The emergence of local training schools for professionals targeting the business process outsourcing job market promises to fill the current skills gaps and rein in the huge costs of in-house training that players in the sector have been grappling with.

A number of institutions have emerged to offer BPO-specific courses, a move inspired by large shortfalls in various capacities in the sector.

The lack of qualified personnel from the labour market has led to players soaking in huge bills in in-house training. KenCall, for instance, has been spending an average of Sh10 million annually to train its own workforce.

"In general, there are huge gaps at all levels of the skills spectrum," Mr Nicholas Nesbitt, CEO of KenCall, said.

He said the affected areas included call centre management, technical support, customer service, quality assurance, certification and basic call centre operations like typing, and proficiency in the English language.

African BPO academy (ABA) is one such institution that is developing programmes targeted at the BPO industry.

Earlier in the year, it entered into a partnership with BPO Certification Institute (BCI), an international firm offering BPO standards, consultancy, and certification services.

"So far the response is positive, given that BPO is not well understood by many institutions yet it offers the future job prospects in Kenya," said Ms Gilda Odera, the proprietor of ABA.

She says the institution has so far registered 320 students and is gearing up to start training up to 2000 students from January to June next year.

"Our model is that we recruit network training partners to offer the training and BCI certifications," said Ms Odera.

ABA, the holder of BCI certifications' training franchise for Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Nigeria, plans to enlist local colleges and universities to spread the web of BPO training in the region.

JKUAT, KCA, and Kenyatta universities are the tertiary institutions lined up to offer trainings beginning January.

ABA offers, at four different levels, training on voice-based interactive programmes, back office processes, finance and accounting, and technical elements.

The training takes 150 to 300 hours spread over 10 to 12 weeks.

Multimedia University College of Kenya (MMU), on the other hand, has been offering BPO training for the past three years.

The courses are crafted to impart skills in customer care, sales, communication, and transcription.

The institutions are expected to reduce costs of operations for players who will save time and money that have been expended in internal training.

But even with the onset of local training, players say that a lot more will have to be done to fully address the skills challenge, citing the fact that Kenya's BPO industry is still young and needs to learn from more established markets.

Analysts say that local training is good as it will help the students get started.

However, the nascent BPO sector still needs more external input to keep up with the industry's best practices.

"To gain higher skills, it is necessary to get experts from established countries like India who can come and offer training. Alternatively, industry leaders can travel to such places, come back and impart their experiences," Nesbitt said.

The local BPO sector has in the recent past suffered from a slump in demand for its services arising from the knock-on effects of the global financial crisis.

Companies in the developed world, who form the bulk of the client base for local BPO firms, halted their outsourcing orders in the wake of the financial crunch.