Costa Rica Hosts Global Outsourcing Conference
July 16, 2010 1 Comment
This guest post was written by Diego May, our Director of Business Development.
I recently attended an event organized by Procomer in Costa Rica called the Costa Rica IT Alliance Summit. As the head of business development for Avantica, I am often provided opportunities to be involved in conferences and events to see how the technology industry is growing in Costa Rica and Latin America. Proccomer is a government agency charged with connecting Costa Rica technology companies with US and other companies. Avantica is a regular participant at their events.
For 7 years now I have been involved with the development of Costa Rica´s technology and services sector. I had the opportunity of contributing to the first Costa Rica Technology Insights event back in 2004. After that initial event, and always with the Verde e Inteligente slogan (translation: green and intelligent), Costa Rica has continued these conferences and its international positioning. With these events and the networking coming out of them a lot of interesting companies have risen and grown and the outsourcing industry has matured.
The event was held July 7th and 8th and was a good evolution of what has been happening for the following reasons:
Very interesting visitors – It was nice to see companies from US, India, Trinidad, Dominican Republic and other countries coming to this event. Prior to the event lots of meetings were pre-arranged and with that level of preparation the 30 minutes sessions were really productive and to the point.
Diversity of players – In a couple of days we were able to interact with some potential direct US clients, professionals in the US advising companies about outsourcing and nearshoring, and companies in India and in US really interested in moving forward about partnering. Very interesting people and very valuable meetings to understand how are the different types of players in this interesting industry evolving over time.
Learning about how market is evolving – Two meetings I am pretty excited about were with companies that are advising other companies on how to best approach outsourcing. It is interesting to see how the outsourcing industry is evolving and how it has become clear now that there are a lot of variables that have to be taken into account in order to find the right outsourcing for the different project types. There are people who have experienced different types of outsourcing engagements and are offering valuable advise to companies thinking about this important, potentially cost-reducing factor. I look forward to following up with these two companies to convey the nearshore value proposition.
Seeking nearshore partnerships – While we met with different potential clients and advisers we also saw clearly how there were also some interesting services boutiques that are seeking for the right partners to scale their businesses. Nearshore and outsourcing in general has matured and these small companies offering great value to their clients can now see that a solid nearshore partner can really help them scale their business. We´ve seen that happen with some of our partners and we look forward to following up with the potential partners we met during the conference.
On a very professional perspective it is nice to see how after some iterations of these events we got to highly productive sessions that in a few days allow its participants to sense what is going on. From direct clients, to partnerships and general industry knowledge, in this event we were able to get a lot of value. Thanks Procomer for such great organization.
On a more personal perspective, as the Argentinean and proud Costa Rican I am, it is fantastic to see how the synchronization of some people some years back and some good intentions well-organized and directed can have such an impact. Today Costa Rica is a well know hub for the IT services industry and it is clearly seen as a top provider of nearshore development services and perhaps 14 years back it was hard for anyone around the globe to think about Costa Rica hosting an Intel Operation.
Pictures from the conference:
Diego May, Director of Business Development, Avantica (far right)
More information about the conference and Costa Rica’s outsourcing industry:
Procomer: The foreign trade corporation of Costa Rica
We were in attendance and we were greatly impressed with the companies in Costa Rica and the entire program. We will return.