Category Archives: America

Mexico is America’s #1 choice for Near-Shoring

September 20, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: America | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Near-Shoring Popular in Mexico
America is outsourcing many services overseas these days.  However, it is difficult, complicated, and expensive to outsource to Asia in many cases.  When you have to send executives to Asia from America, it is expensive!  If you need to call Asia from America, there is a time difference of 9-12 hours. There are strong cultural differences too which lead to communication discordances. In short, there are many complications. 
However, outsourcing to Mexico, and various other Latin American countries is much easier in many ways.  Communication is easier due to the cultural similarities between Anglo and Hispanic culture.  Americans who don’t reside in Texas, New Mexico, or California typically think of Latin culture as something exotic and distant.  However, if you travel to Africa or Asia, you will quickly realize that the Spanish language is very similar to English, the Catholic religion dominant in Latin America is very similar to the Protestant religion dominant (or previously dominant) in the United States.  The culture is much closer to American culture than Chinese, Thai, or Indian culture.
Additionally, business trips to Latin America are much easier than to Asia. There is no jet-lag.  Air-time might be anywhere from 8-16 hours as opposed to 16 to 36 hours for a trip to Asia. If you are in an industry where you need to send your executives back and forth constantly, it will be a drain on a person’s health to be going back and forth to Asia.  However, going back and forth to San Jose, CR, or to Buenos Aires, or Mexico City will be much easier to tolerate in the long run.  There might not be the exotic pleasures of Penang Beef, or Kung Pao Chicken, but the lack of jet lag or long flight times really makes a difference in the long run. Outsourcing to Latin America is easier in many ways.
My friend keeps telling me that in the future, there will be airplanes that will be able to fly from Los Angeles to Mumbai in five hours.  That is a wonderful concept, and I hope it is true.  But, in the mean time, it easier to fly from Dallas to Guadalajara!

Don’t expect to get paid more due to your GPS coordinates

September 19, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: America, Of Interest | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Don’t expect to get paid more because you were born in a particular country. Americans feel that they intrinsically deserve more money for doing certain tasks. Americans also feel that because the cost of living is higher in the United States, that therefor, they should get paid more.The truth is actually very interesting. America is actually one of the most efficient countries on earth. You get more land per dollar than almost anywhere else on the planet. It is cheaper to purchase a house in Oregon than it is to buy an equally sized house in Pune. A laptop in America costs less than the same laptop in Mumbai. America is not more expensive, except for labor and healthcare. Additionally, an apartment in an expensive part of Los Angeles is $2000 per month for what you might be able to get in Tennessee for $350. Costs in America really vary, so we can’t generalize about what “costs” are in America.

Moreover, American workers typically produce a lot more output per hour than people do in most other countries. Countries like Norway, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and the United States produce a lot of output per-capita. People at Indian BPO companies typically get less done per hour and make more mistakes that require redoing the same task multiple times.

My findings are that many Americans merit more money for particular tasks than overseas counterparts because of better skills, more efficient output, and better communication skills. The fact that it is more expensive here has nothing to do with anything.

On the other hand, Filipino call center workers are nicer and smoother than their American counterparts and can get done roughly as much work as well. Over time, the Philippines has been gaining market share for call center business and their wages have not been going down. You are worth what you are worth, so leave your GPS coordinates out of it!

Your GPS doesn’t determine what our BPO is worth!

Tweets:
(1) Just because you live in America, it doesn’t mean you deserve to get paid more.
(2) Americans get paid MORE per hour AND the cost of land and food are LESS in the US too!

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Outsourcing Obamacare
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2014/01/14/outsourcing-obama-care/

Rates for Office Space around the world compared
http://bpo.123outsource.net/2013/12/19/rates-for-office-space-around-the-world-compared/

Blogging gets me clicks from the USA

September 18, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: America, Analytics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

As I promoted my outsourcing directory, I got lots of clicks from India, but found it hard to find browsers from the USA. I found that PPC programs delivered me clicks from whatever country I wanted, but at a hefty price. As I did more with blogging and wrote more popular entries, I saw my clicks triple from the United States. My overseas clicks didn’t go up that much, except for some reason in Bolivia. Maybe they need call center services in Bolivia.

