When it comes to CRM and call centers, more companies are looking to Latin America for opportunities.

 

Companies are adding CRM to their Spanish offerings because of the notable growth in this area. According to IDC, the Latin-American market is valued at an estimated $166 million, with an expected growth rate of 13 percent in the next two years. Overall, one CRM vendor says, it has seen continuous demand for CRM evaluations during 2005, experiencing over 200 requests a month.

 

Call centers are the subject of similar lofty expectations.

 

Two years ago call centers were described as "quickly becoming a springboard for economic growth in the Latin American/Caribbean region" by the industry journal Latin Trade. Today, two years later, that still seems to be the case.

 

Much of the growth is from the strong demand for Spanish-speaking call center agents, and "the trend for American and European companies to outsource workers in developing countries, the Latin American/Caribbean call center market is expected to be the fastest growing in the world from 2001 to 2007," according to market analyst Datamonitor.

 

The region's number of agent positions is expected to rise from 177,000 to nearly 700,000 by the end of 2007, and by the end of 2008, that number is expected to exceed 730,000, according to Latin Trade.

 

While Brazil, the largest economy in the region, will get the lion's share of the jobs, Datamonitor "expects Mexico to be the fastest growing market for outsourced agent positions through 2007, driven in large part by the efforts of outsourcers attempting to service the growing Spanish-speaking population in the U.S.," with the number of agent positions "expected to rise in Mexico from almost 51,000 in 2002 to more than 190,000 in 2007."

 

In 2002, according to a survey conducted by the Instituto Mexicano de Telemarketing, there were "approximately 8,000 call centers and 140,000 representative workstations in Mexico in both the private and public sectors, plus another 30,000 at outsourcing companies.

 

On the whole, in 2002 the Mexican call center industry employed roughly 210,000 people, of which 170,000 were contact representatives.

 

According to a Business Insights report issued about the same time, the Mexican call center market is the second largest in Latin America, larger than the Argentine, Chilean and Colombian combined. Its location for nearshore outsourcing from the US can't be topped either.

 

Generally Mexico is considered a more stable option than other Latin American countries, its inflation and political unrest are more tolerable than, say, Colombia or Argentina's -- foreign direct investment in Mexico rose nearly 6 percent to $13.6 billion in 2002, whereas Latin American FDI fell by nearly a quarter. Frankly, in the eyes of many businesses Mexico's considered a de facto North American economy because of the North American Free Trade Agreement, since trade with the US had risen from $8 billion to $232 billion by 2004, ten years after NAFTA was operative.

 

Due to a combination of factors, then, Mexico "has emerged as the most attractive location from which to serve the U.S. Hispanic population," according to Business Insight, and "with an abundance of English-speaking agents, it is also a competitive alternative to Canada as a nearshore destination from which to serve US English-speakers.

 

David Sims is contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims' columnist page.