Exporter of the week: Outsourcing, the company that provides customer service in Spain and the U.S. and is giving lectures on exporting services

Outsourcing S.A.S. BIC is a Colombian company leader in the BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) and Contact Center sector. Throughout its 30 years in the national market, the company has been able to grow to become one of the main companies in providing integral solutions to the business sector with business process outsourcing. Today the company’s operations are also focused on exporting services.

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The company has been expanding its presence in the market, which has led it to employ 6,200 workers and to have 6 offices throughout the country and internationally with the export of services.

Thanks to its performance, Outsourcing S.A.S. BIC is among the thousand companies with the highest capital generated in Colombia, with projected revenues of $265,000 million pesos by the end of 2023.

In relation to the export of services, Outsourcing S.A.S. opened its sales to Latin American countries 20 years ago. Since then, the company’s international presence has been strengthened and today it reaches an international market in more than 30 countries.

Today, Outsourcing S.A.S. BIC has 4,154 women on its staff, representing 67% of the company’s workforce. More than 2,700 workers are mothers who are heads of households.

The company has also hired 218 people who are victims of Colombia’s armed conflict, 70% of whom are women. Forty-one percent of the workforce is made up of young people under 29 years of age, making the company an important source of youth employment in the country.

In 2021, Outsourcing S.A.S BIC was one of the first companies in the BPO and Contact Center sector in Colombia to become a Benefit and Collective Interest Company (BIC), with B Corp accreditation, which certifies that it works with Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards, committed to sustainability and social impact as central pillars of its business model, which facilitates service export operations.

In the last decade, more than 7,400 companies in 92 countries around the world and belonging to 161 different industries have joined the movement of companies with the purpose of prioritizing sustainability and social development alongside their employees and collaborators.

More and more organizations are called to define and manage sustainable purpose in order to generate significant changes in their environment and achieve a better future for the next generations.

In this interview, we spoke with John Santafé Correa, the general manager of Outsourcing S.A.S BIC, who recalled the company’s trajectory to work with sectors such as finance and insurance, health, the Colombian government, retail, telecommunications and education, among others.

Santafé Correa also explained how the company managed to undertake and sustain operations to export services to countries in Central and South America and Europe.

Below, we transcribe part of the interview, which you can watch in full in the video located at the top of the page.

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What is the core business of Outsourcing SAS in the field of BPO and Contact Center?

In the company we mainly work with the company’s customer service channels. That is, if a person has a question, a concern, a complaint or a claim, he/she communicates and we attend to those requirements. We put on the customer’s shirt.

We also offer customer service through written channels such as WhatsApp, email, website or social networks.

In Outsourcing we attend with trained personnel, this allows us to guarantee a good experience with the brand we represent. We seek to resolve, in a first contact, all the concerns of users. This is the core of our business.

We also attend points of contact, such as the offices of utility companies that need personnel to manage this type of service.

Today, we are also developing technology capabilities to improve efficiency and timeliness in response. We are a service company dedicated to addressing the concerns of the users of all the companies that hire us, including the export of services.

More than a hundred clients have passed through Outsourcing and today we have close to 50 contracts from different markets, both from the public and private sector, as well as from international companies.

What is the attractiveness of Colombia to be considered a power in outsourced services?

Colombia has been a power in this field for many years. And this has been achieved precisely because of its geographical location.

Colombia has become a services hub for countries such as the United States, Europe, particularly Spain, and for countries in the region, where we have very competitive costs, availability of labor, knowledge and a lot of talent, which has helped us to export services.

These factors have made Colombia increasingly relevant in the world of outsourcing services, regardless of distances.

How do you develop a work plan with a client?

All these projects require investment and, as I mentioned earlier, the ability to attract talent. From there we start the contact with a company that has a consistent long-term project, which makes it easier for us to attract talent, but also investment.

Although this business is labor-intensive, it must also have important sources of resources directed to infrastructure or technology. Therefore, agreements are usually made with clients to develop a service with learning curves that can last up to five years.

How does Outsourcing export services and to which countries?

Outsourcing has a vast experience exporting services. We did it initially to South America about 20 years ago. We have been having projects in Europe, to Spain, currently in the United States and in countries of the region.

The idea is to try to position the company’s capabilities and, above all, its human talent to provide services in different languages, at different times and with different profiles in order to position ourselves in the area of exporting services.

I believe that in the end, the greatest potential lies in the bilingual talent of people who really want to develop a career in this sector. Today there are 200,000 people employed in the sector and, what we have seen, is that companies are increasingly interested in hiring people to service their services in a localized way.

India has always been one of the countries that has been at the forefront in this area, but recently U.S. companies have been looking for alternatives in our region and particularly in Colombia.

How many jobs do you generate in all your operations?

We currently have more than 6,500 workers throughout Colombia. Our most important operations center is in Bogotá, where we have six offices. We serve users and customers in Colombia and other countries.

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What are the company’s growth prospects in 5 and 10 years?

Well, this is a sector that has been dynamizing the economy; it represents an increasing percentage in terms of GDP. As we mentioned at the beginning, it is an employment engine.

In Outsourcing, in particular, we have the goal of reaching revenues of over $500,000 million pesos by 2030, of which we estimate that at least 30% will be generated by the export of services.

This is a very ambitious goal, but we believe we have the capabilities and talent to achieve it.

The most important plan we are developing in the company is internationalization, seeking to reach distant markets with local talent.

What does internationalization consist of?

Internationalization consists of deepening the opportunities we have in Europe, in the United States, including countries in the region, such as Chile, Peru and some countries in Central America, where talent from companies such as Outsourcing is still in demand.

Today we have business with Central America that has been growing by more than 20% in the last year. We believe that in this line we have to seek to reach these other markets.

Colombia has very good opportunities for its talent, for its educational level, for its technological capacity and we want to take advantage of them to grow in the export of services.

What are the main achievements of the company in these 30 years?

Precisely, in this year that we are celebrating 30 years, we have tried to position ourselves as a company that works with efficiency and care for people.

As a result of this, we recently received some awards, for example, in the area of human talent management strategy, through a multinational organization called His Way at Work.

Another recognition has been from the CompuTrabajo portal, for being the best company to work for in the sector and one of the ten best in the country.

In addition, we received the Silver award and came in second place for having the best social responsibility strategy in the BPO and contact center sector in Latin America. This is an international award that makes us proud.

Additionally, we won the Gold Award from the Colombian Contact Center Association in the category of best experience strategy.

Finally, I was chosen as the Executive of the Year in the sector at the BPrO CX Summit, something that will lead us to participate as Executive of the Year in Latin America. We have received these awards in just this year.

We have been building very important results and have been recognized for the effort and dedication, not only of the management team, but of all the company’s employees to have a better company and provide a better service.

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