Seven Colombian companies attended the Customer Contact Week in Las Vegas, the largest international event on the outsourcing services industry (BPO) calendar, held between the 13th and 16th of December in Las Vegas (United States). ProColombia, the government agency in charge of Exports, Tourism, Investment and Country Branding, accompanied these seven companies to promote the qualities and characteristics that make these key industrial sectors stand out internationally.

OUTSOURCING
ProColombia

This year's CCW featured nearly 700 participants, with 200 exhibitors from the outsourcing industry. The companies that participated came from different industries, such as food, tax, software, telecommunications, mass media, retail, and many others. With a huge influence in the international market, some of the companies taking part included Target, Coca-Cola, Comcast, Ancestry, TaxSlayer, among others.

Colombia represents 13.1% of all BPO sales in Latin America, surpassing Argentina, Chile, and Peru. In addition, the contact center sector in Colombia is expected to maintain an accumulated growth rate of 3.8% between 2021 and 2022, which makes the country's projected future growth one of the largest in the region.

According to the Offshore Confidence Index of 2021*, Colombia ranked first overall, ahead of countries such as India and South Africa. The main strengths highlighted for Colombia are governmental support and strong cohesion in the BPO sector. The country's infrastructure, scalability of talent, reliability of the public sector, recruitment and staffing, and economic stability are also highly rated in the index. Additionally, the country has 11 submarine cables in operation, making it the second country in the region with the largest number of internet cables allowing it to offer reliable, stable, and fast data transmission. In addition, according to the Ministry of Information and Technology, Colombia registered 2.8 million broadband connections in 2010. In 2018, that figure reached 32.7 million connections.

Prior to 2019, the contact center market in Colombia served mainly the telecommunications and financial services industry, representing more than 50% of operations, with Spain and the United States being the main destinations for call center services exports from Colombia. Moreover, the contact center industry in Colombia is expected to maintain a cumulative growth rate of 3.8% in 2022.

CCW Infrastructure and Talent

Companies: Atento, BRM, Complarketing, Cos, Emergia, GSS, and Iterum. These companies specialize in offering call center and backoffice services, in English and Spanish, which has earned them the trust of large multinationals such as Adobe, Amazon, IBM and Microsoft, among others.

According to the IMD World Talent Report in 2019. Colombia had the largest workforce in the region, and came first for growth and training, surpassing countries such as Peru, Mexico and Brazil. The country has facilitated large BPO companies to move their operations to Colombia from other regional markets to serve their internal and external markets, most notably the United States and Spain.