Net Worth is Network

Saskia Hill tells a remarkable story of the good, the bad and the ugly. It is a salutary tale for any business.

Hill is a Durban chartered accountant and the owner of MCS and Connect BPS, an uMhlanga firm that employs 200 people and offers a suite of services including debt recovery, accounting, and outsourced business processes in a call centre model.

Hill bought the business from a client in 2009, but before that, she did articles with PwC, worked for UK banks, and then with Colgate-Palmolive in New York. Returning to SA in 1999 she ran her own accounting and tax firm for a decade before buying MCS.

Her foray into the call centre world proved profitable and professionally rewarding. MCS services banks, financial service companies and retailers. Connect BPS has clients offshore. Her companies have secured a number of accolades and grown staff and turnover by 400% in 10 years.

Hill was riding the crest of a wave when Covid hit. Days before lockdown she saw signs that work from home was about to become reality and quickly set up her team members at home to enable them to continue working. The stealth with which the MCS and Connect BPS teams were able to move kept spirits up during
the pandemic, especially considering their offices in Cornubia were a bespoke build.

In 2021 MCS won KZN Top Business award for Employee Wellness considering how the company had helped staff during Covid.

In July 2021 Hill and her family were at a game reserve when they got the devastating news that the Cornubia offices had been completely gutted in the riots. In a matter of hours the offices of MCS and Connect BPS went up in smoke and the staff had to work from home again.

Trapped in a game reserve with only their cellphones, Hill and her husband Grant, together with her managers, faced the nigh impossible task of kickstarting their business after the company’s IT servers and administrative capacity was burnt to cinders.

“It was surreal. I felt numb and helpless. Somehow you find the energy to pick up the pieces and move forward. Having an amazing team of staff, clients and suppliers around me, enabled the process to run smoothly. Looking back now it all seems a blur, but we did it.”

What unfolded in the few days after the riots was a remarkable tale of how kindness trumps cruelty in the often cutthroat world of business. It speaks volumes about Hill’s relationship with her staff, her customers, her competitors and generally the goodwill in KZN, a province sorely tested by adversity.

Upon hearing of Hill’s loss, one of MCS’s rivals stepped in and offered office space that was critical to service the company’s overseas clients.

That Hill had the foreign business in the first place is evidence of her chutzpah and her belief in the power of networks. She is a member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organisation and in 2019 Hill visited Canada for an EO event. During an off day she visited contact centres in Canada. This visit eventually turned into lucrative business for MCS.

When the US was looking forward to the then much-awaited Covid-19 vaccine, President-elect Joe Biden’s election mandate was to roll out 100-million doses in 100 days. It was a task easier said than done. While most countries adopted a digital method for vaccine appointment booking, the seniors and the most vulnerable population group needed the vaccine first. To respond, the US Department of Health engaged the call centre industry to set up shop and book appointments by phone.

Connect BPS’ client in the US – faced with the challenge of recruiting 2 000 staff to help do the job – turned to Hill and her team to help find a solution. Being a government project, the jobs could not be offshore, but hiring 2 000 staff was a tall order. So they asked Connect BPS to contact respondents across 50 states, interviewing them against set criteria, setting up start dates, and performing joining formalities. Connect BPS became the recruiting arm and worked seven days a week across all US time zones to find and place agents for a remote call centre. Hill says the co-ordination effort, steep learning curve, and tireless days (and nights) helped get millions of Americans vaccinated. Connect BPS’ clients in the US described Hill’s team as “highly skilled, disciplined, professional and enthusiastic”.

Within four months of the riots, Hill was able to secure temporary office space from where MCS and Connect BPS were able to entrench its rebuild. Now the company has leased offices in Mount Edgecombe. The experience promoted Hill to put together a motivational speech which she dubbed “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”.

The stand-out features of Hill’s story are how her competitors helped her in extraordinary times; how vibrant the call centre industry is in Durban; and how much power there is in networks.

Hill says specialists liken what is happening in the call centre industry in Durban to what happened in South East Asia when it exploded 20 years ago. Back then, Invest Durban’s Russell Curtis was a key player in establishing KZN On-source.

Realising the job prospects in 2002, Curtis was part of a core team that laid much of the groundwork for the growth of the call centre and outsourcing industry in eThekwini. A public-private partnership established 20 years ago brought all the value chain partners together and, since then, has sustained relationships and sector assistance. There are now more than 21 established international operators in KZN who employ close to 37 000 people, contributing about R3,6-billion per annum in export revenue for KZN.

Said Curtis: “The traction of the partnerships in this industry has been phenomenal for Durban and KZN. We’ve stayed close to the industry and collectively we’ve all invested a lot of time and energy in growing the business. We need all the stakeholders to collaborate to sustain this growth.”

Yogan Naidoo, the regional head of BPESA (Business Process Enabling South Africa), a non-profit industry body, said: “KZN provided 40% of the national number of new jobs created in servicing international markets in 2020. Importantly, the province hosts 25% of the export segment of this sector and has the fastest growth rate (37%) of all regions in recent years. The KZN sector is the largest outsourcer to the US and our region has just won the bid to host the 2022 GBS Conference in Durban. This will increase the market share that KZN has in the USA. Not only do we have the skills, capacity and expertise here in KZN but the uniquely collaborative relationships between private and public sector stakeholders underpin our potential for exponential growth.”