Cali, Colombia, continues to grow its IT sector as it looks to attract more BPO, ITO and KPO interest. Invest Pacific says 2018 saw 20 new projects, 10 of them with new companies, added to Cali's investments and moves like Sitel's 2017 opening in the city are adding to the interest.
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It went from being one of the safest destinations in Central America to unexpectedly chaotic and dangerous – stunning would-be investors and attracting significant global attention as a country mired in deep societal and political conflict.
Years of stability in Nicaragua were rocked when an unexpected uprising against the country’s government kicked off in April 2018, leaving hundreds dead and triggering a period of uncertainty.
Some Stay, Some Flee
The turmoil caused a number of BPO operators to reduce headcount or shut-down altogether. Concentrix, for example, reportedly slimmed down significantly during last 18 months, moving some of its workers from Nicaragua to operations established in Costa Rica. Other workers were reportedly laid-off. When asked this week about its Nicaragua strategy, Concentrix declined comment.
But despite the country suffering a sharp fall in foreign investment, some outsourcing providers – largely in customer care and services – are signaling their belief that conditions have improved considerably. BPO provider IBEX Global told Nearshore Americas that the nation is stronger than ever and plans to launch a second site in Managua this month.
“We managed through the crisis and came out ten times stronger as a company through that,” Bob Dechant, the company’s CEO, says.
“In April 2018 the unrest hit and for four months it put some challenges in the ability to get people around town with the protests. We were able to navigate really well with that – putting people in hotels, helping our agents get to and from work,” Dechant reports. “Our clients are important so we are committed, and it would’ve been easy for them to pull out. ”
Dechant believes that approximately 3,000 agents positions were lost in the entire Managua BPO ecosystem, during the months that followed the initial street conflicts.
Trouble in the Latin American nation – population 6.5 million – kicked off when pro-government groups violently crushed a small demonstration against reforms to Nicaragua’s pension system. Street protests then erupted against the regime of President Daniel Ortega and more violence from police and government-backed paramilitaries then created a period of instability not seen since the Sandinista revolution almost 40 years ago.
Clients Remain Supportive
Dechant adds that despite the complications, they managed to see the troubles as an opportunity to build trust with clients. “This was seen as enormous opportunity so rather than follow the path of least resistance, our clients realized how important it was in keeping that economy going,” he says. “We have clients who said they were really committed to staying in this market as long as we can, rather than overreact, and that has paid off.”
Carlos Medina, the country manager for Opticall BPO, which supports optical services organizations in the United States notes that maintaining continuity in operations has remained crucial. “It is our job as BPO leaders to guarantee the sustainability of our business and enable BCP actions when necessary,” he says.
A sense of calm has returned to Managua, according to multiple sources. Although the regime of Ortega remains firmly in tact, only time will tell if Nicaragua will be able to reclaim the title of ‘safest’ country in Central America.
Sitel, one of the true trailblazers to set up in Nicaragua back in 2008, is also issuing a strong vote of confidence around a resurgent Nicaragua. (During those years, Convergys also arrived in the country). Sitel’s first Nicaragua call center opened in one of Managua’s few skyscrapers, called Invercasa, in April 2008. Due to increasing demand for capacity, Sitel expanded twice and ultimately added a second site at the former U.S. Embassy compound in historic old Managua in January 2009. In succeeding years, Nicaragua formed the cornerstone of Sitel’s Nearshore strategy.
Mike Small, CEO of Sitel‘s operations in the Americas, reports that Sitel’s headcount has increased since the protests broke out. “We have actually grown our clients that are there [in Nicaragua] over the last six months,” he says. “At the time of the crisis we had around 2,500–2,600 employees – now we’re over 3,000.”
Clearly, Sitel remains firmly commited. “Nicaragua continues to be a high performing market, and we expect to continue to take advantages to grow in the market,” adds Small.
Managing through Turbulence
Getting through the difficult months required responsive leadership teams, according to both Small and Dechant. First were the practicalities. Small tells Nearshore Americas that the company immediately ordered over 300 cots, had shower facilities set up and provided food service on a 24/7 basis. Means of communications were provided to employees in order to make contact with friends and family. Dechant adds that making sure travel was available in the form of taxis to get agents back home when there were delays, roadblocks or protests was also helpful.
