Poll: Will the ouster of Zelaya hurt the growing BPO industry of Honduras… What's your opinion?
July 1st, 2009[polldaddy poll=1750091]
So far, 2009 looks like a good year for the emerging Honduras BPO community.
The first tenants at Altia business park are planning to move into the state-of-the-art facility in September.
Worldwide outsourcing provider ACS recently announced plans to locate a call center near San Pedro Sula and operators of several industrial parks are helping make the case to invest in Honduras – a country that is becoming well-known for strong English language skills. There are well over 400 English language schools operating in Honduras. In fact, in a story that came out today in the Honduras publication “La Prensa” (click on this link for the Googlized English translation,) the author claims that Honduras has more bilingual speakers per capita …
Tata and Infosys Make Bigger and Bolder Moves in Latin America
June 19th, 2009Two of the world’s biggest outsourced services organizations are putting more investment into Latin America, expecting that stable economies, increasingly educated populations and broad language skills will be key factors in long-term growth.
Tata Consultancy Services opened its seventh Latin America site this week in Mexico, while Infosys is also planning to open a services facility in Mexico.
Infosys CEO: Latin America is going to among the fastest growing markets in the world
The provider is said to be looking to acquire providers in the region, especially those that posesses multi-lingual capabilities. Infosys Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director S Gopalakrishnan says that Latin America is expected to be among the fastest growing markets in the world.
Meanwhile, Tata has opened its third global delivery centre in Queretaro, Mexico. The other two Mexican centres are in Mexico City and Guadalajara in Jalisco state….
By Karina E. Cuevas
The Dominican Republic continues to hold the title of the Caribbean’s call center champion, edging out rival Jamaica and earning continuing praise from major in-country providers. With over 65 call centers, it is the second industry in growth after tourism, generating 40 percent of revenue for the overall DR economy. The call center industry has created around 22,000 direct jobs and there are hopes that as many as 100,000 new jobs will be added in the next five years.
Rodolfo Salazar, America’s Marketing Director for Stream, says the DR is a key part of Stream's Nearshore services strategy
In 2008, $7.2 million was driven from services exports and the country attracted $2.8 million in investments.
An Affinity Play
“Our affinity with the United States of America as well as location and telecommunication infrastructure are benefits aside from the low costs for the industry,” says Veronica Ogando, Investment Promotions Specialist for CEI-RD.
CEI-RD helps facilitate tax exempt status for providers, whether or not they are in an industrial park. The National Free Zone Council backs that proposal providing call center businesses access to the benefits of free trade zones, although this does not apply to the textile or manufacturing industries within the zones.
One of the main features that the DR call center industry counts on is the variety of languages available within the country. Its inhabitants have knowledge of Portuguese, French, English and Italian aside from Spanish. Companies like Stream, which happens to be the top provider in the country, credits cultural affinity as a key feature of the DR’s services industry.
“In the Dominican Republic, we credit not only the exceptional quality of the country’s English-speaking talent base, but also its cultural affinity for the U.S., and highly skilled, educated workforce,” says Rodolfo Salazar, America’s Marketing Director for Stream Global Services.
A Streaming Success
Although countries like the Philippines, Costa Rica, Panama, Guatemala, Venezuela and Colombia are the current competition for the DR, geographical positioning continue to be a primary asset. Stream credits it success with its 80 global clients to the proximity of DR to North America, thus enabling clients to travel to DR sites in a minimum amount of time, addressing any business ventures in one day, if needed.
Another company that is benefiting from the advantages of the free trade zones in the DR is Provitel, a growing and relatively new call center company located in DR’s capital Santo Domingo. With a client base of various Fortune 1000 companies, Provitel sites the neutrality of the government and its low investment costs as key factors for doing business in the DR.
“Because of the saturation of the markets in Argentina, Costa Rica and Mexico it has afforded us an increase in cost and efficiency within DR,” says Ramon Rojas, COO for Provitel. But because there are not enough call centers in the country for the market, there is truly no client competition, but yes a competition of resources and we have ideal human resources.”
“Washington Mutual cited safety as their number one concern in their decision not to relocate to the DR…We have found that when US companies see cities like Bogota, Panama City, Managua or even San Jose, they have a greater comfort level” – Doug Meyer, DRCCA
Necessary Feedback
Despite all the positive feedback some of the main outsourcing companies are receiving, it doesn’t seem to satisfy the Dominican Republic Call Center Association (DRCCA) expectations of what the government needs to apply to make it a better business venture.
Medical Tourism: Where Latin America has an Edge over Asia
June 16th, 2009
Cultural familarity and proximity are key advantages Latin America has over Asia
As many as 23 million US citizens will seek medical treatment overseas by the year 2017 (spending close to $80 billion), and as much as 50% of those treatments will take place in Latin America.
Despite President Obama’s remarks today about the need to shore up the US healthcare system, there is little doubt that an increasing number of citizens will take advantage of what is seen as inexpensive and reliable health care services south of the border.
