Global Services
Market Vista
When UK-based financial markets consultancy Catalyst Development were choosing a location for their first nearshore consulting hub earlier this year, they looked at Belfast, Limerick, Dublin, Galway, Tallinn, Warsaw, and Wrocław.
Sean Coote, managing consultant at Catalyst Development spent three months in Lithuania, which ended up being the company’s pick, looking at talent accessibility, infrastructure, office space, IT development, meeting with financial tax and legal firms.
Anurag Srivastava, vice president at Everest Group says that Lithuania is not a location where you would set up a 2,000-5,000 employee centre to support contact centre or IT-Infrastructure or transactional business process work.
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There is good news for the Latin American and Caribbean countries fighting for nearshore business: there is now more to go around than ever before.
This sentiment is shared by Salil Dani, vice president in the global sourcing service line for the Dallas-based consulting and research company Everest Group. Embracing the nearshore is no longer just a novel idea. He says the service providers in Latin America and the Caribbean are increasingly being viewed as an essential part of the strategies maintained by the Fortune 500 companies that have been in the outsourcing game for decades, such as General Electric, Citigroup, Proctor & Gamble, and Bank of America.
“They are growing a lot in Latin America in particular,” says Dani. “Within Latin America, there could be questions as to whether you want to go to somewhere like Mexico or Costa Rica depending upon what you want to do or other factors. But nearshoring as a proportion is growing in terms of headcount and in terms of revenue. The time-zone alignment creates a huge plus.”
With so many destinations now trying to attract nearshore business, it is clear that promotion matters. These days, say the analysts, any country that wants to be a serious player needs to be investing in this side of the game.
Costa Rica has been at the vanguard for the better part of a decade. Its CINDE agency has piggybacked on the positive ecotourism and safety reputation of the country to bring in foreign executives and get them to quickly sign on the dotted line with business-friendly incentives.
Colombia is showing progress in this area as well. Though its mission goes far beyond the services sector, the government changed the name of its promotion agency from ProExport to ProColombia a few years ago, and its efforts have helped to start to change the perception of the country from scary to business friendly.
In 2008, Trinidad and Tobago proved to be forward thinking by forming a specialized agency — the Trinidad and Tobago International Financial Centre (T&T IFC) — to attract more financial sector companies.
Salil Dani, a vice president in the global sourcing service line for the Dallas-based consulting and research company Everest Group, notes that companies are hearing this message and appreciate both the pitches that governments make and the initiatives they establish to train workers. “Companies are realizing the potential that nearshore locations offer beyond just traditional functions,” says Dani. “Accordingly, the governments and promotion agencies are taking some steps. A lot still has to be done. But they are taking some steps to make the talent ready for these next-generation skills.”
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