caribbeancrmcentralSAN 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.
Multinational companies have become a key player in the IT industry by setting operations in Costa Rica mainly due to the quality of the human resource. Intel, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Procter and Gamble, Oracle and Sykes are some examples.
The industry is highly innovative. In the past two years:
• 88% of the companies implemented improvements in products or services
• 82% launched new products or services
• 65% implemented business model changes and new ways to commercialize
The companies in the industry have wide experience in exports as 50% are already selling their products to other countries (60% of them sell software products)
The IT industry is also highly dynamic and keeps growing as 70% of the companies reported a 10% to 50% growth in the past 2 years.
IT companies in Costa Rica offer a wide variety of solutions in products and services such as:
• BPO
• Application migration
• Web applications and services
• E-Learning
• Tool development
• Mobile applications
• Hosting
• Outsourcing
• NOC-SOC network support
• High-availability data centers, level 4 (Data center Tier 4)
• Components (chips and others)
• Application development for financial services, retail, health, tourism, construction, legal, government, among others.
• Multimedia production
• Customized development and design
• Business intelligence
“This conference will show the range of Costa Rica in all these sectors and position the country as an exporter of high value-added services to the world, which represents an excellent opportunity for the country amid the global economic crisis,” said a CAMTIC official.
Entrepeneurs and potential buyers can find IT products and services "made in Costa Rica" and get to know the Costa Rican IT companies, by visiting http://www.costaricaisit.net, a marketplace developed by Link Exportacion Project and sponsored by the Chamber of Information and Communication Technologies of Costa Rica (CAMTIC).
This website offers this services for potential buyers, business partners and sponsors, who can check costa rican profiles for free and send trade leads to one or more companies.
This website, CostaRicaisIT.net is the technological platform that made possible the organization and development of the Costa Rica Services Summit business meetings event, held this June 3 and 4, 2009 in San José, Costa Rica.
My name is Bret Dudl and my company is La Joya Perfecta, Costa Rica, "The Center of Wellness." I am here attending the Costa Rica Services Summit to learn the latest about Medical Tourism and network with some of the best physicians, hospitals, and medical groups in the world.
I am leading a team of health conscious entrepreneurs to develop Costa Rica's Premier wellness community. Please check us out at http://www.costaricanwellness.com and our latest blog entries at http://www.costaricaviews.com. Pura Vida.