CEO & President of ADS Global - President of the American Chamber of Commerce In Jamaica (ADS GLOBAL - American Chamber of Commerce)

1.    Jamaica has become a hot spot for investment in the Caribbean. However, it seems that competition has risen from the surrounding islands, as for Cuba’s opening regarding the tourism sector and Trinidad & Tobago’s financial positioning for example. We would like to know the comparative advantages that Jamaica has to offer to the investment community worldwide?

To understand the competitive advantages you first need to look at the 3 major areas of growth which are Tourism, ICT/BPO and the Energy sector.  We had  record-breaking growth in FDI last year, 34 per cent growth versus 15 per cent the year before; nearly $800 million of that coming from the progress in reforming the energy sector.  The majority of the investment in the energy is coming from three to four US based companies.   For years Jamaica’s energy crisis has been stifling every aspect of life in Jamaica and has been the deterrent to doing business in Jamaica.  The progress being made in the development of modern infrastructure and supply will ultimately drive the price of energy downwards and increase efficiencies.   That is a tremendous game changer that’s going to allow for so much more investment in so many other areas.  
In fact, I was in Washington DC two weeks ago for the signing of the congressional act for trade between the Caribbean and the US and one thing that came up in all the meetings in Congress was that Jamaica should be the model for energy reform from a policy making perspective for the rest of the Caribbean, Central and South America and then also a model for how to build up the infrastructure.  

The ICT and Tourism sectors are also experiencing tremendous growth and that’s despite the fact that there is a lack of investment incentives from a public policy making perspective to drive additional investments.  What’s driving this growth is also an additional competitive advantage which is that in Jamaica you have the largest English speaking population south of Florida in the western hemisphere which is a key factor in terms of the customer service experience and skill sets which make up the foundati8on of both the ICT and Tourism.

Hotels are expanding and increasing their investment in Jamaica.  US based company AM Resorts in particular is in a major growth stage while at the same time lots of the other  Spanish based operators such as Palladium and Bahia are undertaking major renovations and expansions to their existing resorts.

And the third growth area which is ICT is growing because there is a pushback from the market in terms of outsourcing certain types of product and service fulfilment to India and the Philippines, basically where are you going to get English speaking skills?  Additionally, and just as important, is the development of one of the most modern and technologically advanced broadband infrastructures anywhere in the world. When I first came to Jamaica it was over $30,000 USD for broadband connection to the US.  It’s less than $5000 now, very competitively priced and very reliable infrastructure.  That again is a major competitive advantage Jamaica has to offer the investment community worldwide.


2.    Jamaica’s national debt equals 124% of its GDP and the economy has been stagnating for about a decade with 0 to 1% GDP growth on average. However, 2016 seems to have a better growth forecast and for us to understand the business climate of the country, we would like to know which sectors, to you, seem to be attractive for FDIs?

Well, the government has been reacting to the aspect of handling the debt.  The last government did a very good job of finally turning the philosophy around to say, we've got to make sacrifices in terms of our fiscal policy in order to manage the stranglehold of the nation’s debt. They did a fantastic job on fiscal responsibility and discipline and finally after years Unfortunately though, you can’t just decide to implement a strict fiscal policy to restructure your debt and repayment without a growth strategy.  There was no balance. There was absolutely no growth strategy at all.  Ultimately, that lack of balance resulted in a pushback from the country which caused the change of government.

The new government has undertaken the tremendous challenge of balancing fiscal policies that promote growth while at the same time address the necessary decisions to continue to manage the nation’s debt, let’s hope for everybody’s sake they are successful in doing so.

3.    What should be the growth strategy?

First and foremost the growth strategy should include a public sector that reduces its own bureaucracy and barriers of trade.  Secondly that public sector needs to sit down with the private sector in particular with much more inclusion with foreign direct investment and embrace a policy that is pro-business, pro investment, pro-growth.  There needs to be much more engagement with Jamaica’s largest partner in trade – United States of America.  The government needs to sit down with business and investors from the US and further engage with them in order to develop aggressive policies for trade and commerce.  Essentially, the members businesses of the American Chamber of Commerce need to be invited to the table in order to discuss policy perspective that will create more growth and more incentives for business and there is just not enough of that going on here in Jamaica.

