ICT - A woman's world
Published:Thursday | March 8, 2012 | 12:00 AM
Janet Silvera, Senior Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
The powerful ICT sector in Jamaica makes a strong unspoken statement - "It's a man's world" - but the game changer poised to transform the industry is a Jamaican woman.
Power broker Jacqueline Suther-land, president and chief executive officer of Global Gateway Solutions (GGS) Inc, the only Jamaican female owner of a multi-million dollar call centre in the Freezone area, has already started to erase some of the wording in the statement.
Her company provides telemarketing and technical support, collection services, finance and accounting, medical services and a wide range of customer-service based facilities. GGS operates two 24X7 fully equipped facilities totalling 30,000 square feet, serving a client base of both local and major corporations in the USA and Canada.
Currently, GGS has a staff of more than 500 propelling its operation, and after its 450 per cent growth rate in 2010 was named '2010 Employer of the Year' by the Montego Bay Freezone.
This passion evidenced in the Howard University/University of Maryland master's student, who was born in Kingston, has been identified with 'glass-ceiling crashers' such as Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, Air Jamaica's first female pilot, Maria Ziadie-Haddad, First Lady of Theatre and Film Leonie Forbes, and the much-admired and loved, the Hon Louise Bennett-Coverley.
Not only has Sutherland shattered the pieces by entering one of the most competitive markets worldwide, but she operates a call centre which boasts the undisputed position of being the largest Jamaican-owned offshore business.
"I always had a desire and a vision to come back home to work. I had been with Verizon for many years as their director of information technology," Sutherland tells The Gleaner.
Her return was delayed when she landed a software engineering position with another company. Now that she is back, her presence is being felt in every building block and steel that forms the construction of the Montego Freezone.
Outside of Jamaica, her competitors in the Philippines, India, Latin America, Canada, the USA, the rest of the Caribbean and Brazil already know that the woman who held a key decision-making position at Verizon in the selection and implementation of multimillion-dollar information technology systems solutions for top Fortune 500 companies, including Hughes Information Technology Systems, NOAA, NASA, Central Newspaper Inc, Baan, and John Deer, has returned to her homeland.
The pioneer, whose attributes to excel is woven in the fabric of her DNA, after only three years in the Montego Freezone is forecasting significant growth in 2012.
"Our advantage comes from the fact that a lot of clients are looking for near-shore opportunities, as opposed to going away to places, such as India and the Philippines.
"They are finding Jamaica to be a very attractive alternative."
She says her clients like Jamaica's cultural affinity and accent. "They find that it is warming or soothing for a lot of people that we speak to. It's a little more accent-neutral than trying to talk to someone in India, where there is a language barrier and the accent is much stronger."
In fact, she says one of the many advantages she has in her business is the fact that her staff, which is made up of 90 per cent women, can relate to the customer experience. "We tend to understand the culture much more than our friends in India."
The men in her employ are equally talented, she adds, and she wants to see more of them applying for positions in the call centres here. Quite frankly, she says there are opportunities for men, yet they don't gravitate towards the call centre business.
Capitalise
Sutherland and her team are looking to capitalise more on the ICT sector, encompassing the technical aspect of the job, software levels, information technology. They are also hoping to draw on very experienced skilled sets so they will be able to outsource.
What's next for the woman who graduated with a first degree in mathematics and a master's degree in telecommunications information systems management?
"My passion is still to get into more of the higher-level aspect of the ICT sector, some of the things that Jamaica is ideally striving towards. ITO Software consulting, system analysis, something that I think Jamaica has great interest in, which is still a needed commodity."
Sutherland says she partnered with a gentleman about a year and a half ago, whose background is in finance and accounting. "The two talents allowed us to grow further and I am happy with the growth that we have realised. I might not have been able to grow this fast on my own."
With expansion efforts under way, GGS has plans for opening a recently acquired 18,000-square foot, 500-plus seat centre facility in Kingston, which has the potential to provide hundreds of jobs within the private sector.
In addition to aiding in job and wealth creation through the establishment of facilities in Kingston, GGS will focus on continuous expansion by securing facilities in the rural areas of the island.