Costa Rica Call Center Blog

Rochester, NY – January 14, 2009 – Concentrix Corporation, a global knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) company and wholly owned subsidiary of SYNNEX Corporation (NYSE: SNX), announced today the company has made an equity investment in Occidental Business Services, S.A. (OBS), a leading business process services company with operations in San Jose, Costa Rica. Concentrix now has the ability to service North American, European and Latin American markets with Spanish, the third most prevalent languages spoken in the world, as well as other language requirements.

This strategic location allows Concentrix to offer an outsourced solution in countries with closer proximity to the United States, known as “Near-Shoring”, an alternative for multi-lingual delivery of contact center services to its customers.

“Concentrix sought to acquire an established, high quality Costa Rican service provider,” stated Dick Rapach, Vice President and General Manager of Concentrix Corporation. “After thorough research, we invested in OBS, a leading Costa Rican BPO company with a successful track record spanning over several years. As part of that investment, OBS will rebrand itself as Concentrix Costa Rica.”

“The Concentrix brand has an impeccable reputation and is well established within the BPO space,” commented Manfred Kissling, Chief Executive Officer of Occidental Business Services, S.A. “By leveraging the Concentrix brand, we expect to grow our operations more quickly, utilizing our combined expertise of the Concentrix associates, Concentrix technology and the geographical assets. In addition, Concentrix has a proactive, entrepreneurial culture that fits very well into our existing organization.”

Costa Rica is known for its political, social and economic stability and has a highly qualified multi-lingual labor force. These elements, along with a competitive telecommunications infrastructure, have allowed the country to attract a strong contingent of companies seeking an effective near-shore service delivery option. With a population of over four million and a literacy rate of over 95%, Costa Rica provides an excellent location for Concentrix to provide near-shore services for its large United States client base. The country shares similar time zones with the United States and is easily accessible through air travel.

The growth into Costa Rica represents the most recent expansion by Concentrix, bringing total worldwide employment under the Concentrix banner to more than 4,500 associates.

“We are impressed with the talent pool that is available in this country,” Rapach continued. “Our strategy calls for recruiting the best people available to service both our existing and potential new clients in technical support, customer care and demand generation programs.”

About Concentrix Corporation
Concentrix Corporation is a global KPO company with award-winning expertise in providing our clients with services and support to enhance their customer relationships. From locations in China, Japan, the Philippines, the United States and Central America, our over 4,500 employees support clients in multiple languages and countries around the world. Concentrix Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of SYNNEX Corporation (NYSE: SNX), a Fortune 500 company. For more information, please visit www.concentrix.com

About Occidental Business Services
Occidental Business Services, S.A. is a leading Costa Rican BPO company with headquarters in San Jose, Costa Rica. The company provides a suite of complementary sales, customer care and support services. For more information, please visit www.obsamericas.com

Net sales of Call Center Services, Software and Other Services generated $703 million in the first nine months of 2008 that is an increase of 51% over the revenues on the preceding year.



This is a result of the country providing a:

1. Strategic location as an ideal “Nearshore location”.
2. Stable political, economic and social environment.
3. Highly qualified labor force.
4. Attractive investment incentives.
5. Competitive telecommunications infrastructure.
6. Streamlined start-up process
7. Excellent quality of life

Costa Rica is a low cost and high quality location that has hosted a large number of Captive Multinational Corporation and Outsourcing Companies for many years, positioning the country as a very low risk location.

Related article: http://www.nacion.com/ln_ee/2009/enero/06/economia1829187.html

Thursday, October 23, 2008 – 1:39 PM PDT
Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal

Aling Technologies Inc., announced a restructuring plan that will cut 111 job cuts.

Align (NASDAQ:ALGN) said the job losses in its Santa Clara headquarters will take place between now and January 2009. The remaining positions will be eliminated over the next few quarters as the company creates a new shared services organization in its existing Costa Rica operation that will consolidate customer care, accounts receivable, credit and collections, and customer event registration organizations.

Align’s Treat Operations facility has been in Costa Rica since 2002. It consists of 670 clinical technicians and support personnel and “provides a solid foundation to build a shared services organization that will create greater efficiencies by enabling the company to leverage the existing infrastructure and the talent base in Costa Rica at a lower overall cost,” Align said.

CEO Thomas Prescott said the plan “builds on the cost saving actions we announced in July. The majority of what we are doing is structural and many valued employees are affected. These actions, while difficult, are essential to Align becoming a more efficient company and will result in a more robust operating model with room to invest for future growth.”

As part of these actions, Align will record a restructuring charge estimated to be approximately $5 million, of which approximately $3.5 million will be realized in the fourth quarter and the remainder over the first half of 2009.

As of Sept. 30 Align had approximately 1,400 employees.

61 companies sold $ 773 million this year, according to Cinde

• Sales in the sector are increasing at a rate of 30% per annum since 2002
• Signatures alien give technical and financial support to other countries from here

Hassel Fallas hasselfallas@nacion.com

The 61 transnational service corporations operating in a free zone this year exported about $ 773 million, $ 173 million more than in 2007, estimated the Costa Rican Coalition development initiatives (CINDE).

The calculation did it with data from the Central Bank. It took as a reference the average growth of 30% of the exports sector since 2002.

The services companies in free trade zones export software, financial analysis, technical support, graphic design, architectural and engineering and customer service.