As someone who operates websites, click volume is a huge concern. Quantity of clicks is something I battle for daily. Every time I write a blog article, or modify my site, the only thought that goes through my head is click volume. But, quality and targeting of clicks matters more. On our outsourcing directory, we have lots of overseas providers in India and the Philippines for Call Centers, programming, social media, data entry, BPO, medical transcriptions, and other tasks. But, we had too few service “buyers” from wealthy western countries. I am happy to announce that our clicks from the West are finally going up, and as we promote our blog more and more, not to mention do it more intelligently, our clicks from America will continue to rise!

The new complicated shifting caste system in America

September 11, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: America | Tagged | Leave a comment

In a sense, the entire world has a caste system. But, America’s is more complicated. Certain established populations in the United States have certain types of jobs they typically do. The Jewish community is very active in Accounting, Legal, Arts, Education, and Entertainment type jobs. The black community is very active in government jobs. Whites are a little more complicated as they do most types of jobs except for things like hard outdoor labor, and a lot of high tech jobs. Jobs that are too physically or mentally hard are not often done by whites while more “average” jobs typically are.

Then, there are more complicated caste groups like Asians and Hispanics who have a shorter history in the United States (with the exception of New Mexico where they have a longer history.) 1st generation Asians will often have a nail salon, market, or do laborious jobs, while they push their children (often at gun point) to study hard and do something better when they grow up.

Although it looks like we have a caste system, it is more complicated in the case of Asians and Hispanics. The nail salon caste is Vietnamese and Korean, at least temporarily. But, it isn’t a permanent caste since their children will not be caught dead doing those types of jobs. 1st generation Hispanics will often do very hard physical labor jobs under the worst conditions often in factories or in the hot sun. However, their children tend to work indoors as shop clerks, administrators, or frequently as nurses.

What America lacks (and France as the case may be) is a caste that will do the hard jobs. The problem is that nobody born on American soil wants to work hard, and most people born on local soil are too dumb to do technical jobs. The technical and physically difficult tasks are normally done by immigrants. Immigrants do these jobs, but their children can’t or won’t do those types of jobs. So, then in twenty years we need to import another round of immigrants whose children will also not be able to do the jobs that they were brought here to do. This cycle won’t end until America has 2 billion people, there won’t be any more land, trees, or clean water, and yet there still will be nobody to do the hard work. What will we do?

300 years ago America had the same problem. In those days they brought slaves over. This is not a very moral solution to the problem. However, upon hindsight, they were able to get these slaves to do backbreaking work for more than one generation which would be impossible in modern circumstances.

Perhaps if America attached a value to honest hard work, it might be possible for American born people to actually do a little. Or if all Americans were encouraged to do a few years of physical work before graduating into a more sophisticated form of work that might help. America glamorizes education, and higher level jobs. But, we can’t all be brain surgeons. Someone has to clean the sewers. So, we might as well take pride in this type of work. In any case. I have to go. I have a sewer to clean.

But, the future of our behavior of depending on immigrants to do the hard jobs, and then having their kids (or anyone else’s kids) being willing to do those jobs is that our country will grow to a population of 1 billion, with very few being highly educated. This will make it easier for doctors and other higher level people to have a huge salary, and servants in the future. There will be little competition for higher level jobs as American will be more and more a land of paupers. The people immigrating to the United States in large numbers, and the people having the most children in America are desperately poor, and their descendants sometimes make it to the middle class, although most do not. The future is an escalation of poverty growing and growing and growing.

Should Americans Provide Outsourcing Services?

September 8, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: America | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Should Americans provide outsourcing services?
 
I think it would be a great exercise to have Americans set up outsourcing services, or mock simulated outsourcing business models to understand the metrics of land, labor, and other costs involved in staying competitive in a global market.  What people will quickly find out, is that to stay ahead, you have to either be really cheap, really efficient, really good, or really sophisticated.  
 
