Global ICT Firms Urge Obama to Remove the Cuba Embargo
August 31st, 2010Nokia Oyj, AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. are urging the U.S. government to ease rules that keep them from operating in Cuba even after President Barack Obama loosened telecommunications regulations last year to promote democracy on the communist island.
Nokia, the world’s biggest mobile-phone maker, is urging the U.S. to ease its 47-year-old trade embargo so it can sell handsets to Cuba. AT&T and Verizon, the largest U.S. wireless providers, urged regulators to make it easier for U.S. companies to directly connect calls to and from Cuba.
The companies’ pleas come after Obama said in April 2009 that greater contact with the outside world would reduce Cubans’ dependency on President Raul Castro’s regime. Still, other regulations prevent companies with U.S. operations from entering the market, according to a July report by the Washington-based Cuba Study Group, which advocates for an open economy.
“We don’t understand why the regulations stopped where they did,” …
SPECIAL REPORT: Jamaica’s ICT Runs Smoothly But Some Call Centers Face Attendance Gaps
June 4th, 2010BY NEARSHORE AMERICAS STAFF
While Jamaica’s tourism industry has taken a US$350 million hit in losses because of recent unrest, the country is reporting that its Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector remains robust in spite of the violent conflicts.
“Despite the recent unrest in sections of Kingston, companies in the information and communications technology sector are indicating that they have not sustained major disruptions and are already experiencing the return of normal operation levels in their businesses,” said a representative from Jamaica Promotions (JAMPRO), the government agency with responsibility for the sector.
Last week, part’s of the country’s capital – West Kingston descended into unrest after Prime Minister Bruce Golding gave instruction for extradition of Christopher “Dudus” Coke, an “area don” in Tivoli Gardens, a community in West Kingston. Coke is wanted by the United States on allegations of drug trafficking and gun running.
But residents from Tivoli Gardens barricaded all …
Special Guest Post: Peter Ryan, OVUM
With Kingston dominating the headlines globally during the last week, many existing and prospective outsourcing firms may be reconsidering plans to deliver services from that country, wary of the negative impact that such events may have on their ability to do business and the safety of their employees.
However, Ovum believes that it would be short-sighted to abandon such plans. The island has a lot to offer in terms of cost savings and human capital, and efforts to take on criminal elements are finally coming to fruition.
Teleperformance Says “No Comment” On DR Expansion
April 26th, 2010
Teleperformance - one of the most acquisitive Contact Center and BPO providers in the Nearshore region during the last few years – has some big plans in store for the Dominican Republic. The plans are so big, in fact, that the company doesn’t want to talk about them quite yet. In the meantime, Nearshore Americas can start to paint the picture for you. Read on to hear the details.
By Karina Cuevas
Despite claims that the tourism industry has the hottest career prospects for smart young college grads in the DR, the call center/BPO industry has risen to become the top career choice for many of these individuals.
Like so many countries in the Caribbean/ Latin America region (CALA), the Dominican Republic has a robust and growing tourism sector. Just like global services, tourism requires skilled talent and a steady stream of new recruits. Many skeptics have claimed that the Caribbean islands will never be able to rise to become real BPO powerhouses because there will always be alternative career paths in tourism. Is this true?
Jamaica: The Full Picture
April 22nd, 2010By Susan Arledge
Several years ago, the Caribbean began to emerge as a sensible and low cost alternative to outsourcing to Asia or India (especially when a smaller number of agents were required) and countries such as Jamaica, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic began to emerge as top location choices.
These countries have recognized that they are greatly in need of attracting jobs in an effort to retain their knowledge based workforces. Jamaica, as an example, recognized that the BPO industry provides a chance to eradicate poverty and increase the country’s standard of living.
The Honorable Karl Samuda, Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce, is aggressively seeking BPO and ICT companies to bring jobs to Jamaica and is working with the community colleges, the national investment promotion agency, Jamaica Trade and Invest (JTI/Jampro) and local developers to make …
PCI Compliance Becomes Next Big Thing for Nearshore BPO
March 4th, 2010By Kirk Laughlin
The credit card industry’s way of keeping a tight lid on fraud and other slippery activity has been through the creation of “PCI” – the short-code name for a comprehensive set of rules that govern just how credit card handlers should protect card information and the privacy of cardholders.
