Seeking Opportunity Arbitrage in LatAm
August 10th, 2011
By Eric Simonson, Everest Group
I often hear organizations wanting to attain benefits but with a desire to “minimize” risk. Understandable, but what they don’t realize at the outset is that this is a limiting mindset, particularly when most also agree they prefer sustained benefits. My preferred definition of global sourcing is “attaining a different profile of benefits from successfully managing a different profile of risk.”
Instead of trying to follow what has already been proven “safe,” the innovators in global sourcing are intentional about what risks their organizations can take and successfully manage in order to achieve the desired benefits. These risks may be in overcoming infrastructure disadvantages, creating delivery models that can withstand more variability, or choosing to cultivate an underutilized talent pool.
The single largest and most enduring challenge in global services is getting the right talent. …
El Salvador Journal: A First-Hand Reaction from the Experts
November 15th, 2010
By Kirk Laughlin
San Salvador: A number of influential executives from the offshore/nearshore sourcing industry gathered here last week for a brief tour of the expanding call center/BPO industries of this nation of six million people. Meeting several dozen luminaries, executives, managers and country promotion leaders – the group came away with a distinct and real-world view of where the country is headed.
The group included Anupam Govil of Global Equations, Peter Ryan of Ovum, Juan Gonzalez from Frost and Sullivan and Shannon Curley of Jones Lang LaSalle. We asked them two key questions about El Salvador – and you might be surprised that the country is being called one of “the most interesting markets in Central America.”
El Salvador Journal: A Success Story Growing Cautiously
November 12th, 2010
By Kirk Laughlin
Spend a few days in San Salvador (as I’m doing with a group of analysts and advisors on a PROESA- sponsored country tour), and you learn quickly that a not-forgotten civil war and having the smallest geographic size of any country in the region creates a unique kind of hunger among the professional class in El Salvador. Put simply, El Salvadorans are careful – even conservative – about using their resources. And in the case of human capital, the call center and BPO industries are well aware that ongoing expansion has to be managed wisely so that supply of workers does not outstrip demand.
What’s Behind the Sudden Departure of Stream CEO Scott Murray?
August 20th, 2010
Was it Scott Murray’s brash and hard-charging style that led to his sudden departure as top boss at Stream Global Services this week? We may never know the real answer, but there are plenty of surprised looks on the faces of those who work at Stream or do business with the global call center and CRM giant, based outside of Boston. The announcement went out early today that Murray is being replaced by Kathryn Marinello, the former CEO at Ceridian, a major payroll and HR outsourcing firm.
Murray is certainly not leaving under a cloud like Mark Hurd did during his sudden resignation at HP just a few weeks ago, but the news does come as somewhat of a shock for an executive who returned to Stream to command a growth-first strategy that seemed to directly reflect the aggressive style of Murray himself. There are two clues that lead us to believe that Murray was removed – rather than him leaving by choice.
Ohio is ‘Horrified’ Call Center Services are Set Up in El Salvador
August 17th, 2010Bob Bloom, second-generation owner of Bloom Brothers Supply, stands in his showroom between the clothes washers and an electric heat-pump water heater. Ohio’s rebate program helped him sell 45 refrigerators, 91 dishwashers, 112 washing machines and 12 water heaters in four months, and hire two more workers to help handle the extra business.
A Texas company that administered Ohio’s $11 million appliance rebate program used hundreds of workers in El Salvador to process applications and answer customers’ calls.
Parago Inc. never told state officials that it would handle the rebates from an offshore call center, Lisa Patt-McDaniel, director of the Ohio Department of Development, said.
State officials never asked, either. The state’s application doesn’t specifically require companies to say where call centers are situated.
State officials learned of the El Salvador arrangement on the day the program began, after …
By Jon Felperin
It is no secret that Central America faces some challenges on the road to create a robust and truly bilingual professional workforce. Local efforts at English education are inconsistent across the region and many hardworking students graduate with less than an intermediate level of spoken English–far below what contact centers require for entry level employment.
A Top LatAm Marketing Executive at Stream Moves On
April 27th, 2010Rodolfo Salazar, a popular and well-known marketing head for Stream Global Services’ operations in the Americas, has resigned from his role at the international BPO player. Salazar, who is based in El Salvador, spent nearly two years at Stream and was one of the company’s chief spokespersons for their activities in the region.
“After working for Telefonica, Microsoft and Dell, I could summarize my experience with Stream Global Services as a great ride through a high potential growth market in fast paced ever-changing organization, driven by an Experienced business man (CEO Scott Murray) that knows how to take calculated risks fast for growing the Business even faster,” wrote Salazar in an email to Nearshore Americas.
Salazar has not made clear what he’ll be doing next – but we wish him the best and hope he lands in a place where he can continue to advocate for the Nearshore …
El Salvador: On the Right Path
April 13th, 2010
By Victor Casiano
Strategically located in the heart of Central America, El Salvador is close enough (and in an attractive time zone) to be appealing to companies based in the U.S. and Canada. The country offers competitive pricing in comparison to neighbors such as Mexico, Panama or Costa Rica. However, the Salvadorian outsourcing industry still has some untapped potential, which I will be covering briefly in this collaboration to Nearshore Americas.
Early Inspiration
El Salvador was launched as an outsourcing destination in the 2004-2005 period, when Dell and Sykes started operations in the country. At that time, the jobs generated by the industry went from 1,000 to over 9,000 in 2010, a real testament to the attractiveness of the country as an outsourcing destination. There are currently 38 centers in El Salvador (including two finance-specialized BPOs), out …
Five Years Later, CAFTA Influence on Pro Services Outsourcing is Hotly Debated
February 16th, 2010
By Tarun George
The Dominican Republic-Central American Free trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) remains a controversial treaty five years after its contentious passage, yet many experts believe that the agreement is only just beginning to show its real impact.
CAFTA-DR forms one of the largest free trade blocs in the Americas, joining together Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. Bilateral trade between the US and the CAFTA countries is valued at over $45 billion annually. But nearly five years on from when it was first implemented in the US, what effect has it had on the trade in services? NearshoreAmericas is taking a look at whether CAFTA has in fact enabled a more productive relationship between US customers and the professional services outsourcing industry in Central America.
