Social Media Becomes a Key Weapon for Some Latin America Outsourcing Firms
August 17th, 2010
By Fernando Labastida
outsourcing social media nearshore americas 300x208 Social Media Becomes a Key Weapon for Some Latin America Outsourcing Firms Despite the hype of social media there is still a lot of skepticism about its effectiveness as a lead generation tool for businesses that rely on other businesses for revenue. This is no less true for Latin American Nearshore providers of custom software development, business process outsourcing, and call centers.
However, there is a new generation of software outsourcing providers that are harnessing the power of social media to enter international markets and compete against their larger competitor from Latin America, the U.S. and Asia.
Two companies that particularly stand out are Scio Consulting, and Sieena Software, two “under the radar” companies out of México. They are also using innovative social media approaches to gain market share in the United States.
Less that 100 Employees
The first thing you notice about both companies is their size. Both Scio Consulting and Sieena Software have slightly less than 100 employees. But that hasn’t stopped them from generating more than 70% of their revenues from the United States. They were also created from the ground up as providers of outsourcing services to the United States, contradicting the conventional wisdom that you have to already be successful in your own country before entering the U.S. market.
Scio Consulting CEO Luis Aburto commented: “I got my first client in 2003 using a project board which I think was called contractednetwork.com. Back then I was just a freelancer with a website…I didn’t even have any employees yet.” Sieena CEO Mauricio Duran’s first two customers were people he had met while studying in the United States about ten years ago, both of whom are still customers today.
Targeting Digital Niches
LuisAburto 127x150 Social Media Becomes a Key Weapon for Some Latin America Outsourcing Firms
"We experimented by focusing on different approaches, and what we found was that there isn’t a single activity that provides you the best results. What’s worked for us is to have a presence and a voice in many different channels" - Luis Aburto at Scio
Both companies provide development services for the Web, niches not traditionally served by outsourcing providers, instead of competing head to head with the large providers in managed services or IT outsourcing. “We focus on building corporate Internet portals using Microsoft Sharepoint, with an emphasis on user interface design,” Durán said. “This is an area almost completely ignored by the large Indian providers.”
Scio Consulting’s helps software companies deliver their applications as a service over the Internet as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies. Aburto’s roots as a “freelancer with a website” makes him unique in the outsourcing space. Aburto says that about 60% of Scio’s customers come through their website. However, it wasn’t always like that.
“In the beginning all we had was our website, and we promoted our services through our network of contacts,” said Aburto. Sieena’s Duran said most of his early customers were people he had met while studying in Los Angeles.
Scio Consulting initially used the traditional marketing tools common to B2B technology companies. According to Aburto, “…we did telemarketing, email marketing, launched a blog, held webinars, podcasts, wrote white papers, and even had booths at trade shows and conferences.” In 2003 they started using LinkedIn, forging connections with their contacts. But starting in 2008 they became active participants in various LinkedIn Groups, and in 2009 started using Twitter and Facebook.
Aburto said after experimenting with various social media channels and approaches they found there wasn’t a magic bullet. “We experimented by focusing on different approaches, and what we found was that there isn’t a single activity that provides you the best results. What’s worked for us is to have a presence and a voice in many different channels,” explains Aburto.
Scio practices a classic two-step approach in their social media marketing. Reminiscent of direct-response advertising, they first offer valuable content by promoting their webinars and workshops instead of directly soliciting business.
After prospects attend a workshop or webinar many of them turn into customers. Aburto: “We get roughly 50% of our webinar and workshop attendees through social media.”
What about Lead Quality?
“One time one of the largest American software companies sent eight people to one of our workshops because they found out about us via Twitter,” Aburto said. He said they eventually became a customer.
Sieena’s story is slightly different. According to Duran, their first social media success was a customer that found them through LinkedIn. “We currently get 20% of our business through the Internet, but we have started to see more activity on our website through our weekly blog posts,” Duran said.
Sieena takes a more narrow approach to social media. Duran: “What has worked for us to choose a limited number of marketing activities and focus on that,” instead of spreading themselves too thin.
As content marketing expert Joe Pulizzi has stated, content strategy comes before social media strategy, a statement Aburto agrees with.
