term leases, which reduces risk when experimenting with new ideas.

This latest incubator project was made possible through collaboration between several organisations. The Inter-American Development Bank provided financing for construction, the Kingston Free Zone installed the Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) and technical systems, and the Global Services Association of Jamaica supplied computers and servers.

Jamaica’s BPO sector has grown steadily despite occasional setbacks from hurricanes. The country is now the largest BPO hub in the Caribbean, employing between 40,000 and 50,000 people and generating close to US$1 billion in annual revenue. 

The government is now focused on moving the industry up the value chain — from basic voice support to higher-skilled services such as data analytics, compliance monitoring, complex customer engagement, and knowledge-based processing.