Guatemala is experiencing a strong growth in the Outsourcing sector and is fully taking advantage of its new position as a Call Center and business process Outsourcing destination.

Guatemala has shown excellent capability to develop Contact Centers and BPO (Business Processing Outsourcing). The country has state of the art technology and an important telecommunications capacity. The human capital meets the highest standards of the industrial sector and its competitive cost make Guatemala one of the most attractive countries in Latin America for the investors.

The market has experience in both Spanish language and bilingual services. The range of world-class services provided by the Guatemalan market include: Inbound, Outbound, Cross-selling, Cold-Callling, Upselling/Upgrading, Customer Service, Loans and Payments, Market Research, Customer Support, Tech Support, Ticket Handling, Tier 1 and 2 Helpdesk.

The country has experience in various vertical industries such as banks, credit assessment, logistics, and planning of delivery routes from residential services, e-mail and mass communication delivery, data entry, batch generation, high-level executive documents and slides, as well as reverse logistics and mail-in rebate management, among others.

Presently, Guatemala employs more than 9,000 operators in approximately 50 call centers. Half of them provide services to Guatemalan customers and the other half to markets in Central America, Mexico and the United States.

Telecommunications

Guatemala presently enjoys the fruits of what is considered to be one of the most successful privatizations of the state-owned telephony in the world. Thanks to the immediate liberalization, the market had access to foreign investment since 1996. Twelve years later, Guatemala now has:

• The lowest mobile phone rates in Latin America.
• One of the lowest long distance phone rates in Latin America.

Guatemala currently has 3 cellular phone operators, 20 local network operators, and 17 international operators, with a density of 34 lines per 100 inhabitants. There are over 28 ISPs (Internet Service Providers) offering such services as QoS, MPLS and capacities of up to STM64. The country is connected to the NAP of the Americas through 3 independent submarine cables and land cables leading towards Mexico. The larges fiber optics project in Latin America, Emergia, completes the ring crossing the entire country and traveling through the center of Guatemala City.

This has enabled a 99.9875% redundancy. Guatemalan telecommunication suppliers have the largest amount of leased space in the NAP of the Americas in all Latin America. The sector also has a broad range of local integrators that are capable of implementing contingency sites and complex Business Continuity projects. The telecommunications sector is one of the most dynamic of our economy, with a significant growth. The last seven years have shown a constant investment, including a considerable penetration of fixed, mobile and fiber optic lines.

Unlike the rest of the Central American countries, Guatemala is interconnected by three of the most advanced communications networks of the region:

• Emergia.
• Maya 1.
• Arcos.

Such interconnection is additionally backed by a modern telecommunications network strengthened by the presence of various local and international operators, such as:

• Telefónica/Bell South.
• Millicom/Comcel.
• Telmex/Telgua and many other Internet providers.

Human Resources

Skilled labor in Guatemala is unique for several reasons: neutral accent, abundance of bilingual labor, ability to speak with other Spanih speaking accents. These qualities make our country very attractive for investment and the quality and quantity of Guatemalan talent show that this sector has still a lot to offer.

Guatemala has an economically active population (EAP) of 4.5 million people (4% annual growth) of which over 2.1 million have experience in information technology. Guatemalans are recognized for their technical training, typing skills, quality standards and productivity with a strong analytical component due to the diversified program of the Minnistry of Education.

Guatemala stands out in the Central American and in the Caribbean region for many reasons, such as:

• The largest university student population in the region (over 176,000 students enrolled).
• Cultural affinity (bicultural and western).
• Bilingual human resource with a neutral accent.
• Abilities acquired in the four variants of modern Spanish.
• Competitive costs (32-45% less as compared with the region).
• Guatemalan attitude: customer service.