Central America Site Selection Mashup Uncovers New Promise in Guatemala and Honduras
September 25th, 2012
By Jon Tonti
Amassing data for site selection purposes can be challenging, at best. Firms get paid big dollars to curate and make sense of information they pull together from IPAs, research firms, global governance organizations, and proprietary research efforts. Any honest site selector will tell you that the data is always incomplete, but nevertheless it serves to keep a pulse on different nearshore destinations and to narrow candidate destinations for site visits. Our friends at Arledge Partners shared with us a bunch of data they have a collected on nearshore markets and we explore it in this Central America “data mashup.”
Can Strategic Sourcing lead Your Business to Great Collaboration and Innovation?
September 21st, 2012By Jon Tonti
Sourcing external service providers to reduce costs and increase efficiency is the strategic sourcing baseline for any company. From that starting point companies grapple with how to get the most out of their strategic sourcing by finding the right providers and then aligning with them. A lot of company money is spent on consultants to advise management teams how to do exactly that. Nearshore Americas talked with Scott Madden’s Andy Flores in order to take advantage of his knowledge and the residual knowledge built up at Scott Madden in regards to strategic sourcing.
What Happens When Vendor Management Capabilities Don’t Exist in All Layers of Your Organization?
September 12th, 2012
By Jon Tonti
Every company has different structures for managing vendors that hinge on where to centralize and decentralize power. Decentralization can give employees the space to act more independently and gain the capabilities that come with the challenge; however, an organization may run the risk of disjointed communication, less objective vendor scrutiny, or putting unprepared managers in high pressure situations.
Jamaica BPO in Depth: Special Report Uncovers Potential for Specialized Services
September 11th, 2012
Read the full report by clicking here
By Jon Tonti
Jamaica has the largest English speaking population in the western hemisphere behind the United States and Canada totaling 2.7 million. What’s the best way to tap into this thriving population of English-speaking Jamaicans? That’s one of the key questions pursued in a new Nearshore Americas E-report – BPO Jamaica– that takes a fresh look at a country that both Gartner and A.T. Kearney say is a “market to watch in 2012.”
BPO Jamaica stresses that companies like ACS/Xerox, Teleperformance, Convergys, VistaPrint, and Scotiabank are not in the Jamaican market for pure labor arbitrage, but are instead pushing into more sophisticated BPO, taking advantage of Jamaica’s human capital, the country’s “major strength,” and a strength that is now beginning to flourish in Kingston rather than solely Montego …
Softtek’s Ross sees savings on testing TCO
By Jon Tonti
Methodology for software development is one of the fastest evolving segments of technology project management. Long dead is testing on a post-development cycle basis. As a percentage of development time and cost it varies, but nobody can deny that it is weighty. Testing is adapting to accommodate the demands of software development methodology – hell-bent on cutting waste
CEO Dariva: Focusing on multinational customers
By Edileuza Soares
A fast rising Brazil-based managed mobility services (MMS) provider is looking to capitalize on the lucrative BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) market and is relying partly on a global coalition of like-minded firms to help accelerate growth. Brazil-based MMS provider, Navita, expects to generate US$ 25 million in 2012, more than double the $ 17 million it reported last year.
First Call Resolution: How to Define, Measure and Improve
August 28th, 2012By Rosanne D’Ausilio
A typical customer will not call back a call center. Not only does this keep costs high, but it decreases customer loyalty and increases turnover.
Kanban Case Study: Taking ‘Lean’ to the Furthest Limits on Globally Distributed Teams
August 27th, 2012
By Jon Tonti
A recent post on the practice of “Kanban” stirred up significant interest at Nearshore Americas – so we decided to revisit the issue and look specifically at how it works for globally distributed teams. In the previous article, we touched on Kanban’s framework, in this analysis, we look at Kanban usage by a product development team at Experian (the global information and credit processing firm) and how it leads to organic cross-functional team development.
As Eddy Martinez departs, focus is on a well-connected DR attorney who will lead the CEI-RD
By Jon Tonti
Danilo Medina assumed presidential powers of the island nation of the Dominican Republic (DR) last week and with his arrival came the appointments of the new director of the country’s investment promotions agency, Centro de Exportación e Inversión (CEI-RD), Jean Alain Rodríguez and sub-director general Carlos Pared Vidal. Rodríguez replaces the popular Eddy Martinez (who occupied the post for over a decade) and is widely heralded as the man who brought the contact center and BPO industry to the Dominican Republic.
Why the “Command and Control” Model of US Management Fails to Work in Latin America
August 21st, 2012
Duke’s Lewin: P&G is struggling in Brazil because of trying manage the ‘American Way’.
By Jon Tonti
Just because US music, fashion, and entertainment have long since permeated and been adopted by Latin America, don’t think that the US corporate style of management enjoys the same reception. Latin America has its own management style that is as different to the US management style as France’s is to Germany’s. “I recently saw a situation where a company brought in a top manager from outside the region who was put in charge of a group of executives from the home country that resulted in 25 percent of those executives leaving the company,” said Jane Siegel, a senior scientist at Carnegie Mellon’s Silicon Valley campus.