Companies are conducting these activities for their own regional or global operations (captive operations) or to other firms (outsourcing), which is the case with many call centers.

The greatest benefit of export services from free zone is reflected in jobs and wages, said Gabriela Llobet, director of Cinde.

Timothy Scott, director of the association of Free Zones, pointed out that the average salary in the scheme is $ 1,000 per month.

Currently, 20,000 Costa Ricans working in transnational “added value” services. Cinde, are called so because their duties require more capable personnel.

The markets where they are sold U.S. (main), Europe, Asia and Africa. Among the exporters include Procter & Gamble, Western Union, HP and Sykes.

Good pace. The export of services companies in a free zone grows at an annual average of 30%, which exceeds by more than double, which have tourism services (11.6%) and financial (11.4 %).

That pace of growth is explained in part because in six years the number of foreign firms in services that were installed here rose from five to 61.

In 2007 Costa Rica exported $ 3,532 million in services, were $ 600 million in services in free zones.

Under the Free Trade Zone regime zone also operate manufacturing and processing firms, but its exports are accounted for in the category of property.

How is measured? Not being a tangible assets (such as microchips exports from Intel), the export of services from free zone is quantified by setting a price at that time an engineer used to repair a communication network, a person who answered an e – mail or a call made from another country.

There are two ways to charge for services: if the assistance was for the transnational operations in another country, the amount is charged to a corporate cost center, who transferred to Costa Rica. If services are for other companies, is billed to the customer, as do some call centers. At year’s end, the companies sent the report to the PROCOMER, which in turn passed to the Central Bank to cleanse the export figure, said Llobet.

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3rd July 2008
By CBR Staff Writer

The use of global delivery models is now common practice within the business process outsourcing market, and, according to a new Datamonitor report, Latin America is becoming an increasingly popular destination for IT services and business process outsourcing vendors that are looking to provide low-cost services to clients.

The report looks at the factors driving this trend, discusses the main players currently active in the market and analyzes possible strategies for including Latin America in a coherent global sourcing model. It also investigates the key business process outsourcing (BPO) delivery locations within this region and the main business factors that will help companies to choose the destination that best suits their needs.

The last two years have seen a marked increase in the number of outsourcing vendors utilizing Latin America as a low-cost delivery location. Key examples include major players such as IBM, EDS, Tata Consultancy Services and ACS, all of which have significantly increased their presence in the region since 2006, while providers such as Infosys and Cognizant have opened centers in Latin America for the first time.

Due to its geographical proximity, Latin America can be used as a nearshore location to serve customers in the US. This enables both client and vendor to maintain a close relationship, including more face-to-face meetings, and also means that problems can be solved in real-time, without the delays that inevitably occur when work from the US is offshored to more distant locations such as India or China.

Operating in Latin America also gives clients access to a major pool of native Spanish and Portuguese speakers. Particularly in the case of customer-facing BPO functions, this offers the potential to provide better and more efficient services to the Hispanic community in the US, as well as opening up the Spanish and Portuguese markets in southern Europe. Providing local language services also improves the quality of services offered to end users, thus increasing customer retention.

While in the past IT services vendors tended to pick one offshore location, usually India, and deliver a range of services from this location, an increasing number of companies are adopting a multi-shoring strategy, whereby they set up centers in a number of countries in different geographic regions. This not only allows them to provide services from closer to the customer, but also reduces the risks associated with housing all of their operations in one location.

Furthermore, when questioned by Datamonitor, many vendors expressed a fear of ‘putting all their eggs in one basket’, mindful of the chaos that could be caused should India’s economy crash, or wage inflation in the country hit new peaks. In this context, Latin America is an attractive alternative location for vendors with an existing presence in India.

One of the main drivers behind the elevation of India to its position as the pre-eminent global sourcing location was its vast reserve of skilled labor. Similarly, up-and-coming locations such as China and Russia offer large untapped labor pools, enabling vendors to scale-up a delivery center quickly.

In comparison, customers may find that Latin American countries are unable to deliver the kind of scale available in these other, more populous regions. This is partly due to simple population size, but it is also the case that regions like India and Russia churn out more technical graduates than their counterparts in Latin America.

Latin American countries can circumvent this potential problem by offering highly skilled services in niche areas. Also, the region’s positioning as a primarily nearshore location necessitates a different operating model from the one utilized in India, for example, in which scale is of lesser importance.

Latin America also still has some perception challenges to overcome in its development as a sourcing location, as concerns about stability (both economic and political) and security continue to hang over many Latin American countries, including Brazil, Mexico and Colombia. As a result, vendors may think twice before setting up in these locations.

All of the vendors that Datamonitor spoke to indicated that they expected the recent expansion of Latin America’s IT services and BPO sector to continue for the foreseeable future, with more vendors moving into the market.

The investment by international IT services and BPO providers has tended to focus around certain countries (most notably Mexico, Brazil and Argentina) and certain locations within those countries (including Mexico City, Monterrey and Guadalajara in Mexico; Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, and Buenos Aires in Argentina). There are many other cities within these Tier 1 countries which could be tapped, and also many other countries within Latin America which are still to be used to their full potential.

The Tier 2 Latin American countries identified in the report (including Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Panama and Uruguay) still, in some cases, represent relatively unknown quantities for many within the IT services and BPO industry. These locations each have their own unique set of strengths and weaknesses, but are all viable sourcing locations, many of which have yet to be fully exploited.

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