There is a lot of legacy based businesses that have been in Jamaica for a long time that have been very successful. They seem to be much more involved from a policy perspective even though foreign direct investment is driving huge levels of growth in Jamaica.  I just recently expressed this to the Hon. Kamina Johnson-Smith, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade at AmCham Leadership Breakfast Series where I said to her that the government needs to greatly increase dialogue with the foreign investment community.

4.    How does that create jobs for Jamaicans?  

Investment drives jobs.  The private sector is what drives growth.  Investment is what drives the private sector.  If you want to drive investment, the public sector needs to say to the private sector what do we need to do in order to have you invest more money, what do you need from us in order to be successful and to your business.  That’s what will lead to major job creation.

5.    The BPO sector has been growing at an average of 21%.  It’s one of the fastest growing sectors in Jamaica.  What are the remaining opportunities in these sectors?  Are these exaggerated numbers or do you think you still have opportunities within the sector.

That’s a great question.  I have been in this business for the last 15 years in the Caribbean and twenty-five years in my life.  

Something I talk about a lot both as President American Chamber but more importantly as CEO and Co-founder of ADS Global.  We've been here for 10 years and our anniversary is coming up and we've seen huge changes for the better overall but also recently... challenges to growth.  First of all, over the last 10 years it is by far the largest sector for job growth.  

Second of all, the industry has not even scratched the surface but that’s with its overall attention.  The industry has gotten very segmented to mainly traditional voice services and hasn’t expanded its skill sets beyond that.  It hasn’t created and the educational pipeline to expand the skill sets beyond that, hasn't addressed the brain drain at the management level and hasn't got into other areas of that industry which we refer to as BPO - Business Process Outsourcing.

6.    The main focus here is low or middle skilled workers working in BPOs. Why is that?

A lot of people think it is low, I don’t agree.  It’s definitely a middle level skill.  It’s the same skill set that your tourism base pulls from.  The real issue is that if you look at the last ten years, leys the say first 6 or 7 years you had a larger percentage of higher skill sets that the industry average worldwide yet as the growth took off the country hasn’t kept up with eh pipeline for skill sets so therefore the labour force is pulling from a smaller pool of middle skilled workers.

The other challenge is that public policy towards labour has become imbalanced towards the rights of the employees versus the rights of the employer.  Listen, don’t get me wrong we all want to be fair to our employees which is necessary on order to do well in business but you need to have a balance from a cultural perspective in that what fair needs to be fair both to the company and its workers. It’s important that we build this sector with both public and private entities working together in order to further strengthen the nation’s people capital.  There was a time when people were every excited and proud to say I’m going to work in a call centre I don’t know if it’s like that anymore. And I honestly feel that’s been a direct result of rapid growth and the lack of public policy reform in terms of human resources within the industry.

7.    5. How would you upgrade the skills of the workers in order to offer better services and get more prestige for these employees?

First it starts with the individual person.  People need to create better skill set for themselves.  The private sector is not in charge of making people better rather we have a responsibility to create the opportunity for people to improve their skills.  We are investing in human resources but you can’t make a person get out of bed and go work and try to do better, people have to invest in themselves.

The industry has made a major investment in Jamaica’s people capital.  It needs to do even more but it can’t do it alone and this is where cooperation from a policy making perspective is greatly needed.  

For example in the last few years, the industry has done a great job of working with the government to implement workforce development  at an educational level but it’s nowhere near where it needs to be and it’s not keeping up with the growth.  Very large companies are coming into the space and their demand for skillsets is putting a strain on the system.  And an even greater challenge that we face is that employee retention rates are decreasing.  There need to be greater incentives for companies to invest in vocational education and training and there needs to be a paradigm shift that a job is a career and a career is a privilege not a right.  What I mean by that is that more and more there is a tendency of the employee base to feel that they are entitled to their job versus taking into account their job performance.  

So what’s the solution...the industry needs to expand its service offering beyond traditional call centre services.  We need to diversify more towards a BPO model this will result in a trickle-down effect across all areas including the upgrade of skills of workers hence more prestigious career paths.

