Wednesday, August 09, 2006

More Transition

I work for a company that provides technical (I/T) support to several other companies most of which are very well known in their field. To cut costs, we outsource the help desk function to external companies. I have been with my current company for about 3 years and have seen the help desk change 3 times to three different companies. By the end of next month, that will have grown by one as we change companies for help desk services yet again. This time is different...we are insourcing our support...we are getting into the help desk business ourselves.

I do not mind change, but this transition always has a steep learning curve associated with it. By the time we get the new desk brought up to speed on what is going on, we change the personnel. Hopefully this will slow down now.

I am told that Costa Rica is a great area to open IT support centers. They have a large pool of talent and the cost of living is quite low. As a matter of fact, Costa Rica is a top retiree relocation spot for US senior citizens. English is spoken as well as Spanish and the climate is very favorable. I hope it works out well for us and our customers ... they deserve that. I guess I can be glad that we did not ship it to Asia. While the talent in Asia is vast, people in North America would prefer to deal with someone closer to home. I know that this sounds a bit racist, but it is not intended to be that way. My preference would be to let the support stay in the country that needs it and let the afterhours calls go elsewhere.

JMHO / YMMV.

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