Its not all about price!
People around the world think that business is mainly about price competition, and nothing could be farther from the truth.  If you go to the supermarket, the lower cost yogurt sits on the shelf while Yoplait gets hoarded.  Yoplait probably costs more than double ounce per ounce, but you can’t get people to stop buying it . Why?   It tastes good, its drinkable, fashionable, and comes in a cool container — thats why.  People want what they want and are willing to pay more to get what they want than a boring bare-bones standardized product.  i-phones are selling off the shelf while simpler phones that could be sold for $10 at a profit don’t even exist at shops anymore.  People want fancy stuff and couldn’t care less about saving money, and that includes the poor too.
 
So, if an American company tried to compete with all of these foreign outsourcing businesses in the international market, how would we compete?  What would we do?  Competing on price would be futile, but there are many other ways to compete.
 
Languages.  Every language known to mankind (and some not known) is spoken in America.  Setting up global services that are multi-lingual with native speakers would be easy here due to the availability of prospective staff members
 
Speed.  Normally Americans go slow and want to be unavailable during lunch, but what if we devised ways to be lightening quick like Domino’s Pizza.  Then we would have a niche.  What if we had a web development system where websites could be designed, optimized, and marketed all in the time frame of 72 hours?  If the system delivered quality work in that time frame, companies would pay through the nose for that type of service.
 
Sophistication.  What if American companies thought of extra features and niceties to add to regular services to make them more attractive?  We might be able to easily compete with overseas companies just because the services were so pleasant to use.
 
Partnering.  What if American companies partnered with overseas companies (many larger ones already do) to take advantage of affordable labor and combine it with American Ingenuity?
 
Land.  What if American companies figured out how to get staff members to be in a place with really inexpensive land and were able to establish low cost BPO services there — perhaps in a place like Tulsa or Memphis which are some of the lowest cost metros in the states.  With such low land and labor costs, companies would easily be able to compete on an international level.
 
Technology.  What if American companies got even better at using automization, robotics and other technologies, so we could compete with India.  If were were twice as efficient as the Japanese, we could compete even with our high labor costs.
 
American salaries are high, and to keep these high salaries in a global market place we have to merit them.  Money is a gift from god, but the gift is not just given without terms.  You have to merit the money (or have really good karma), or god isn’t going to keep giving it.

On a final note, India is getting really expensive, and the general inefficiencies of the country prevent them from competing with America in the long run.  As India gets more expensive, it will be easier for America to compete with them.

The current status of American culture: a lack of work ethic

September 8, 2010 by 123outsource
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The current status of American culture in 2014: a lack of work ethic

America gets a D
I am sad to say this, but America has lost its work ethic. Asia is the place with great work ethic, but due to very unstable economic, political, and environmental conditions, Asia will continue to experience major problems. Americans who I have encountered in the work world are either overburdened, or completely irresponsible and lazy. America will not be able to hold its title of being #1 if these habits don’t change.

My generation born in the late 60’s or early 70’s at least grew up in a time when families were together and people took pride in their work. Although this has substantially fallen apart since the mid-80’s, at least we saw society when it was somewhat intact. The younger kids are part of the A.D.D. generation. I don’t use the terms Z, Y, or millenials. People jump from channel to channel, tweet to tweet, job to job, etc. Education and family values don’t see to be valued as much although a higher percentage of people seem to be going to college. Families are falling apart, and a high percentage of teenagers have sexually transmitted diseases.

When I try to hire people in America to work for me, they either take me on as a client and then don’t do any work, or they just don’t get back to me. It doesn’t matter how much I pay, people are not so interested in working. I also find that standards for quality of work are very low. People don’t respect deadlines either. I tried to hire bloggers, but they want very high prices for what seems to me to be very mediocre work that will not attract traffic to my blogs. So, I am stuck being very busy doing my writing myself.