Contact centers, especially those in Latin America and the Caribbean that deal with payments, billing and collections, are naturally prime candidates to adopt PCI. “It’s become a big topic of late and in some situations it’s becoming ‘table stakes,’”, says industry consultant Ann Harts, of HartsGroup. “There continues to be a large flow of business opportunities for call center/BPO companies who are PCI compliant… some clients are starting to migrate to this designation as a minimum or an industry standard, even though it may not needed based on the type of work.”
For one thing, more and more customers are going to demand it, says Thomas Oronti, president of Nearshore Call Center Services, a Dominican Republic based provider that employs about 1,200 agents in three facilities in the country. Oronti told Nearshore Americas recently that PCI compliance has become a top priority for his organization over the last year. “Bigger companies want to see a PCI certificate,” he says.
With Eyes on Tech Services, Jamaica Begins to Move Beyond Call Centers
February 12th, 2010
Jamaica Trade and Invest (JTI) is the lead trade promotion agency for BPO and IT services investment.
By Kirk Laughlin
One of the bigger bellweather moments in the migration of services’ work from India to the Nearshore came over a year ago when Delta Airlines publicly let it be known that they were investing heavily in call center functions in Jamaica and “pulling out” of South Asia.
The organization benefiting most from this was E-Services Group, which was acquired by global contact center giant ACS for $85 million. Over 4,000 E-Services employees joined ACS, and Delta has remained a key customer throughout the ownership transition.
This move seems to be part of a string of developments that are putting Jamaica – one of the most convenient Nearshore locations for North American companies – higher on the radar for outsourced services. Long seen as a modest sized call center hub, Jamaica is chipping away at reforming its image into one of a fuller-scale outsourcing destination that has the talent and capacity to play at a higher level that would include finance, accounting and technology services.
“We want to move into the next stratosphere,” says Don Gittens, senior consulting officer at trade promotion agency, Jamaica Trade and Invest, who notes that the country is focused on equipping students with a kind of technology literacy that is seeing increasing demand from US corporations.
Call Centers in Dominican Republic Answer Call in Haiti
February 9th, 2010
“This is a non stop job and we are working with five organizations to make sure all the people are receiving our aid,” said Emma Castro, Site Administrator for Stream.
By Karina Cuevas
A large part of the Dominican Republic call center industry has stepped up in a wide variety of ways to help alleviate the terrible suffering in Haiti.
Many of the institutions began collecting monetary donations internally through their employees, while others have obtained in-kind goods to deliver in Haiti. “Right after the earthquake, a high sense of corporate responsibility kicked in,” said Kemil Carbuccia, Sales and Marketing Manager for Nearshore Call Center Services. We always try to contribute because there is a willingness to help the people in need.”
Nearshore Call Center Services has already made three trips to the devastated nation and is planning on a fourth one within the next two weeks. Employees have delivered medicine, food and clothing to various sectors in Haiti and despite their well intentioned efforts; it does not seem like enough.
“At the beginning it was traffic and logistics [that made it difficult to get to Haiti],” said Carbuccia. Everyone wants to help, but it’s hard to organize and try to get everyone what they need.”
A client company of Nearshore is providing space for storage and thanks to contacts in Haiti; the goods are being delivered from one community to another in a somewhat efficient manner despite the lack of security engulfing the country.
Want to Really Help Haiti? Start Investing Now, Clinton Tells Business Elite
January 29th, 2010Former US president Bill Clinton appealed for big business to help Haiti “rise from the ashes” on Thursday as a rising Chinese leader made his biggest international appearance yet at the Davos forum.
While Greece’s prime minister attacked currency speculators, Clinton told the political and business elite at the World Economic Forum that real money could be made in the Caribbean nation where nearly 170,000 people died in the January 12 quake.
“They need to be helped through this hideous natural disaster,” said Clinton, a UN special envoy on Haiti, a country he said had been “punished by either being ignored or abused”.
“They’ve got the best chance they’ve ever had in my lifetime … to escape that past and we have the best chance we’ve ever had to be a part of that,” he said as he launched an initiative at the World Economic Forum to get private sector help for the …
