Outsourcing: West Corporation Interview (Part 4)

By guest author Tony Scott Culture Gaps and Management Challenges Tony: Do you find a cultural gap between the agents who are working for West who are based in the Philippines or who worked for you previously in India compared to your U.S. agents? Has that impacted your ability to move into higher value services

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Outsourcing: West Corporation Interview (Part 3)

By guest author Tony Scott New Offshore Centers For BPO? Tony: Are you looking at the virtual model outside of the United States as well, or do you do pure brick-and-mortar offshore? Matt: We have discussed it, but we haven’t pursued it at this point.

Outsourcing: West Corporation Interview (Part 2)

By guest author Tony Scott The Home Agent Advantage Tony: You mentioned that you believe you are able to provide a total cost of service at a lower rate using the home agent model versus the brick-and-mortar model?Compared to domestic brick-and-mortar call centers, what percentage differential do you typically find?

Outsourcing: West Corporation Interview (Part 1)

The Future of Call Centers Last week I talked about the double-edged sword facing outsourcing companies that are playing a pure labor arbitrage game because of lower cost of communications and the potential to virtualize call centers. This week I’d like to share with you some of my interview with several senior executives from a

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Is Outsourcing Dying Or Thriving? (Part 4)

By guest author Tony Scott The Double-Edged Sword: The Flat World A few years ago Thomas Friedman’s “The World Is Flat” became a global best seller. One of that book’s key areas of focus was examining the immense change that lower-cost, effective global communications was causing by enabling back-office call centers and IT support work

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Is Outsourcing Dying Or Thriving? (Part 3)

By guest author Tony Scott In part I of my article, I pointed out the reasons why outsourcing to India based on pure labor rate arbitrage faces significant obstacles to continued growth – and possibly even to future survival. On the other hand, outsourcing is clearly thriving – in India and around the world. How

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Is Outsourcing Dying Or Thriving? (Part 2)

By guest author Tony Scott It has now been two years since Sramana Mitra’s article “The Death of Indian Outsourcing” was published. Is outsourcing dying – or thriving? In one sense, outsourcing in India as it was known in the past is on the verge of (and in some cases is already) “hitting the wall.”

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Is Outsourcing Dying Or Thriving? (Part 1)

By guest author Tony Scott Almost exactly two years ago, Sramana Mitra wrote an article titled “The Death of Indian Outsourcing.” That article created quite a bit of controversy and stimulated a lot of conversation. Companies providing outsourcing services, companies using outsourcing services, and people in general in the United States and India often had

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