Sitel’s LatAm HR Chief: Governments Could do a Better Job
August 3rd, 2010By Tarun George
The ability to find qualified and language-proficient workers is a very big deal when you’re trying to sustain or expand an outsourcing operation. The pursuit of talent is the force that drives the nearshoring engine, and there are always going to be debates about the next hot spot where great talent and attractive wages converge. Julio Mosquera-Stanziola, Sitel‘s Regional HR Director for Latin American Operations is an expert at finding the next great talent pool – so we decided to find out what he thinks about the current market. Hear why he thinks Chile, Colombia and Nicaragua are leading destinations in Latin America… and more.
Six Questions for Sitel’s Global Site Selection Chief
April 15th, 2010By Kirk Laughlin
Ever wonder how the globe’s top tier BPO players – organizations like Sitel, Teleperformance, Convergys, Genpact and others – go about deciding when a country is ripe for investment?
The CALA region (Caribbean and Latin America) is chock full of interesting options – ranging from the well established hubs like Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Colombia and Costa Rica to a new set of tigers that are determined to make their mark – such as Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras.
We caught up recently with Kim Facer – the top guy at Sitel who scouts the world looking for the next right home for the Sitel shingle. Hear what Kim has to say about saturation (“a real threat”), his bullishness on Central America and why “the sun sets on every market” in our interview, by clicking here.
CSR in the Nearshore: We’re Paying Attention
March 12th, 2010By Kirk Laughlin
A key part of our mission at Nearshore Americas is to create a more visible platform to highlight the work sourcing providers and their customers are doing in the area of corporate social responsibility. Although CSR may seem to have little to do with our core business-oriented coverage of the exploding Nearshore sourcing industry, we believe discussing CSR activities on a regular basis will be an appropriate reminder and powerful symbol of the kind of commitment companies are making in local and regional societies across the Americas.
Our role – and hopefully this is pretty apparent by now – is to get accurate information out to the world and particularly to US sourcing customers about what is really going on in this market. Those of us in the Nearshore sourcing industry continue to hear countless myths and misinterpretations about this market, so we’re always going to be here to get the story right and paint the most accurate picture possible.
Part of telling an accurate story includes highlighting the strong alliances outsourcing providers are establishing to help people in need. By exposing these activities we hope to contribute to breaking down any lingering perception that sourcing providers are solely in these locations to strip the local economies of good talent and operate in a bubble without regard to the needs of local communities.
Sitel’s Investment in Nicaragua “Like Striking Gold”
March 2nd, 2010By Kirk Laughlin
Sitel’s Nicaragua operation has been one of the “biggest success stories over the last 18 months” for the global BPO and contact center organization, Andrew Kokes, VP of Marketing at Sitel, told Nearshore Americas last week.
That’s a pretty bold statement for a company that employs over 60,000 workers in over 140 facilities in 27 countries around the world. But, Kokes says the value of Nicaragua became so apparent so quickly that the company opened a second facility within the first year, which is a rarity for Sitel.
“It’s been a phenomenal experience,” said Kokes. “What made it a tough place to be in the 80s, has changed dramatically… now everyone has come home and they have come back bilingual, and educated.”
In fact, about 75% of the nearly 2,000 person staff working at Sitel’s two in-country facilities …
Starbucks Dumps Internal Call Centers and Puts an Order into Sitel
January 19th, 2010SOURCE: TMCNET
As many call centers around the U.S. are shutting down and offshoring operations to other countries, it comes as no surprise when the coffee giant Starbucks announced that it would close its Seattle call center and outsource center to a third party.
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The call center, which employed 130 people, will now fall under the domain of global contact-center giant Sitel. According to reports, the new call center will be outsourced to the Sitel branch in Albuquerque, N.M.
The observed trend of customer care, back office and business process operations being closed or shifted seems to be very prevalent in the retail domain.
Early last year, Williams-Sonoma, the retailer and lifestyle company closed its call center in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, putting approximately 330 …
Nothing Personal Sitel, But a ‘Black Book’ Award is a Black Mark in Our Book
January 11th, 2010By Kirk Laughlin, Editorial Director
Loyal followers of Nearshore Americas will recall the outrage we felt when Bogota was named the “world’s riskiest” place to outsource by Brown and Wilson last year. This “finding” goes down as one of the most reckless and erroneous pieces of “research” in the last several years in the global services industry. For one thing, you know something is seriously wrong when the researchers – in this case Mr. Brown and Mr. Wilson who are the bosses at the Black Book – are nowhere to be found when they are asked to explain how they actually came about drawing this conclusion.
At Nearshore Americas, we didn’t want to forget what we consider something that actually damages all of Latin American outsourcing. Since the release of that report, DataMonitor made the highly questionable decision to purchase the “Black Book” brand. Bad decision? Of course. DataMonitor …