“In order for social media to work, it’s important that the content that you publish is relevant,” Aburto says. “It’s relatively easy to make ‘noise’ using social media channels by hiring people to publish content robotically, but it’s very obvious to your customers who is a marketing hired gun, and who is a true though leader.”
Through relevant blog posts, case studies and webinars, both Sieena and Scio Consulting are providing relevant content to U.S. buyers. But what about other Latin American outsourcing providers? Has the word caught on yet that relevant content and “thinking like a publisher” is the way to success? That remains to be seen.
We would love to hear your views and experiences on social media and content as a way for Nearshore services provides from the Americas to drives success in foreign markets.
Fernando Labastida is the owner of Latin IT Marketing, a content marketing consultancy helping Latin American software and nearshore providers successfully enter the U.S. market.
Posted by Kirk Laughlin on Tuesday, August 17, 2010 at 2:58 pm
Filed under Nearshoring 101 · Tagged Global services marketing, Latin America marketing, Scio Consulting, Sienna, Social media
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Friday, August 6, 2010
Videos - Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Advanced IT Pro Training.
The following videos are taken from the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Advanced IT Pro Training.
* * *
This Getting Started with SharePoint Server 2010 module (1 of 11) introduces Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 capabilities to IT professionals. Concepts covered include document sharing, lists, alerts, team sites, metadata, and more.
Presented by: John D. Ross, SharePoint MVP, SharePoint 911
Length: 54 minutes 15 seconds
VIDEO: 1 | What can SharePoint Server 2010 Do for me?
* * *
This Getting Started with SharePoint Server 2010 module (2 of 11) covers software and hardware requirements, and the basic concepts of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.
Presented by: Randy Drisgill, SharePoint MVP, SharePoint 911
Length: 17 minutes 16 seconds
VIDEO: 2 | How SharePoint Server 2010 Works
* * *
In this Getting Started with SharePoint Server 2010 module (3 of 11), we cover the process of using Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 to create a single server environment for testing.
Presented by: Todd Klindt, SharePoint MVP, SharePoint 911
Length: 54 minutes 15 seconds
VIDEO: 3 | Simple Install for Testing
* * *
In this Getting Started with SharePoint Server 2010 module (4 of 11), we help you learn about the search capabilities in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. Learn which content sources you can crawl to create an index, how to schedule crawls, and find out about IFilters for third-party file types.
Presented by: John D. Ross, SharePoint MVP, SharePoint 911
Length: 35 minutes 39 seconds
VIDEO: 4 | Search in SharePoint Server 2010
* * *
In this Getting Started with SharePoint Server 2010 module (5 of 11), we cover new backup features in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. Learn how to back up your content not only by using the user interface, but also by using Windows PowerShell. You will also learn how to restore content from an unattached database.
Presented by: Shane Young, SharePoint MVP, SharePoint 911
Length: 18 minutes 59 seconds
VIDEO: 5 | Backups in SharePoint Server 2010
* * *
In this Getting Started with SharePoint Server 2010 module (6 of 11), we help you create the first site on a SharePoint farm by using Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010. Learn how to create Web applications, site collections, and Web sites.
Presented by: Randy Drisgill, SharePoint MVP, SharePoint 911
Length: 24 minutes 21 seconds
* * *
In this Getting Started with SharePoint Server 2010 module (7 of 11), learn how to give users permissions to the content, as well as who can access Central Administration and manage the service applications.
Presented by: Matthew McDermott, SharePoint MVP, Catapult Systems
Length: 16 minutes 5 seconds
VIDEO: 7 | Security in SharePoint Server 2010
* * *
In this Getting Started with SharePoint Server 2010 module (8 of 11), we cover Windows PowerShell basics and how administrators can manage Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 by using cmdlets.
Presented by: Todd Klindt, SharePoint MVP, SharePoint 911
Length: 30 minutes 48 seconds
* * *
In this Getting Started with SharePoint Server 2010 module (9 of 11), we cover performance-related tools to manage resources, troubleshoot problems, and increase performance in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010.
Presented by: Shane Young, SharePoint MVP, SharePoint 911
Length: 23 minutes 23 seconds
* * *
In this Getting Started with SharePoint Server 2010 module (10 of 11), we take a look at the upgrade process and options available to go from Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to SharePoint Server 2010.
