Culture, Conflict and Where Value Fits In
December 1st, 2009
By Danny Ertel, Co-Founder and Joe Bubman, Consultant, Vantage Partners
Complex outsourcing relationships are always difficult to manage, but the unique characteristics of offshore deals complicate the challenge. Some early concerns about offshoring, such as political uncertainty and tax issues, appear to have become more manageable with experience. Others remain, however, with one rising above the rest, according to hundreds of participants in Vantage Partners’ “Managing Offshoring Relationships: Governance in Global Deals” study: culture. And the way customers and service providers manage culture has a direct impact on the value they achieve in their deal.
What do we mean by culture?
Companies nearly always encounter different organizational cultures when entering into strategic relationships with external partners. After all, companies have different strategies, structures, risk positions, capabilities, and norms, and when the deal is more than a simple buy-sell transaction, those …
Outsourcing to a Better Bottom Line
November 19th, 2009
By Jeffrey B. Andrews, Thompson & Knight LLP
Why is outsourcing such an effective strategic tool? Quite simply, outsourcing provides companies with a proven means to increase their profitability.
Yet just as with any long-term service relationship, problems are inevitable. Disagreements over the scope of the services, static pricing that fails to remain competitive, and the service provider’s failure to deliver promised innovation and performance improvements can lead to increased costs that erode the profitability gains achievable through outsourcing. To address these problems, customers should include provisions in their contracts that comprehensively define the scope of the outsourced services, provide for service evolution and continuous improvement, and provide for pricing resets tied to changes in market prices.
No contract can ever completely set forth all of the functions and responsibilities being outsourced.
Carefully Define the …
Searching for Skilled Multilingual Agents
November 18th, 2009By Jeff Pappas, Executive VP, Arledge Partners Real Estate Group
What is a “Multilingual Call center”? Well, one that provides services for various languages, apart from the global language, English. When a US based BPO requires a global presence, then it is pays to obtain services in different languages like Spanish, German, Portuguese, French, etc. Providing services in different languages will improve upon the service quality, expertise and experience of the contact center.
Many contact center services, including inbound, outbound, order fulfillment and other activities are provided by multilingual call centers as niche marketing.
A BPO could save upwards of 25% or more on the operating cost to run a Portuguese center outside of Brazil and Portugal.
Language Complexities
Successful BPOs provide services to their customers in the language which is well-understood by them. Thus, it is difficult to establish a multilingual call …
Seven Essentials to Latam Site Selection
November 17th, 2009By Susan Arledge, President/CEO, Arledge Partners Real Estate Group
Latin America is becoming the venue of choice for call center relocations as the industry continues to seek low cost English solutions. So, if you are considering opening operations in LATAM, here are Seven Essential Questions that you should answer before making this type of investment:
What is the size of the labor pool in the area that I am considering?
What are the risks of skill shortages and saturation by other call center competitors?
Is there sufficient bilingual labor in the region?
Which countries have ongoing English training programs?
LATAM is not a homogeneous region – each country has cultural differences. What is …
Building a Demand-driven Strategy
November 11th, 2009
By Chris Nuttall, PA Consulting Group
“Location, location, location” has been the cry of nearshoring advocates and advisors for many years now.
Choosing the optimal location for nearshored services based on factors such as language and labor capabilities, risks, rewards, macroeconomic stability and government incentives has resulted in a plethora of options for any US organization looking to nearshore its processes and activities.
This has resulted in captives, shared services, outsourcing deals, joint ventures and other equity-based structures with both service providers and large corporates investing heavily in setting up new and expanding existing delivery centers. In short, the nearshoring supply side has exploded in scope and scale across the Western Hemisphere with competitive options across Canada and from the Rio Grande to the Southern Cone.