The context of the crisis, and the fact that Nicaragua remains an emerging economy, also played a factor in how client relationships were managed. “The first and foremost thing is open, honest and transparent conversations with our clients and making sure we are building contingency strategies,” adds Small.
While Dechant says: “Our leadership team was second-to-none. If you have weak leadership navigating through crisis, you’re going to lose. I believed in the leadership we had and now we are doing better than ever.”
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Contact centers and BPO providers in the Nearshore and throughout the world are struggling to meet data protection guidelines, such as those issued by the Payment Card Industry (PCI), as literally millions of employees attempt to turn their homes into makeshift offices.
Scaling to meet the demand by issuing hardware to workers is one thing, but ensuring that companies are completely in line with PCI compliance – especially those with “level one” certification – is turning out to be a much more complex undertaking.
At the beginning of March the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) issued a series of updates on the risks that the COVID-19 pandemic poses to PCI-compliance, as well as recommendations on how to maintain policies in remote work environments.
“All staff should receive security awareness training that emphasizes the importance of data security and be knowledgeable in the organization’s security policies and processes that apply to remote working. For example, policies and procedures should clearly prohibit any unauthorized copying, moving, sharing, or storing of payment card data in remote environments. Remote staff additionally need to be aware of their physical surroundings, taking care to prevent sensitive information from being viewed by unauthorized persons,” recommended the PCI SSC last week, while recognizing that some controls might be challenging to implement.
Nearshore Americas spoke with three BPO providers and an industry analyst to understand how the industry is adapting to this new reality and the potential security risks that come with it.
“In the operations that are not directly managed by banks, it is very possible there are PCI violations going on because there is remote access from other locations. This is something that needs to be revised,” said Alejandra Romero, a Mexico City-based industry analyst with over twenty years of experience, including a 16-year run as a chief operating officer at Qualfon.
For Romero, the pandemic has led to a tidal wave of disruption and a level of disorganization that had never really been considered as a possibility for many BPO operators. Because of that, most Business Continuity Plans (BCPs) were developed without imaging the current scenario where huge volumes would have to be migrated to remote sites in a very short period of time. The high volume of agents that have been moved to work-at-home introduces a series of IT, security and monitoring challenges that are acutely important for contact centers with clients who require PCI adherence.
In an ideal scenario, contact centers and BPO providers that move agents to at-home locations should be providing those agents with company-issued equipment, which should already include updated security software to protect against privacy breaches. The companies’ local networks should also be designed to support those off-site connections.
Hui Wu-Curtis, President and COO at World Connection, said that her company moved all of its 700 agents to their homes. World Connection has sites in Guatemala City and Boise, Idaho. In Guatemala, the government has implemented hard social distancing measures and has closed contact centers that didn’t follow them. “Before this, we didn’t offer a work-at-home option, but we had the infrastructure ready to go, which is why we were able to do it within two days,” Wu-Curtis said.
“We didn’t want any of our employees to use their own equipment, so what we did, we inventoried and sent home company-issued equipment to all of our employees. It has the same security protocols. It’s still a lockdown, we still have monitoring capability. So, everything is the same, systematically.” she added.
One of the world’s largest providers, Sitel, faced similar challenges when deploying Nearshore agents to at-home environments. With presence in Mexico, Nicaragua, Colombia, and Panama, Sitel took advantage of its experience with work-at-home in North America.
Pete Weaklend, Senior Vice President of Solutions and Innovations at Sitel, told Nearshore Americas that leaders implemented work-at-home both with company-issued equipment and with agent devices that pass a requirements test. As of last Thursday (March 26th), Sitel transitioned 47% of agents in Panama to work from home, and 53% in Colombia. The goal is to reach 70% and 75% of agents working from home, respectively, within a week.
“When agents take home a PC from our site, we establish a secure VPN connection, which ensures that it provides the security and controls we need from a PCI standpoint,” Weaklend said.
“For the agent’s PC solution, we use a Linux bootable USB that completely locks down the agent’s operating system, drivers, ability to print, everything. It opens up a new OS on that PC. It becomes a dumb terminal that is now connected to our network,” he added.