India gets a D-
Indians want to work. But, most of them lack the education to really be able to do any meaningful work. Most people looking for work make about three spelling mistakes per sentence. Nobody with any standards would be able to hire more than 1% of the applicants. It is very sad. Indian companies tend to be very impersonal about how they handle clients. The focus is on “the requirements,” and contracts rather than tuning in to how the client feels and what they want. If you visit them in person, the boss will be hospitable to you and get to know you, but the others generally will not. By the time you get to know the workers assigned to your project they will either quit or be on maternity leave. The Indian work ethic is there, but it is short-sighted and sloppy. People are out for short term gains, and very little attention is given to professionalism and quality of work.

Eastern Europe gets a D+
Russia and Eastern Europe offer higher class outsourcing. But, I have noticed that it takes them about three times as long as American workers to do the same thing. Hour padding seems to be cultural with them, but it is not acceptable to me as it is not honest or reputable.

China gets F
China has been in a mad rush to make money. They built lots of factories too fast, and now their factories are not close to being fully utilized. It is typical for Chinese companies to put very toxic chemicals and lead in their manufactured goods. Imagine buying children’s toys that children put in their mouths and learning that it is toxic and could lead to brain damage. This kind of recklessness is why China is experiencing a lot of impediments to their growth. Since they routinely fudge their numbers for economic growth, it is hard to know if they are growing or not. They would grow a lot faster if there would be a shred of concientiousness. Additionally, China has salted its soil with chemicals. It will not be able to use a large proportion of its farmland due to reckless use of chemicals. The air is filled with toxic chemicals as very dangerous materials are burned in areas where people live. Additionally, the water is very polluted with dangerous toxic materials. More than half of Chinese over the age of 50 have cancer which is due highly to the toxicity in the area. Why such a highly cultured nationality would trash its own country is beyond me, but I am very sad as I am a lover of Chinese culture and have been since early childhood.

Additionally, China reserves the right to take intellectual property in some shape or form from companies that do business with them. Since they are such a humongous market, companies feel compelled to agree to whatever terms China wants. But, these days, many large companies are pulling out of China because China likes to set the rules of who controls what, and who they will hire, and a bunch of other factors that I am not familiar enough to tell you about. Is it worth it to give up your freedom to get into a big market and be completely at the mercy of a much more powerful entity? Many companies are saying no and are jumping off the bandwagon.

Communication skills at Chinese companies are abysmal. Trying to get programming work done with them is a nightmare. I expect that since Chinese are so motivated to get ahead, that in a few years they will become superstars of the hi-tech world. But, how many years will it take? That is a question that’s answer will unravel over time. I would expect that after 2020, China will be far in the lead for software outsourcing. We’ll see if my prediction comes true!

Does anyone get an A?
Japan unfortunately doesn’t do outsourcing. But, I had the pleasure of having a green tea donut in Little Tokyo here in Los Angeles. I will say that Japanese are the only culture that I would use as a role model. People were very nice to me and engaged me in small talk. The fact that they knew English was a huge perk. But, during our conversation, if a customer walked in, their attention would go to greeting the new customer. There was no delay. It took them less than a second to jump into action. This type of emphasis on being considerate and timely is a huge attribute that only the Japanese have as a culture. I think that the rest of the world needs to learn from Japan. Maybe we should learn to bow too — it couldn’t hurt.

The BPO across the border

September 8, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: America | Tagged | Leave a comment

Before the drug war in Mexico, it was popular for Americans to cross the border in search of fun, sun, good margaritas, tacos, and a generally good time. Unfortunately, if you go to Mexico now, you might end up being caught in the cross-fire. Mexico in reality has not really been safe since the 1950’s, but took a turn for the worse with all of the cartels causing so much trouble. Putting danger aside, let’s talk about the long term possibilities here.

The United States has a 1951 mile long border with Mexico. It is hard for workers to get visas to enter the United States. It is easy to get into Mexico. They don’t even check you when you enter the country. Imagine if outsourcing companies were set up right on the Mexican side of the border. You could import workers from India, The Philippines, The Ukraine, and anywhere else you want. Management could live on the US side of the border, but drive across every day to go to work, or stay in a short-term corporate housing situation.