Driving Sustained Value
Yet, this is often the wrong way to think about how to drive sustainable value from …
Destinations that Rise Above the Crowd
November 9th, 2009By Anupam Govil, Chairman, Global Sourcing Forum + Expo
The world is not only getting hot, flat and crowded (as Tom Friedman would put it), but it is also getting very, very competitive and homogeneous. Currently more than 100 countries lay claim to having some sort of outsourcing industry in their region, leading to a very crowded market with almost indistinguishable service advantages. Emerging destinations face significant challenges in establishing their credibility, defining their value proposition and differentiating themselves from their competition.
In every regional cluster, one or two countries usually shine and emerge as strong global outsourcing hubs, such as Costa Rica and Chile in CALA; Egypt and Morocco in North Africa; and Poland and Czech Republic in CEE.
There are many reasons why a country becomes the “preferred” location for the sourcing community, but no …
Guatemala and Cost Competitiveness
September 15th, 2009By Jeff Pappas, Executive VP, Arledge Partners Real Estate Group
Central America has become a hotbed for call center investment as US based
contact centers continue their aggressive search to find the most cost competitive Spanish/English bilingual support for their clients. In English speaking countries, Central America is considered a region of the North American continent. Politically, it usually comprises seven countries – Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama.
Though Guatemala is a developing country with the largest population in Central America of around 14 million inhabitants, the country still faces many social problems and is among the 10 poorest countries in Latin America. The distribution of income is unequally high with approximately 29% of the population living below the poverty line.
Still Guatemala has its advantages. Here are some facts:
The professional workforce speaks English relatively fluently. Interestingly, per year, …
Wage Wars: Mexico vs. LATAM Neighbors
September 15th, 2009By Susan Arledge, President/CEO, Arledge Partners Real Estate Group
On the way to the recent IMT Contact Forum entitled “Mexico – Your Best Option,” a couple of important questions
where on my mind: Is Mexico safe and is there enough available bilingual labor?
During one of the sessions at the Forum, someone cited a recent article in a Texas paper noting that Ciudad Juárez has become the murder capital of Mexico in recent months. More than 200 people have been killed in Juárez in the first 16 days of September vying for lucrative distribution routes into Texas.
“We’d like to think this will soon be over, but this area is too important of a transit point, so it’s likely the killings will continue for a while,” said Alfredo Quijano, editor of Norte de Ciudad Juárez newspaper.
Seeking Reassurance
Over the weekend, a banner …
Big Upside for Latin American CROs
September 15th, 2009Bright Future for CROs: Why Offshore Lab Research is Booming
By Federico L. O’Conor, founder, ICCL Inteligencia de Mercados.
Contract Research Organizations (CRO) in Latin America are key strategic partners to many pharmaceutical and 
biotech companies from North America and Europe. CRO’s allows these firms to concentrate efforts in their core skills, mostly related to manufacturing, marketing and sales. In the continuous race to optimize resources, cost reduction generally results the very first variable to be adjusted. Areas such as legal affairs and logistics have been pioneers when their specific duties have been outsourced into the hands of organizations more specialized in those key activities.
Beginning fifteen years ago, healthcare enterprises began using outsourcing providers to assist in areas like Regulatory Submissions, Patient Recruitment, Project Management and Clinical Monitoring. In recent years, Latin America has become an increasingly attractive destination.
First reports …
Putting Governance First
September 15th, 2009By Anupam Govil, Chairman, Global Sourcing Forum + Expo
Latin America and the Caribbean have emerged as attractive sourcing destinations for North American companies because they are geographically close, have compatible time zones, and can provide strong bilingual capabilities. Recent reports by Zagada Research on Contact Center industry in Caribbean and Central American have shown a dramatic growth of almost 300% over the last four years.
However this rapid growth has stretched the middle management talent available in the region, giving rise to increasing concerns about quality control, risk management and governance. When choosing a partner in Latin America or the Caribbean it is important for North American firms to carefully consider local laws, regulations and business practices which may either impede or help with effective governance and enforcement of contracts and SLAs.
Varying Strength, Varying Quality
Quality assurance metrics, timeline and deliverables as …