With such a huge upside, it’s no wonder that medical tourism development leaders in Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, Argentina, Guatemala, Colombia, Chile, and El Salvador are looking to get a stake in this growing market.
So what does make …
Is Cuba Ready for a BPO Revolution? We Have Some Answers
June 10th, 2009Costa Rica Services Summit Coverage (The show is over, but the reporting continues!)
Officials from Cuba's DISAIC (Cristina Espinosa on left and Mayra Barreto) spoke optimistically about Cuba's emerging professional services sector. CRM Central Editor Kirk Laughlin joins them at the Costa Rica Services Summit.
The establishment of Cuba as an Nearshore services base for US corporations is not as outrageous as we might have thought only a year ago. Recent geopolitical shifts (including the recent wrangling over Cuba’s potential OAS membership, detailed here in Time Magazine) are revealing a genuine thaw between the US and Cuba with the potential removal of the “insane” embargo in place since 1960.
While I don’t plan to incite any political firestorms here, there are clearly some valid causes to encourage normalized trade relations with Cuba, cultivate technology transfer and enable Cuba to slowly develop a viable, long-term export services sector. Why? For the same reasons that apply to many of its Nearshore neighbors – from Panama to Nicaragua and Jamaica and the Dominican Republic – the inflow of foreign capital into economically distressed nations generally causes good things to happen. Jobs appear where they didn’t before, university students develop career aspirations that are based on realistic opportunity, knowledge workers develop specialized skills and foreign corporations begin to investigate the long-term value of initiating sourcing relationships.
Can this happen in Cuba? It’s not as insane as you might think.
I say that because I sat down with two Cuba government officials at the Costa Rica Services Summit, both of whom work for at DISAIC, a government agency focused on consulting with Cuba business to improve their technology infrastructure, HR, training and technical services. Sitting down for an interview was Cristina Ramirez Espinosa, marketing communications director and Mayra Sanchez Barreto, IT consulting director.
What's Working and What's Not in Costa Rica
June 4th, 2009Costa Rica Services Summit Coverage: A Collective Q/A
Over 300 attendees make up this year's Services Summit. What's striking is there is literally no drop off - people are sticking around for the full conference.
The valuable part to blogging from a buyer/seller (corporate speed dating) event from a business journalist’s perspective is you have deeper conversations with a focused group of individuals. Unlike a conference with on-stage speakers and panels, this type of event seems to enable you to self-direct your own line of inquiry and test market your opinions.
Here are the key topics I’ve been driving and the collective responses (drawn from about two dozen in-depth conversations throughout the summit):
Question: How does Costa Rica rate among other nearshore nations?
Answer: Costa Rica is …
Hernan Campos, marketing director for Costa Rica Medical, sampled the services of his company when he went for vibro liposuction. Find out what happened in this post.
Costa Rica Services Summit Coverage
When Hernan Campos decided to trim a good bit of fat off his shoulders, belly and other pats of his body, he knew exactly who to turn to. (BTW, I checked with Hernan and he gave me full permission to share his story.) Hernan shed about 35 pounds in one treatment, provided by Costa Rica Medical, a San Jose-based, medical services organization that provides a wide range of cosmetic surgery and other popular procedures not generally covered by US insurance carriers. Hernan underwent a new, more advanced procedure called Vibroliposuction, a treatment that has not been approved yet by the FDA for usage in the United States.
Read more to find out how things went… .
Blogging Live: Costa Rica Services Summit
June 3rd, 2009
Hotel San Jose Palacio is the site of the Costa Rica Services Summit, starting today. (Post script: Internet connectivity unfortunately has been a nightmare throughout the conference. We are confident PROCOMER will choose a different venue for the 2010 Services Summit.)
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica – Over 300 attendees from across the Americas and Europe are here this morning, and for the next two days, to strike up business relationships with Costa Rica service providers in four key sectors: health/ medical tourism; engineering and design; entertainment and media and IT and software development. Two Costa Rica economic development agencies – CAMTIC and PROCOMER – organized the event.
The event is largely organized around the increasingly popular corporate matchmaking process, where buyers (over 100 are here) meet the service providers in the various sectors.
Costa Rica has established itself as an early pioneer in outsourcing services and its maturation has positioned the country to go after niche, value-added services. I will be meeting with over a dozen service providers in IT and medical tourism and will follow up with more posts.
For further data and details on the Costa Rica services market – following this post.
Mario Espana is the managing director of CADIS, a Guatemala City-based services firm.
Nearshore services involving product development, R and D and project support are definitely on the rise. While there remain concerns that the Nearshore region – especially Central America – risks being limited to call center and customer support services, we continue to see important signs of growth in value-added business support operations which – in our view – must define the next phase of expansion for the Nearshore community.
Mario Espana is the managing director of CADIS, a Guatemala City-based operation providing graphic design for sales materials, CAD design for architectural projects, web design and other services. Espana views human capital as one of the primary attractions of the Guatemala services sector. In an …