Everise also benefited from having a work-at-home infrastructure built to scale. As the pandemic measures became more stringent around the world, the company’s priority shifted to deploying work-at-home for agents in Kuala Lumpur, Manila, and Guatemala. “As of today, we moved home roughly 71% of our agents globally, the goal for phase one is to reach 82% of the agent population, and then for phase two it would be the remaining positions,” said Amy Grisham, Senior Manager of IT Governance & Compliance at Everise.
Grisham says that the pandemic caught the company in the middle of its PCI-compliance assessment, so the topic was fresh in the minds of leadership. The work-at-home platform is based on recently developed requirements. Some of the IT security measures include multifactor authentication and data privacy procedures, handled through network segmentation techniques.
Some industry observers have worried that broadband connectivity would become a big challenge for Latin American and Caribbean-based workers, however so far those concerns seem to be unwarranted. Most BPO providers are located in metropolitan areas where the telecommunications infrastructure tends to be reliable and pervasive. Many in the industry are watching carefully to see whether demand for network resources erodes performance. Additionally, some question whether the electrical grid in various locations will endure added strain.
Aside from the broadband and equipment provisioning issues is the biggest worry of all: physical security. PCI-compliance requires very specific physical accommodations. Desk are expected to be clean and uncluttered. “Entry controls” are expected to add an extra dimension of protection that – in the real world of the call center – typically includes security personnel, checking bags and using badges to verify the identity of those entering the floor.
The topic of data protection inside Nearshore call centers is, understandably sensitive. There have been actual breaches, most notably when two call center agents servicing AT&T in Monterrey, Mexico were found in 2015 to have sold personal customer data to an outside third-party. The personal details of almost 280,000 U.S. customers, including “full or partial” Social Security numbers was compromised. (The investigation also resulted in the discovery of violations in the Philippines and Colombia.)
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ordered AT&T to pay a $25 million fine because of the breaches.
How can providers guarantee their agents will not write down credit card information, or snap screen shots on a mobile device, in an environment over which they have no control?
“The physical environment within which an office worker or home worker is taking card payments over the telephone should be effectively monitored, and access controlled,” recommended the PCI SSC on their website last week.
World Connection is considering providing their at-home agents with webcams that could detect unusual activity at the desk level.
“We would try to live stream monitor, or, if the network can’t handle that, then we are going to bounce in to monitor their activity periodically, so they know that at any moment they are going to have random monitoring throughout the day,” Wu-Curtis said.
However, for Alejandra Romero, monitoring via webcams, particularly live streaming, poses a broadband issue everywhere, particularly in a moment where residential networks are strained due to the increased traffic.
For his part, Weaklend recognizes the constraints potentially existing in the “last mile,” an element that is hard for companies to control directly.
“We are using all of the security and confidentiality waivers that the agents sign, the equipment waiver that they sign, all the background check pieces where we can. All those standard things to make sure the employee is aware of this issue,” Weaklend said.
“All of our at-home processes are designed with the same controls that have been certified for us in the US. As far as the actual at-home environment, the ‘can they write something down?’, that has to be covered by the controls that we have around the employee, the trust in the employee. And that goes for all time, including everything we deployed for work-at-home in the US,” he concluded.
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American call center firm Sitel is set to hire 400 agents in Canada’s St. Catharines, a glimmer of hope for the industry battered by a rising wave of automation and COVID-19 travel restrictions.
The new hires will provide customer care services to an American telecom firm, the call center stated in a press release.
To comply with social distancing measures in this age of coronavirus, the BPO provider is restructuring workspaces at the facility in Canada’s Niagara region.
“With the size and space available in our contact center, the new associates will be on the production floor, where we’re implementing strict social distancing policies, as well as rigorous cleaning activities,” said site director Gemma Dale.
Also, every employee will be told to wear a protective mask at the office and work on staggered shifts.
The pandemic is driving demand for customer services, says the BPO, which, in April this year, revealed a plan to hire 10,000 work-at-home agents for its operations across North America.
When Covid-19 led to stringent travel restrictions in St. Catharines earlier in March, Sitel ordered 95% of its agents to operate from home. A month later, it added 200 more employees to its payroll on the back of increased demand for customer care service.
All new positions are full time, says the call center provider, adding that new hires will be trained in the job.