Presented by: Shane Young, SharePoint MVP, SharePoint 911
Length: 41 minutes 06 seconds
* * *
In this Getting Started with SharePoint Server 2010 module (11 of 11), we explore how SharePoint 2010 provides services in a flexible and scalable architecture. Service applications are not just for SharePoint Server; SharePoint Foundation has the architecture as well.
Presented by: Shane Young, SharePoint MVP, SharePoint 911
Length: 28 minutes 41 seconds
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Mauricio Duran > www.Sieena.com at Hispanic Entrepreneurs
This is taken from the blog of HISPANIC ENTREPRENEURS:
Mauricio Duran, Founder, Sieena
What do you need to be an entrepreneur?
You need to have a dream, something that will keep you going every day and helps you understand and manage the risks of running a business. You also need to be passionate about your work, and be willing to go the extra mile to achieve your goals.
What did inspire you to start your business?
We wanted to build a different type of company. We were inspired by the work done by companies like Microsoft and we wanted to build innovative software using talented resources from the Hispanic community. Our vision was to create a company where talented software engineers could enjoy challenging projects and a great work environment. We take particular pride when our solutions get released to the market and they are used by thousands of people around the world.
How did you finance it?
We spent roughly $2,000 to create the company, bought a couple of laptops and a domain. One of our best clients, and a good friend of us, hired us to build a new web application and he gave us a payment in advance. We used the money to get a small office and pay the first salaries.
Being Hispanic…Does it have any influence on your business?
Yes, people enjoy working with our team. The Hispanic culture has a lot of similarities with the US culture. This gives us the opportunity to team up with our clients and work side by side on projects that require frequent, open and direct communication.
In the face of adversity, how do you decide to keep going?
We are lucky to have a great team, including our employees, clients and vendors. Our loyal clients have kept us busy even during the worst economic crisis in the US history. It is easy to wake up in the morning when you know that there are people in the office that are always willing to help, and work hard to meet our client needs.
What is the biggest challenge your business has faced?
Our biggest challenge was to find a niche market where we could specialize. This helped us get a better place in the value chain and offer clear benefits to our clients.
If you could change one thing about your business, what would it be?
There are a few things we are trying to change; we are learning from previous experiences and developing new service offerings, improving our processes and becoming more disciplined about running our business. We started as a young group of software developers and have evolved into managers and directors with different and new responsibilities.
What was your childhood ambition?
I wanted to be a successful architect, but this changed as soon as my parents got me an Atari XE and I started programming.
Tell us about three entrepreneurs that you admire
Without any doubt, the entrepreneur that I admire the most is Bill Gates. I had the opportunity to meet him in the summer of 97. He responded candidly to all our questions and he gave us more than one hour of his time to talk about Microsoft and his vision about business and technology. Another person I really admire is Miguel de Icaza, one of the most talented software developers in the world, and also a successful entrepreneur.
For business meetings: breakfast, lunch, or dinner?
All of the above. We spend a lot of time with our clients and we like to invite them out to meet in a relaxed environment.
What sacrifices on your personal life did you have to make in order to become a business success?
I travel frequently and that takes some time away from my family. I am lucky to have wife that understands this and provides the support needed to continue growing the business. It would be hard to focus on business activities without having the right balance between personal, family and work time.
What is your favorite quote?
Your network is your net worth. I read this quote a few years ago and it made me realize how important it has been to maintain a close relationship with the people we work with.
Is it difficult to be unconventional?
We don’t think about ourselves as unconventional. We are hardworking people, and there is no magic sauce for success. We had to learn a lot of things about running a business, including topics like sales and marketing. These were new areas for us, since we all have a background in engineering.
Biggest mistake made?
Our biggest mistake was to focus too much on a single aspect of the business, and not paying attention to other functional areas. We used to work a lot with companies in the real estate industry and we got hit by the financial crisis probably before the rest of our competitors. In a way, this was a good thing because it made us realize that we needed to pay attention to all the areas involved in running a business. Now we have formal sales and marketing organizations, a strong financial and accounting department and well defined HR policies and procedures.
Do you consider yourself an innovator? Why?
