The Quest For Growth

Lorraine Rodrigues...hunting for third-party customers.

Four years ago, offshoring was virtually unheard of in Fiji. If it was, there were more pressing issues to deal with at the time. Then two years ago, Quest came along.

Although set up as a type of in-house business offshore processing centre for the ANZ Banking Group's Pacific operations, it is slowly beginning a hunt for third-party customers.

Quest's managing director Lorraine Rodrigues says the company is also setting up a second office in the Western Division. "There are a couple of reasons why we have set up in Nadi. One is we need to establish a back-up site for our current operations in Suva, to act as a physical back-up.

"Suva will also act as the back-up operation for Nadi. There will be two production sites but each will be able to back the other up in the event of an emergency."

Rodrigues says the second reason for establishing the Nadi office is its accessibility to the airport. "Because we are carrying out work for other Pacific countries, it would be easier to send staff across from Nadi."

Quest's growth in Fiji fits in with its parent group's expansion plans. The ANZ Group has a strategy to bring all the operations of its various Pacific branches into a single shared services centre.

"What that means," Rodrigues says, "is that all the support functions, the operational functions supporting the banking system for all the countries in the Pacific that can be carried out from one point, would be centralised into Quest."

These functions include finance, reconciliation work, risk and controls, call centre and help desk operations.

"We are looking at putting in this one location any support function that potentially can be carried out from a remote location."
By standardising and taking on these functions, Quest is allowing each regional ANZ branch to devote its attention to customer service.

"If we were to have little back-office operations in 10 locations, it would be difficult to manage and control, particularly if you are located in countries where skills are not keeping up with the rapid changes in the industry," Rodrigues says.

Which is why Fiji is an ideal location for the shared services centre. Countries like Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Kiribati and East Timor do not have the type of labour pool that Fiji has.

What Fiji offers its island neighbours is the ability to take on complex banking functions for EFTPOS, ATM, phone banking and Inter-net banking transactions. As banks begin to offer this range of banking services, banking operations become more difficult.
"What we are finding is that in these countries it is becoming really difficult to attract and find people who have the capability and skills to perform these tasks," Rodrigues says.

ANZ has come up with the strategy that can sustain developments in banking services and retain the ability to offer the kinds of products and services that the bank wants to offer without having to worry about how it is going to support them.

"By having Quest look after all that and being the expert at it, we can allow the countries to just concentrate on their customers."
Rodrigues says there had been some reactions initially to these adjustments. "With any change there is always some sort of reaction and when you are trying to move functions away from countries into Quest it is not immediately welcome, even by the staff and the management of these countries.

"But this is because it's a change and they are losing control.

"Initially, when you are trying to do something different, people are a little sceptical about whether or not it will work and whether or not Quest will be able to do it as well as they have.

"So Quest went through the process of managing that change by beginning slowly‹it picked countries that felt they had a need for help.
"If you take finance for example, when we started providing finance functions, we asked for a volunteer country to be the pilot.
"The Solomons immediately put up its hands because it was facing numerous problems trying to meet the ANZ Group's deadlines for financial reporting.

"We immediately had a volunteer who was keen to do it. We did it for the Solomons and we did it very well. That is the key," Rodrigues says.

"When you are taking functions across, you need to do it really well. Just as good as it was done in-country is not good enough. You need to do it better to win their confidence.

"We focussed on making sure they received a service that was better than what they were used to so that when we moved to the next country, it became easier.

"Establishing that credibility was something the company had to work hard at. That isn't something that comes with the set-up. We are always having to earn credibility by maintaining that standard.

"We approached it in small steps and progressively expanded our services to the extent that today, Quest offers its voucher processing services to other banks."

Colonial became the first such customer and this month ANZ Fiji will hand over its credit card voucher processing to Quest.
Over the next 12 months, Rodrigues says the company will concentrate on two areas. One is expanding its voucher processing services both within Fiji as well as Papua New Guinea.

"That will mean having to set up an operation in PNG because you physically can't bring the vouchers across to Fiji to process them.
"The other area of focus is to continue building on the Pacific shared services offering. We have already centralised all the finance functions into Quest and we are doing a lot of card support operations.

"But there is a lot more in terms of regional training that we can provide out of Quest. We are also looking at some kind of regional payroll system as well as all the other reconciliation work that is still being carried out in Pacific countries."

Rodrigues says the potential for Fiji for a business process offshoring industry is enormous. "I can't quantify it but it could mean 12,000, 22,000, 40,000 new jobs.

"If you look at what the BPO industry has done for the Indian economy for example, it's now a US$2 billion industry there.
"It could equal or better the sugar industry and the textile industry. And the beauty of it is it can stand on its own."