Mexico’s Mining Industry

22 Negocios ProMéxico
mexico:
A Talent for Key
Operations
MexIco IS DeterMIneD to becoMe one of the worlD’S key
playerS In InforMatIon technology anD all the relateD
offShore proceSSeS. Vangtel, a coMpany baSeD In the north
of the country, haS juSt the potentIal for that.
The main selling point of Vangtel, a company offering
consultancy in offshore Business Process Outsourcing
(BPO), information technology and call centers, is to
highlight Mexico’s human capital with talent to spare
when it comes to conducting operations that are central to global
companies today.
Every time the firm, based in Hermosillo, Sonora, “sets out its
stall” for large companies to decide to move their back-office operations
from economies like the US, Germany, Japan and the UK, or
from traditional offshore bases –India and the Philippines– to Mexico,
it emphasizes the excellent training of the country’s workforce
in disciplines that are now considered fundamental, beginning with
English as a second language and information technology.
“The main feature of most of our positions is globalization, in
the sense that the person who is working with us is actually doing
so in a global world,” says Arturo Rodríguez, Vice president of
business development at Vangtel.
While Vangtel reassures its customers by signing service contracts
in the US, through its partner in that country, Arizona-based
The Offshore Group –in order to be governed under a known
and reliable legal framework– it also states in its bid that its human
capital comprises Mexican university graduates with highlevel
technical and analytical skills. It also points out that during
the time it has operated from the border state of Sonora, it has
maintained agreements with language and software certification
schools in order to ensure the quality of its operations.
“Certainly, there are people whose main occupation is related
to the phone but we have software developers, support engineers,
____
by omar magaña
photos courtesy of vangtel
network engineers and other engineers who oversee networks
related to telephone or telecommunication lines. Other personnel
are related to finance, accounting and payments,” relates Rodríguez.
It is significant that the company’s headquarters are in Hermosillo;
the company also has bases in Ciudad Obregón, Sonora,
and Guadalajara, Jalisco. According to Rodríguez, the proximity
of Sonora and Arizona has created a shared culture in which the
use of the English language is essential. Moreover, there is a group
of universities in the state that have given a significant boost to
degree subjects related to information technology. In Guadalajara,
Vangtel has welcomed the development that has taken place in the
technologies and software cluster, hence its presence in that city
in western Mexico.
Vangtel believes in a key aspect usually overseen when attracting
global companies and that is the fact that Mexico and
the US are in the same time zones, an issue of no little significance
when it comes to matching processes. It is clear that Vangtel
will always emphasize an argument of basic importance for
any company: Clients become more competitive when they set
all their important, non-core business processes in a country
that offers a highly-skilled workforce and lower costs than
those of the major economies.
vangTel paves The way
In its invitation letter to Mexico, Vangtel tells companies the
benefits of establishing in a country that has everything ready
to get the cogs turning almost straight away. The state of Sonora
offers the physical, legal and management infrastructure for call
centers, BPO units or data centers to connect to the world in a
timely manner.
“We have a very specific model insofar as it allows companies
to control how it operates. We believe that the way we support the
firms enables them to be productive and run the right operation,”
states Rodríguez.
The main feature of Vangtel
is its “shelter program”, that is,
solutions tailored to each company.
The Sonora-based firm
helps to conduct operations
that require anything between
one to 500 employees, especially
those that corporations
are willing to delegate to a third
party, such as customer service
operations.
With this set-up, the company’s
clients define the tasks
they want to hand over and the
size of the staff, without losing
ownership and control over important
data.
“We know of no other company that does what we do the way
we do it,” affirms Rodríguez. He continues, “We are an established
company with over a thousand employees for different customers.
We are also the largest ‘shelter’ in Mexico.” On the other hand, he
recognizes some limitations with respect to the size of the human
Vangtel will always emphasize
an argument of basic importance
for any company: Clients become
more competitive when they set all
their important, non-core business
processes in a country that offers
a highly-skilled workforce and
lower costs than those of the major
economies.
Negocios ProMéxico 23
capital available, agreeing that it may not be the best choice for
companies requiring development centers or call centers with
3,000 people in them. For smaller operations, however, Vangtel
believes itself to be the ideal partner in the country.
Vangtel is part of the industry that is changing the face of
Mexico for the world, infor-
mation technology, which has
been strengthened through
the efforts of the private sector
and universities that have set
themselves the goal of beating
the Philippines to third place in
this sector, on a global level.
Given its status as a hybrid
industry, Vangtel’s client portfolio
includes a wide range of
companies, to which it offers
about 15 different services
ranging from development,
programming and software
support, to conducting financial
transactions.
Vangtel and other companies of the kind in Mexico are turning
the country into a nerve center for the knowledge society
that already drives and will continue to drive business in the
century that is just beginning. n
www.vangtel.com