Offshore & Offbase

By Steven Burke, CRN 4:21 PM EST Fri. Apr. 15, 2005
Don't tell Insource America President and CEO Bob Venero that there's no falloff in customer service when business operations are outsourced offshore. He doesn't buy it.

Venero said he has seen some of the worst scripted service in the world from offshore providers. The most egregious examples are from reps that "only follow a script that is in front of them," he said. "There is no ingenuity." Last September, Venero, CEO of FutureTech, a $60 million solution provider in Holbrook, N.Y., started Insource America, which employs 45 help-desk personnel, in response to the offshore movement.

STEVEN BURKE
Can be reached at (781) 839-1221 or via e-mail at sburke@cmp.com.
He views offshoring as the easy way out for vendors. "I think it's a shortcut," he said. "It's a quick out to show initial cost savings and to raise the stock."

Insource America, billed as The Homeland Help Desk, is designed to offer an alternative to offshoring by taking individuals off government assistance programs and helping them earn the skills and certification to work on IT help desks. And Insource America is structured to provide rates that are competitive with outsourcing operations in India, China and Canada, Venero said.

What's interesting is that the company is gaining some traction. Hofstra University, for example, recently expanded its help-desk contract to support its 13,000-member student body after giving Insource America solid marks for its work with the university's faculty. Insource America also is doing wireless support for some hotel customers and is even doing some outbound sales call work.

Admittedly, Venero's Insource America initiative competes with offshore outsourcers, which tout huge cost savings, so he does have an ax to grind. But his comments are still notable given the move last week by Ingram Micro, the world largest computer products distributor, to offshore for the first time a number of functions, including some inside sales rep positions (see story page 83). Ingram Micro is pledging that VARs will not see any negative impact from the move.

Venero, who does several million dollars of business with Ingram Micro annually, clearly is not pleased about the distributor's news. He thinks the distributor will find more than a pothole or two along the offshoring road. Only time will tell. "The grass isn't always greener on the other side," he said. "The money is not always greener, either."

What do you think of Ingram's outsourcing initiative? Let me know at (781) 839-1221 or via e-mail at sburke@cmp.com.

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