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American BPO provider Sitel has reportedly launched a large-scale expansion program in Colombia, with plans to add as many as 2,000 employees to its payroll.
The expansion plan includes establishing a new call center in Barranquilla and hiring bilingual home-based agents in Medellín and Bucaramanga, according to the country’s investment promotion agency ProColombia.
The BPO provider is hiring not just call center agents, but also analysts, engineers, and support personnel. New members will be added to its workforce in Bogota and Cali as well.
Considering local media reports, Sitel has secured 10 new clients in the Andean country over the past two months. As of now, the BPO has employed 5,000 people across a dozen offices in the country.
Sitel has been operating in Colombia for the past 23 years, with businesses in transportation, technology, financial services, and telecommunications, being its major clients.
“This new investment by Sitel confirms Colombia’s potential as an investment destination in BPO… It is a vote of confidence in our talent that will bring technology, knowledge, and jobs” said Flavia Santoro, President of ProColombia.
“Colombia is the third country with the most contact center agents in the region with about 124,000 and it is estimated that by 2020 it will exceed 130,000,” stated the agency, citing a study by the research firm Frost & Sullivan.
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Global BPO provider Sitel has begun building a co-working center in the Colombian city of Barranquilla to train and oversee home-based employees, besides unveiling an ambitious plan to hire 11,000 people in the Andean country over the next few months.
The facility, nicknamed Maxhub, will be the contact center of the future because it is designed to meet the needs of work-from-home model necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The co-working center will also serve as a location for service delivery, but its main focus will be training newly-hired employees and managing those working from home.
“The typical contact center – with rows and rows of cubicles – is a place of the past,” declared the BPO provider in its description of Maxhubs.
The campus will feature 1,500 square feet of co-working space. More than anything else, it will be equipped with a gym, cafeteria, and a library, where both remote-workers and on-site employees will socialize and learn from each other.
The Maxhub will be used to “support our growing network of at-home associates with tools and resources,” says Eduardo Endo, VP of Operations at Sitel Colombia.
Some employees at the facility will work even while learning. If everything goes according to the plan, the facility will be up and running in the Spring of 2021.
Sitel moved most of its 5,000 Colombian employees to home environments following the coronavirus outbreak. All of them are still operating from home. The BPO provider is not talking about bringing them back to the office.
Sitel has been operating in Colombia for the past 23 years, with businesses in transportation, technology, financial services, and telecommunications, being its major clients. Earlier this year, local media houses reported that the call center operator had secured 10 new clients in the Andean country in a space of two months.
Sitel is not the only BPO provider looking to hire thousands of employees in Colombia. Earlier in August, Teleperformance disclosed plans to recruit 10,000 remote customer care agents in the Andean country.
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American call center firm Sitel has teamed up with the BPO association in Colombia, BPrO, to offer employment opportunities to thousands of Venezuelans living as refugees in the Andean country.
Miami, Florida-based BPO provider has claimed in a press release that it has already taken on board 500 refugees over the past three years and that it would soon hire 300 more Venezuelans.
Given the devastating and deepening economic crisis in the country, millions of Venezuelans have fled to neighboring countries like Brazil, Peru and Colombia. Today, nearly 15% of Venezuelans are living the life of a refugee in a foreign country.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the refugee crisis in Venezuela, and we’re proud to be able to do our part for many of these immigrants,” stated Eduardo Endo, the country manager for Sitel in Colombia.
Eight other BPO firms have also joined hands with Sitel, but there are no further details about them yet. It seems the BPO firms were brought together by Tent, a non-profit launched in 2016 specifically to encourage corporate firms to hire refugees.
“Integrating refugees into a company’s workforce isn’t just good for society – refugees are hard-working, motivated employees who tend to stay longer with their employers,” stated Yaron Schwartz, Head of Impact Sourcing at the Tent Partnership for Refugees.
Not just refugees, Sitel says it has even offered employment to people who lost their jobs during the pandemic. Moreover, the BPO provider has also offered to teach English for free in order to help them land a job in other industries.
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Nearshore Americas is gearing up to host a new webinar on MAXhubs – a new breed of co-working facility armed with all modern amenities for BPO employees to excel in their work in the face of outsourcing’s post-pandemic reality.
