Panel: Getting Smart About Site Selection
May 15th, 2012Red tape, scalability, labor analysis, financial incentives and investment risk are among the burning issues for a Nexus panel joining together Ann Harts, Kevin Parikh and Fabrizio Opertti
By Luke Bujarski
Mexico’s telecoms sector has gained a bad reputation for under investment, poor quality and high costs. Fixed line and mobile telephony rates are among the most expensive across the OECD and bandwidth is subpar compared to download speeds in other LATAM markets. While government initiatives poised to foster competition continue to hit roadblocks, America Movil is feeling the heat and things are slowly changing.
Atul Vashistha of Neo Group and Steve Rudderham of Capgemini with Mark Pfeiffer and Henri Sas of Teleperformance at Nexus 2012
By Jon Tonti
Teleperformance, the customer care and technical support giant with over 135,000 employees worldwide and almost $3 billion dollars in revenues in 2011, took home the Foundations for the Future Impact Award presented at Nearshore Nexus. Teleperformance bested a competitive field of applicants in part because of its exceptional ability to transform the company’s corporate social responsibility efforts into community based grassroots campaigns with sustained local support.
The consensus from NSAM's readers: Wait for the Castros to move on before taking Cuba seriously.
By Jon Tonti
A mere 230 miles from Miami, Havana’s ultra-attractive geographic positioning continues to push Cuba on to the radar of ‘what ifs’ when looking at explosive possibilities in the Nearshore services sector.
But before floating into dream land – let’s review the facts: Cuba’s BPO market today is nearly non-existent and the Cuban government is not focused on jump-starting it. Despite an intelligent workforce that is increasingly exposed to private-run business, Cuba still has a long way to go to become viable for global services. We drew upon our pool of experts and did some poking around of our own to find that Cuba lacks a BPO scene because of the Cuban government’s preference for other industries, a weak technological infrastructure, a dearth of transparency, and political and workforce uncertainty.
Beverly Burke, Director, Information and Promotion at BELTRAIDE, talks about how Belize is making a name for itself in the Nearshore.
By Michael Blankman
In my recent article, we concluded that the most important aspect of managing remotely is building a strong and trusting relationship. Creating a partnership that doesn’t rely solely on the contract for the outsourcer to get performance security. The partnership is critical because once operations are outsourced, real influence over daily management will and should be limited, or why outsource at all? The partnership needs to be based on respecting each other’s expertise, ensuring roles and responsibilities are clearly defined and that the underlying business model justifying the decision to outsource is protected.
Managing Outsourcers: When SLAs Don’t Do the Job
May 1st, 2012By Robert L. Scheier
Service level agreements (SLAs) are the heart and soul of many outsourcing contracts. They define what the provider must deliver and their penalties for failure, in anything from application uptime to the time required to solve a customer’s problem on a help line.
But at least as currently defined, SLAs often fall short of detecting (and, more importantly, correcting) problems quickly. That was the message at the recent SIG Spring Summit from Senior Corporate Counsel Richard English of Ingram Micro and Shaalu Mehra of Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton, who helps the electronic distributor negotiate outsourcing deals.
By Rosanne D’Ausilio PhD
Average turnover, reported at 40% to 50%, has always been, and continues to be, a chronically costly problem for call centers, a problem that seems to be tolerated rather than solved. Respondents to a FurstPerson survey reported an average monthly attrition rate of 7.18%. Annualized, a 40% annual turnover estimate becomes an actual turnover rate of 87%. As you read further, you’ll see what that costs!
India Losing Cost Advantage Over Latin America
April 23rd, 2012
By Robert L. Scheier
Hourly labor costs in the Latin American Nearshore are still slightly higher than in traditional low-cost leader India. But other factors such as faster time to market and simplified communications often still make the Nearshore the better choice, according to speakers at the Nearshore Nexus outsourcing conference in New York City last week.
Uribe Declares New Day for Nearshore at Nexus
April 19th, 2012
Uribe highlighted positive social, political and business developments in the Latin American/Caribbean region
Kirk Laughlin, CEO of Nearshore Americas, kicked off today’s Nearshore Nexus Conference at the Crowne Plaza in New York City by stating nearshore outsourcing has gone from “novel to mainstream.” Laughlin promised that conference speakers would illustrate how outsourcing destinations in Latin America and the Caribbean are “no longer in the shadow of India or China,” but have instead become vibrant providers of sophisticated IT and business outsourcing services in their own right. The first speaker, former President of the Republic of Colombia Mr. Alvaro Uribe, delivered on that promise.
