By 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 …

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Is now the time for investors to take a real look at setting up BPO operations in Honduras?  Foreign Minister Mario Canahuati explains why things have changed for the better since last year’s coup.

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SOURCE: CAllCenterInternational

The varying levels of competition and market maturity among countries have livened up the diverse Latin American market for contact center outsourcing. According to a Frost & Sullivan study, while major markets such as Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and Argentina are reaching maturity in terms of quality of service and infrastructure, the competition is fierce in developing markets such as Peru and Guatemala.

Market revenues to grow
This intense competition is keeping market participants on their toes, causing them to reposition themselves from being mere providers of contact center customer care services to offering more complex business process outsourcing (BPO) services such as logistics and channels. The analysis finds that the market earned revenues of 6.8 billion dollars in 2008 and estimates this to reach 13.7 billion dollars in 2014.

“Outsourcers’ improving ability to provide a fully integrated suite of end-to-end services covering the main business processes are standing …

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Source: ProcesoHN

Tegucigalpa – American Business leaders told  Honduran President  Porfirio Lobo Sosa the country is becoming better positioned to attract jobs in the field of call centers and business process outsourcing.

Leading the delegation was Ruben Sorto, a representative of  Group Karims, who manages marketing at San Pedro Sula’s Altia Business Park, the first business and technology park that houses offices, multinational corporations and service customer care in the region.

Also present were  Peter Ryan, principal analyst at Ovum contact center outsourcing and BPO, Jeff Pappas, senior vice president and partner at Arledge Associations (and Nearshore Americas columnist) and and Ann Harts of  The Harts Group.

These companies are related to the industry of call centers, server support, back office services, telemarketing and operational bases for regional corporate headquarters. Investments in this industry have grown in recent years in Central America.

The call centers industry has created about 30,000  jobs …

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Press Release, January 14, 2010

Affiliated Computer Services, Inc. today announced it has been placed in the “Leaders” quadrant in industry analyst firm Gartner Inc.’s Magic Quadrant for Finance & Accounting BPO.

ACS was positioned in the leaders quadrant based on the evaluation criteria of ability to execute and completeness of vision. According to the report, “Leaders are performing well today, both with a clear vision of market direction and by actively building competencies to sustain …

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By Kirk Laughlin, Editorial Director

Nearshore Americas is spending several days on the ground this week in Honduras for a couple of very good reasons which I will be talking about and exploring on some interesting videos over the course of the next two weeks. We have been interviewing high level government officials, education and human capital leaders, telecom regulators and business leaders while traveling with our host from Altia Business Park, Ruben Sorto, who is the marketing director at the San Pedro Sula based facility, which is the first world-class business center in Honduras designed to service BPO and call center operations.

Ruben joined me (we’re both at the far right on the panel) today on a …

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By 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 …

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SOURCE: ECONOMICTIMES

US-based BPO and KPO firm Motif has opened a500-seat delivery centre in Costa Rica where it will offer bilingual service in English and Spanish. The company aims to tap Latino client base in the US and other geographies. The company will invest $2.5 million in the centre and will begin operations in January next year.

“The delivery centre in Costa Rica will be the first of its kind to provide bilingual support to its clients in both English and Spanish. We studied several site locations in Latin America and settled on Costa Rica for its proximity to the US and a host of other reasons. The country may not be as cheap as other Latin American countries. But in long term the total operations cost it will be cheaper. Also, the country offers a very well educated and stable workforce,” said Chris Meneze, president and CEO of Motif.

The …

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By 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 …

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SOURCE: ElSalvador.com

(Espanol Version Below)

El Salvador continues to emerge as an important destination for contact center services and one of the leaders in the market is  Business Communication Center (BCC), which is now recruiting bilingual staff for its newly opened facility, said the company’s administrative manager, Guillermo Alfaro.

With an initial investment of $350,000, the company has hired 40 agents and will hire another 100 as part of its first stage. It is expected that within a year the firm will have about 500 open jobs for people who speak and write fluent English,  Alfaro said.

“Every three months we expect to hire about 100 new employees, to complete the remaining 400,” he said, adding that the company’s vision is to expand in 2011 to other parts of the metropolitan area of San Salvador.

Currently, the top 40 operators and agents are doing pilot tests and support sales management functions for two …

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