This was a decision that probably made a lot of sense to companies looking to outsource their customer service and/or data management four years ago. But something is changing. As the world’s largest Business Performance Outsourcing (BPO) firms target Colombia, opening businesses like Contact and Data Centers, going to India may be decision of the past.
What is causing this phenomenon?
Well let’s see. First and most important, the Colombia of today is nothing like the one from the headlines in the news ten years ago. What changed? Thanks to the two terms of President Alvaro Uribe and his policies on Democratic Security, the country is now a much safer place. This helped stabilized the country to a point were Foreign Direct Investment started flowing in; by 2009 FDI tripled compared to 2003.
Second, Colombia is strategically positioned geographically. It’s only a three-hour flight from Miami and is in the same time zone as the US East coast, making it very manageable by US Companies. Also the country has a vast bilingual population, which continues to grow as the government invests in new programs to make English available to more people. Still, if a company is looking to serve their Spanish speaking customers, Colombia is known to have the most neutral and well spoken Spanish, according to the Great Royal Academy of Spanish language.
Third, some of the world’s renown BPO players have already opened operations in Colombia including: Convergys (US), Teleperformance (France), Sutherland (India), Flat World Solutions (US), Avanza (Spain), Konecta (Spain), Emergia (Spain) and Telemark (Spain).
According to the World Bank, Colombia ranks third in Latin America as the most friendly business climate after Brazil and Chile and ranks 14th in the world. So in black and white that is why the decision to outsource operations to Colombia is one we will hear more and more often in the coming years.
By, Alejandro Tribin
December 4, 2010
No comments:
Post a Comment