Scheduled for April 6th, 2PM EDT/ 11AM PDT, the webinar will feature a live feed from the new Barranquilla MAXhub location, while shining a light on Sitel’s newly-built MAXhub in the Barranquilla, Colombia. Special guest speakers include Olivier Camino, founder and global Chief Operating Officer (COO), and Mike Small, Sitel’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Americas.
In total, five Sitel executives will speak at the the webinar, offering their experts insight on how to build a MAXhub facility to enhance business operations in the new normal. MAXhubs were originally designed to meet the needs of the work-from-home model that has become so fundamental to the industry over the last year. With many predicting that the remote working model is here to stay, the traditional brick-and-mortar contact center – with its rows and rows of uniform cubicles – may soon be a place of the past.
MAXhubs, however, are designed for the future with a people-centric vision and hybrid working model in mind. With educational resources on site for both employed agents and the local communities, they are centres of learning that bring benefits to places where it is needed. But MAXhubs also offer physical well-being and communal elements. Most are equipped with a gym, cafeteria, and a library, where both remote-workers and on-site employees can socialize and learn from one another.
The traditional brick-and-mortar contact center – with its rows and rows of uniform cubicles – may soon be a place of the past
In other words, the MAXhub co-working facility is not limited to delivering services. It is a place for development, paying as much attention to training new-hired staff as it does managing remote agents.
The webinar will also delve into the business climate and talent pool in Barranquilla. A young upstart on the BPO market, Barranquilla has positioned itself as a strong alternative location for companies looking outside of the major Colombian markets of Bogota and Medellin. The city, located on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, has the second-highest rate of English speakers in the country while also offering attractive tax incentives via its status as a Free Trade Zone.
Sitel has been operating in Colombia for the past 23 years, with businesses in transportation, technology, financial services, and telecommunications, being its major clients.
The Sitel executives participating in the webinar are Olivier Camino, Eduardo Endo, Mario Parodi, Mike Small, and Javier Chia. Nearshore Americas Managing Director Kirk Laughlin will moderate the event.
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Venezuela’s socio-economic implosion has caused an estimated five million people to flee their home country, with many crossing the western border into Colombia. As the Colombian government takes steps to integrate migrants into the local economy, the private sector is playing its part and offering migrants jobs in the booming BPO industry.
“What we’re seeing today is the result of the work of various governments, public-private partnerships and a clear understanding of the BPO sector’s relevance,” said Mauricio Velásquez, managing director at Bogota-based Velásquez & Company.
“There is a historic connection between the two countries but the high levels of unemployment in the Venezuelan community was becoming a domestic social issue for Colombia. We also needed to take advantage of all the people coming with technical capabilities and skills,” he added.
Colombia supports 13.1% of BPO sales in the region, ranking third in A.T. Kearney’s Latin America service location indicator. Through constant government support, a strategic geographic location and the ability to leverage the local cost of human resources to compete with other markets, Colombia is positioning itself as an increasingly attractive jurisdiction for the industry.
The country’s success in the BPO sector is symptomatic of the industry’s wider regional and global growth. However, Colombia’s particular conditions, including an investor-friendly regulatory framework and a large work force — which has been enriched by the recent influx of migrants and refugees — makes it more competitive.
An initiative by Tent Partnership for Refugees, IAOP, the global BPO association, and BPrO, the Colombian BPO association, is facilitating the hiring of Venezuelan refugees, allowing the BPO sector to lead the way in integrating Venezuelan migrants into Colombia’s workforce.
“Over the last five years, Colombia has welcomed about two million Venezuelans who have fled their country due to economic turmoil and insecurity. While both the Colombian government and the private sector have shown great leadership in welcoming Venezuelans, these refugees still face steep barriers to the job market. The BPO sector is one of Colombia’s leading industries and is growing at a fast rate; we felt there was a huge opportunity for BPO firms to show their support for Venezuelan refugees and double down on their efforts to integrate them,” said Yaron Schwartz, Lead of BPO Initiative, Tent Partnership for Refugees.
