Corsidian, customer-contact provider, buys TCG   

BY ENRIQUE MARTEL

San Juan, PR. June, 2006. The ripple effects of the $1 billion acquisition of Aspect Communications by Concerto Software and Aspect Communications Corp. took some time to arrive to the island. But the recent by out of TCG Innovations, a local Aspect reseller, by Corsidian Inc., a provider of Concerto products, show how the local call center sector is also maturing.

Research on outsourcing call centers to low-cost regions varies in its conclusions.

While tight profit margins are driving outsourcers to move offshore to places like India and Philippines, western businesses remain concerned over distance and the perception of losing control, according to the International Customer Management Institute. "Knock-on effects" from bad press coverage appears to have increased while previous bad experience has been cited as a cause for apprehension.

With regional offices in Brazil, Mexico and Puerto Rico, Corsidian was looking to expand locally its inbound-calling business line, TCG´s bread and butter, according to Corsidian´s general manger in Puerto Rico, Nelson Aviles.

Formerly Manta Systems, Corsidian´s local market has mostly consisted of technology and services for predictive dialing systems to call clients with billing information. Inbound systems are the ones used when a customer calls a service center and his call is processed and transferred to the next available agent.

"Many of the clients of TCG have inbound clients but not outbound clients and many of Corsidian clients are outbound clients but not inbound", said Aviles, who did not disclosed terms of the deal. "The idea is to unite these two companies so we can offer all of expanded services to our clients".

Aware of the fact that the Latin American industry is rapidly growing, Corsidian, with offices in Brazil, Mexico and Puerto Rico, now opens offices in Bogota, where it will surely face the challenges and opportunities that arise, to better compete with the globalized markets.

Contact centers gained popularity after the 1990 recession when companies began looking for efficiency and cost-effectiveness, said Aviles.

As the client base grew for many companies, so did the option of renting space and agents in contact centers to service a number of firms from different sectors. Others, particularly large companies, opted to create or enhance their own contact center departments.

Corsidian was among the number of companies that rose as resellers to fill the demand for new technology and services: automatic call distribution, interactive voice recognition, work force management, predictive dialing, quality recording and monitoring, VoIP Solutions, among others.

Growth potential

The "arduous" competition in the local sector for customer contact solutions has a minimum wage to deal with, which limits its size. But both Aviles and new Corsidian director, Ramon Maldonado, formerly TCG president, believe the island still has a skilled-labor edge (including bilingual services) over its low-cost competition in Latin America. Companies marketing to U.S. Hispanic populations or that provide knowledge-based services, such as nursing, benefit form agents who speak English and Spanish and have an educated background, Maldonado said.

The number of agent positions in the Caribbean and Latina America call-center market is expected to grow from 336,000 in 2003 to 730,000 in 2008, according to data of Research and Markets Ltd. Published by the institute.

Mexico and Brazil accounted for 290,000 agent positions in 2003 - representing 86 percent of the entire CALA agent population, according to the Institute.

Aviles and Maldonado said many banks and insurance companies, among the sector´s to clients, prefer to have their own call centers to keep sensitive data in-house.

If there is one direction call centers are headed, they said, it is straight to the homes of employees. Although still in the early adopter stage, the remote agent model is gaining acceptance, and by 2009, 7.5 percent of agents will sit outside of the traditional contact center, predicts Datamonitor, an international market researcher.

There are currently upwards of 100,000 home-based phone representatives in the United States, according to the International Data Group, or IDG. Compared with traditional outsourcing and offshore alternatives, companies utilizing home-based agents can access highly skilled representatives who are closely attuned to the U.S. market at very reasonable cost, IDG reports. Accessing high-quality agents is not limited to those within commuting distance and agents can be contacted when needed, instead of occupying call centers during periods of very little call activity.

It still remains to be seen if remote agents will indeed become a popular line of work in Puerto Rico, where only 33 percent for the population had Internet access in 2005, according to an Estudios Tecnicos study. About a third of Internet users on the island connected through DSL or cable.

Aviles and Maldonado point out that recent infrastructure expansion and frequent ad campaigns by local cable and telecom companies will quickly blow up these Internet figures, if they have not done so by now.

"When you call a Dell call center, you are not talking to an operator in a call center but rather to a remote agent in his house", he said. "There are certain limitations of space that a company faces and if people can do it from their homes, why not¿ I mean, you can measure their production up to the minute. They have to notify the system if the are going to get up from their desk".