8.    How did you end up in the Caribbean?

On 9/11 my two partners were in Mumbai trying to sign a deal for us to move our Philadelphia facility to India.  I had decided to go to the Caribbean to do due diligence on the viability of the call centre industry in that part of the world.  What I found out was that the industry in the Caribbean was very limited but there was a sense of economic development from public sector that they wanted to encourage companies to invest in the region.    Unfortunately due to the tragedy of 9/11 it took weeks for us to all to get back to Philadelphia to discuss the best way forward for the company’s offshore model.  We decided on the Caribbean versus India due to the volatility of that part of the world at that time.

We went to Guyana and the Eastern Caribbean.  We built the very first outsourced call centre in the history of Guyana right at the Berbice River next to the University of Guyana.  That centre is still there today.  We built it from ground up.  Twenty five thousand square foot facility and eventually sold our interest and came north to Montego Bay

We were very attracted to the skill sets of the labour force available in Montego Bay.  At the time 90 per cent of our business was very high-end market research for the media industry and we found the right staffing model in Jamaica.  As the company evolved we expanded our service offering to include marketing support and BPO services.  We’ve recently expanded the company into high end database management, secured date storage and back office support services for several industries including financial, telco and tourism sectors.  We not only service clients worldwide we also focus on business development within the region as such some of the companies we work for are Digicel, Scotiabank and Palladium Hotel Group.

9    How do you keep up with competition?  Everyone is doing probably the same thing and that’s what I was probably asking you earlier like the market is probably saturating.

The competition really isn't for clients.  My type of company approaches its clients with a value added model and much of what we do at ADS works within niche markets.  A large percentage of the call centre industry works a within a commodity based model.  A company like our size can’t win the commodity battle.  You have to be a large company such as a West or Xerox to be successful with a price driven model.  They have the economies of scale.  

By the way we were a much bigger company at one time.  15 years ago we operated ten different facilities around the world and I had 8 partners and a large Board of Directors to deal with.  One day I woke up and just decided to downsize myself and two of my partners joined my which eventually led us to the Caribbean and Jamaica.  Today I have the flexibility and empowerment o build the company in my own vision and strategically take it where I want it to go.  

10. Do you have any expansion strategy?  

Our number one expansion strategy is not necessarily to increase revenue but rather to increase our margins.  Our goal this year is to increase our margins by 20 percent.  The way we are doing that is to diversify our business model so that we better leverage our technology capabilities.  We have recently expanded towards being an outsourced technology solutions provider and we’ve entered the big data market.  We are about to launch a product line for socially sourced data and lead generation.  We call it ADS Social Advantage, the official product rollout will be during the fourth quarter of this year but we have begun beta testing.   We recently did a soft launch which can be seen at www.ads-social.com

We’ve also expanded our marketing support services for the tourism industry, we now provide technology solutions including customized loyalty rewards platforms and search engine applications.  One such solution can be seen at www.destinationspassport.com


11. You are also the President of the American Chamber Commerce.  What is your main role as the President?  

The American Chamber of Commerce represents the majority of foreign direct investment in Jamaica.  We also represent Jamaican companies that do business with the United States and within the region.  There are 24 American Chambers in the western hemisphere and over 116 worldwide.  We are also supported by the US Chamber of Commerce which is the largest business organization in the world.  Additionally we have a strong relationship with the US Embassy.  My main role as President is to leverage that network and our global brand in order to support our members and act as a facilitator for growth.

12.    You got a number of statuses, you are the President of the American Chamber of Commerce and you are the CEO and Co-Founder of ADS. Out of all of your achievements what are you most proud of?  

Two of my achievements mean the most to me.  First I’m definitely proud of the fact that ADS pioneered the ICT sector here in Jamaica.  Secondly, along the way we’ve been able to make a difference for many of our employees and their families.  We are not a big company but we try our best to make a difference where a difference where a difference can be made.  
On a more personal side I have adopted a small school in Montego Bay and do my best to provide the students with a sense of hope that they can make a difference in the future of Jamaica.  At the end of the day if I can make a difference in one child’s life then I have been able to make a difference in this world.