For Debi Hamill, CEO of the IAOP, it is important to promote impact sourcing as a business model, particularly because experiences like this one in Colombia have a lot of potential to help refugees globally by integrating them into their new communities. Nine BPO firms, including Sitel Group, Alorica and Sutherland have joined the pledge to create thousands of jobs for Venezuelans.
“The BPO industry has hired a considerable number of Venezuelans refugees. In the specific case of Sitel, we are constantly growing and looking for the best talent in the market,” said Maria Fernanda Gonzalez, director of human resources for Sitel Colombia.
The introduction of Venezuelans to Colombia’s labor force also increases the capabilities of various industries, including BPO, to address its own shortcomings. Despite Colombia’s growth as a Nearshore provider in the region, the industry still faces important challenges. Staff turnover and lack of the necessary bilingualism remain key obstacles for the BPO sector.
“We’ve found that Venezuelans have great language skills and strong technical backgrounds. Language skills is the main thing we look for. We are a customer experience management company and we hire mostly customer solutions agents. Although a lot of them are highly-skilled professionals that used to have a career in their home country,” Gonzalez added.
Colombian authorities have been closely involved with the industry, investing heavily to enhance the country’s position. The current administration in Colombia included the BPO industry as one of a dozen prioritized sectors to invest in order to increase productivity and competitiveness. “The government has understood the relevance of programs oriented to improve language skills but also the strategic need to expand the technological knowledge of the population. There is still some work to do,” said Velásquez.
In spite of the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, which produced a 6.8% GDP contraction in Colombia in 2020, the BPO industry is set for growth. The BPO sector is an essential part of Colombia’s economic reactivation, boosting job creation and service exports. By the end of 2020, the sector — including domestic as well as exported services – amounted to more than 605,000 jobs, 20,000 of those were created during the pandemic.
“Traditional industries have suffered during the pandemic, but this sector is experiencing growth. Employers are learning how to recruit and expand employment options across the country,” said Velásquez.
For investors and employers, the expansion of remote work brought the option to modernize recruitment processes. “The pandemic forced all of us to innovate and grow. We had three sites at the beginning of 2020, now there is this possibility to expand to other cities. More importantly we learned how to recruit and engage employees in a virtual way,” added Gonzalez.
While Colombia remains a hotspot for investment in telecommunications and in technology-based services, as a result of trained professionals and an already existing quality technological infrastructure, the country is well positioned to take advantage of various digital transformations processes accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. “Colombia’s connectivity situation is very advantageous. But we are now finally seeing the full potential of it. With things like remote work, companies in the sector will seek out talent and build teams everywhere,” Velásquez said.
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BPO provider Sitel Group has agreed to acquire its American peer Sykes for US$2.2 billion.
The merger will turn Sitel into a BPO giant, increasing its global headcount to in excess of 150,000. The combined company is also expected to make more than $4 billion in annual revenue.
Founded in North Carolina in 1977 as an engineering services business, Sykes has an interesting history. Sometime in 1990, founder John Sykes saw the opportunity to move into the consumer support services arena to offer tech support, which has remained at the center of its offering even to this day.
Sykes has since acquired several smaller rivals, widening its footprints to major across Latin America and Europe. In Latin America, Sykes has delivery centers in Costa Rica, Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, and El Salvador.
Sykes’ LatAm journey began in Costa Rica nearly two decades ago. Today, a large chunk of its regional workforce, (about 6,000 people) is based in Costa Rica.
Sykes and Tech Support
Moreover, Sykes’ tech support service is not as vulnerable to automation as other call center services. In an interview with Nearshore Americas five years ago, its CEO Chuck Sykes said: “The work that we are doing particularly in El Salvador and Colombia and all the Latin American operations is very very technical. Those are not being automated.”
The transaction is expected to be completed in the second half of 2021. And Sykes will be delisted from Nasdaq soon after.
Sitel is not new to Latin America either. It has operations in Nicaragua and Panama, in addition to Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia. The Miami, Florida-based company runs delivery centers in Canada as well, besides dozens of countries in Europe and Asia.
Olivier Camino, Sitel’s co-founder, says the BPO industry has undergone a dramatic change with the rise of the work-at-home model. “Post pandemic, ……….. the need for valuable emotional connections and conversations between brands and their consumers has never been so important,” he added, indirectly disclosing the reason for the acquisition.
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