Costa Rica Call Center Blog

Global executives increasingly identify the environment, including climate change, as a top concern. When it comes to purchasing, however, it appears that companies aren’t necessarily translating the importance they place on climate change into action. A McKinsey survey of more than 2,000 global executives1 finds that while nearly half of respondents say that climate change is a somewhat or very important issue to consider in purchasing and supply chain management, fewer than one-quarter report their companies always or frequently take climate change into consideration in these areas. Among high-tech and other manufacturing executives, 54 percent and 56 percent of respondents, respectively, say climate change is important in purchasing, yet these executives were no more likely than average to say it was considered in practice.

They may be missing an opportunity. Our analysis suggests that for consumer goods makers, high-tech players, and other manufacturers, between 40 and 60 percent of a company’s carbon footprint resides upstream in its supply chain—from raw materials, transport, and packaging to the energy consumed in manufacturing processes. For retailers, the figure can be 80 percent. Therefore, any significant carbon-abatement activities will require collaboration with supply chain partners, first to comprehensively understand the emissions associated with products, and then to analyze abatement opportunities systematically. Surprisingly perhaps, we find that many of the opportunities to reduce emissions carry no net life-cycle costs—the upfront investment more than pays for itself through lower energy or material usage. Others, however, will require tradeoffs between emissions and profitability, in areas such as logistics and product design (including product specification and functionality). Forward-looking companies are using such discussions as opportunities for supplier development, for example by transferring best practices in manufacturing, purchasing, and R&D—as well as energy efficiency—to key suppliers. This opens the possibility of still lower costs and improved operational performance, in addition to helping suppliers remove more carbon from their supply chains.

About the Authors:
Chris Brickman and Drew Ungerman are principals in McKinsey’s Dallas office.
The authors would like to thank Bernhard Klement for his contribution to this article.

Permalink: http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Operations/Supply_Chain_Logistics/Climate_change_and_supply-chain_management_2175

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.

Permalink: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://www.nacion.com/ln_ee/2008/julio/21/economia1625931.html&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3DServicios%2Ben%2Bzona%2Bfranca%2Bganan%2Bterreno%2Ben%2Bexportaciones%26num%3D50%26hl%3Den%26pwst%3D1

• Project will attract more high technology investments to country
• Costa Rica’s President Oscar Arias to attend inauguration.

Esterillos, Costa Rica – July 18, 2008 — Global Crossing (NASDAQ: GLBC), a leading global IP solutions provider, today announced the lighting of its new fiber-optic submarine cable in Esterillos of Parrita, Puntarenas. Global Crossing; Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE), the state-run entity responsible for Costa Rica’s telecommunications; and the Radiográfica Costarricense S.A. (RACSA) will host a ceremony today at the new Unqui cable station in the town of Esterillos. Costa Rican President Oscar Arias along with executives from Global Crossing, ICE and RACSA will attend the event to launch the new system.

This much anticipated fiber-optic submarine cable will facilitate the expansion of ICE’s international network to the rest of the world through Global Crossing’s network, allowing Costa Rica to increase reliability of its international telecommunications and strengthen the country’s competitiveness, not only within Latin America, but on a worldwide scale.

“We’re excited to reinforce our partnership with ICE in this initiative to expand Costa Rica’s telecommunications services and increased connectivity around the world. This agreement is another step in the ongoing, cooperative effort between ICE, RACSA and Global Crossing to promote the continuous social and economic growth of the country,” said John Legere, Global Crossing’s CEO.

The new cable connection is an extension of the Pan American Crossing (PAC), which connects the United States’ west coast, Mexico, Panama, Venezuela and the Virgin Islands, in addition to the east coast of the United States, South America, Europe and Asia, via Global Crossing’s other underwater cable systems.

With the new Global Crossing connection, Costa Rica will benefit from the security, reliability and global reach of Global Crossing’s high-quality IP network. Additionally, this joint project provides ICE with a reliable international network infrastructure on both coasts, supporting the exponential growth of Internet traffic and transport of mission critical IP business applications in the region.

ICE’s capacity to transport international traffic will increase, as will the possibilities for businesses in the region. As an example, the new bandwidth enables the transmission of approximately 185 million e-mails per second, assuming an average e-mail of 20KB; allows 2.5 million people to watch a video online, assuming 1.5M per connection; and can handle 60 million phone calls. Global Crossing’s branch reaching Costa Rica has a design capacity of 256 STM1 equivalents, allowing for future increases in capacity as ICE’s service requirements grow.

ICE has modernized and expanded its communications infrastructure at an international level, enabling national and multinational companies in the country to speed the flow information. The new cable landing is an important milestone for Costa Rica as it strives to develop a telecommunications infrastructure that will support the country’s fast-growing demand for broadband applications.

Permalink: http://www.globalcrossing.com/news/2008/july/18.aspx

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.

Permalink: http://www.cbronline.com/article_feature.asp?guid=EA29B320-3A5F-4D9A-9862-FED8F313E7BC

By Zach Church, News Writer
01 Jul 2008 SearchCIO-Midmarket.com

With the U.S. economy in a rut, the value of the rupee rising and wages increasing, midmarket CIOs have good reason to look beyond India and instead evaluate opportunities in places such as Canada and South America as offshoring alternatives, analysts say.