By Aaron Ukodie
Amal Hassan, is the Chief Executive Officer of Outsource Global. She is from Kano State. She is so fluent with the English Language, you would almost think she was British-bred, or schooled in Europe or the United States. No! Hassan had her education, from primary to tertiary level, in Kano. She was born in Kano, and married in Kano.
Her talent, in how she speaks the English language, as if it is her first language, was acquired in Kano. Now, Amal has used her creative way of speaking the English Language to produce an amazing story of how one could deploy talent, fed with passion, to succeed in any endeavor. Her story is inspirational. The manner she has raised her enterprise, so doggedly, is worthy. It is a story of how one could break business walls and stereotypes.
Amal started a company in Kano, in 2003 that engaged in training of IT professionals. After training several hundreds, she found out in 2005 that her graduates could not be employed. She got frustrated. She moved her business from Kano to Kaduna, with the hope that Kaduna would present a more business friendly environment. There too, she met a seeming brick wall. She was driven to relocate to Abuja, still frustrated but not downcast. There, in Abuja, she began to research on how she could improve on the employment situation of her people.
In the course of her research she stumbled on Business Processing Outsourcing. She looked at several models but zeroed on the Indian model where she found out that the BPO provided millions of jobs for Indians. It was about 2.2 million jobs at the time Amal was looking at the Indian BPO model.
At this point she asked herself, if India could do it, why not Nigeria. When she looked at the parameters for setting up a BPO, Amal thought to herself that Nigeria had better parameters than India; Nigeria had better English speaking people, more educated workforce, better infrastructure and better timeline.
“If India could do it, why not Nigeria”, she remarked.
With the conviction, and the desire to provide job for her IT professionals that passed through her school, Amal began a process of setting up an outsourcing outfit, in 2013, known as Outsource Global.
Amal’s efforts to get established, and get her enterprise off the ground were not smooth sailing. She told the story of how she tried to get her first break- through; convincing clients to patronize her new, and somewhat, inexperienced outsourcing business. The Indians were having a field day and many outsourcing business looked to India. Unperturbed, Amal trudged on, making several visits to the United States in search of global clients. Her breakthrough came in 2016. In one of her visits, she spoke to 14 potential clients who did not hesitate to turn her down. The 15th potential client she talk to had sympathy and offered to try her. That client, which Amal declined to name, became her first customer. She did not disappoint the client and today Outsource Global have several international clients in the United State and United Kingdom. She is now looking to the Japanese market.
When she gets a client in Japan, she is not going to employ Japanese to man the contact desks. Nigerians would do the job! “You could get over 200 Nigerians who could speak Japanese fluently”, she said.
One very outstanding mark of Amal’s OG is that the market is segmented such that there are graduates from various disciples, such as medicine, law, business administration, IT, etc, in her employment, who handle various clients as the need arises.
Outsource Global has its headquarters in Abuja, with offices in Lagos and Kaduna. Under her leadership, OG has emerged as the leading Nigerian contact centre provider, servicing the international market, turning the company into a truly global BPO giant, creating over 700 jobs and putting Nigeria on the global map for contact centre business process outsourcing.
Amal’s entrepreneurial prowess and business acumen continue to set her apart, as a highly regarded business leader in Nigeria. Over the years, she has participated in local and international business missions and attended various professional and leadership courses.
She is widely regarded as a role model for the girl-child and women, especially in northern Nigeria.
The United States Embassy has often showcased her as a woman business role model.
This is Amal’s conviction about the Nigerian workforce:
“The biggest assets that Nigeria has, is our talents. Nigerians have every skill set you need. If Nigeria drops oil today and says, we will focus on skills, we will succeed. Nigerians can adapt to any kind of job and skill set. There is no process you will give to Nigerians that they will not succeed. All we need is a well-structured environment”.
Amal knows what she is talking about. She has proven it in her organization, where most of the employees are Nigerians, servicing American and English clients; and when you interact with them, you would think the workforce is English or American, in the way they had adapted to the spoken English and conversational requirement of the outsourcing business.
This was also due to the right environment that Amal has created, in terms of tools and work ambience, structured to international standards.
Amal has a Bachelor of Science and Master Degrees in Business Administration, from the Bayero University, Kano. She is an alumnus of Fortune-US Department of State Global Women’s Mentoring Programme, which links young female leaders to Fortune’s most powerful women.