There are countless places along this long border where there is an American city and a sister city in Mexico. San Ysidro, Mexicali, Yuma, Nogales, Brownsville, Laredo, and El Paso to name a few. The majority would probably be in Texas, but there are a few in other areas.

It might be very profitable in the long run to set up these types of operations. You get the benefit of American management and foreign labor, right within yelling distance of comfortable American metro areas! It is surprising that nothing like this has ever been tried to my knowledge. Maybe one day it will be tried. Keep in mind that this is not the least expensive way to create an outsourcing operation. Mexico is not the cheapest place for manufacturing, labor, or anything else (except for avocados). However, Mexico does offer the convenience of proximity, and a culture that is compatible with American culture (to a point), not to mention that their language is spoken by 10% of American citizens!

So, why not start a BPO right across the Rio Grande. It is worth a shot!

Tweets:
(1) Why not start a BPO right across the Rio Grande?
(2) Cross the border for a taco, margarita, or BPO outsourcing company w/a call center?

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Diversity — a personal story

September 7, 2010 by 123outsource
Categories: America | Tagged , | Leave a comment

This story begins in early childhood. It really has a lot to do with my family’s history. Both of my parents lived in very international settings and were a strong influence in my life. Most Americans only know American culture. Even Americans who have been living side by side with other cultural groups for years seem to know very little about their non-Anglo neighbors.

My father grew up in San Francisco and his entire family loved Asian cultures. As a child, I heard many stories about Japanese culture, Chinese cuisine, and my father even knew how to write many Chinese characters. He taught me how to count to ten in two different Southern Chinese dialects. I learned how to use chopsticks early on as well. I “forced” or coerced my father to teach me the ancient Chinese game of “Go” or wei-chi (baduk in Korean). He was an expert at the game, and after many years of struggle, I too became a fairly decent player — although not as good as he was even after 37 years of playing. It is hard to compete intellectually with a father who was an MIT graduate.

My mother incidently also had a lot of family members in the San Francisco area, but had a completely different cultural orientation. I learned about the Arabic culture, as she grew up in an Arabic speaking country. I also became acquainted with Indians (Hindustanis) and Indian spirituality which has been a huge plus in my life. Since my mother lived in New York for many years, she was living very closely to Spanish speaking people at a time where very few other parts of America had any hispanics.

So, the influence of the two sides of the family connected me to a wide variety of very rich cultures — and it was fascinating. As a child, I had the opportunity of meeting people from around the world. This really shaped my life in many ways. In my University days, I had even more opportunities to meet even more people from even more places. I had never met Africans before I went to college, and I have many fond memories of all of the African parties I went to, and how nice the music and food was too.

An interest, or a means for survival?
In the beginning, I thought that understanding diversity was merely an interest. Connecting with cultures that meant something to me was a passion, but I didn’t see it as being important for my life. I thought that America was 90% culturally American, and that the others just lived in separated areas, or were scattered throughout the mainstream. This was 30 years ago when I was having the thought that understanding diversity was merely fascinating. America has changed, and the world has changed. The world is very connected these days. People travel from country to country much more often these days than ever before. International travel used to be the leisure of the upper class, but now it is something even the poor do from time to time. The demographics of America have changed tremendously, and continue to change. When I was a child, whites were more than 80% of the population. NOW, whites represent less than 50% of the birthrate. The diverse people are now destined to be the majority — and understanding them is my key to survival in the world today. As an example, I went to a wine tasting yesterday in Los Angeles — not a cultural event — but, 90% of the people there were non-anglos. Without a thorough understanding of diversity, it would have been hard to interact with anyone there!

Additionally, for my future, my psychic has told me many times that he sees a brilliant career in international trade between various Asian and Middle Eastern countries. I hope he is right. We will find out.

It has not all been a walk in the park
The down side of diversity, is that I often feel lonely. I live in a very diverse place, but find that people are not so friendly to you if you are not from their group. This has been the case since early childhood, when I was often rejected by people from other communities…

My friend came up with a brilliant saying which I will remember forever. He said this to me…

“You like diversity, but diversity doesn’t like you”