Yes, we help our clients build innovative solutions and Sieena has received innovation awards for the work we have done in the past few years. Our work is to find innovative ways to use technology to satisfy our client’s business needs.
About the Company:
Sieena is a Nearshore software development firm specializing in market research, entertainment and startup companies. We help our clients use technology to get ahead of their competitors. We achieve this by using our vertical expertise and the experience obtained by delivering successful engagement for more than 6 years.
Sieena is a certified Microsoft Gold Partner with competencies in Business Intelligence, Collaboration Portals, Software Development, Web Development and Data Management. More than 90% of our staff is certified and we have won multiple awards for innovation and design. We leverage our development center in Monterrey Mexico to provide competitive pricing to our clients.
For more information visit http://www.sieena.com/
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Mauricio Duran > www.Sieena.com
Mauricio Duran, Founder, Sieena
What do you need to be an entrepreneur?
You need to have a dream, something that will keep you going every day and helps you understand and manage the risks of running a business. You also need to be passionate about your work, and be willing to go the extra mile to achieve your goals.
What did inspire you to start your business?
We wanted to build a different type of company. We were inspired by the work done by companies like Microsoft and we wanted to build innovative software using talented resources from the Hispanic community. Our vision was to create a company where talented software engineers could enjoy challenging projects and a great work environment. We take particular pride when our solutions get released to the market and they are used by thousands of people around the world.
How did you finance it?
We spent roughly $2,000 to create the company, bought a couple of laptops and a domain. One of our best clients, and a good friend of us, hired us to build a new web application and he gave us a payment in advance. We used the money to get a small office and pay the first salaries.
Being Hispanic…Does it have any influence on your business?
Yes, people enjoy working with our team. The Hispanic culture has a lot of similarities with the US culture. This gives us the opportunity to team up with our clients and work side by side on projects that require frequent, open and direct communication.
In the face of adversity, how do you decide to keep going?
We are lucky to have a great team, including our employees, clients and vendors. Our loyal clients have kept us busy even during the worst economic crisis in the US history. It is easy to wake up in the morning when you know that there are people in the office that are always willing to help, and work hard to meet our client needs.
What is the biggest challenge your business has faced?
Our biggest challenge was to find a niche market where we could specialize. This helped us get a better place in the value chain and offer clear benefits to our clients.
If you could change one thing about your business, what would it be?
There are a few things we are trying to change; we are learning from previous experiences and developing new service offerings, improving our processes and becoming more disciplined about running our business. We started as a young group of software developers and have evolved into managers and directors with different and new responsibilities.
What was your childhood ambition?
I wanted to be a successful architect, but this changed as soon as my parents got me an Atari XE and I started programming.
Tell us about three entrepreneurs that you admire
Without any doubt, the entrepreneur that I admire the most is Bill Gates. I had the opportunity to meet him in the summer of 97. He responded candidly to all our questions and he gave us more than one hour of his time to talk about Microsoft and his vision about business and technology. Another person I really admire is Miguel de Icaza, one of the most talented software developers in the world, and also a successful entrepreneur.
For business meetings: breakfast, lunch, or dinner?
All of the above. We spend a lot of time with our clients and we like to invite them out to meet in a relaxed environment.
What sacrifices on your personal life did you have to make in order to become a business success?
I travel frequently and that takes some time away from my family. I am lucky to have wife that understands this and provides the support needed to continue growing the business. It would be hard to focus on business activities without having the right balance between personal, family and work time.
What is your favorite quote?
Your network is your net worth. I read this quote a few years ago and it made me realize how important it has been to maintain a close relationship with the people we work with.
Is it difficult to be unconventional?
We don’t think about ourselves as unconventional. We are hardworking people, and there is no magic sauce for success. We had to learn a lot of things about running a business, including topics like sales and marketing. These were new areas for us, since we all have a background in engineering.
Biggest mistake made?
Our biggest mistake was to focus too much on a single aspect of the business, and not paying attention to other functional areas. We used to work a lot with companies in the real estate industry and we got hit by the financial crisis probably before the rest of our competitors. In a way, this was a good thing because it made us realize that we needed to pay attention to all the areas involved in running a business. Now we have formal sales and marketing organizations, a strong financial and accounting department and well defined HR policies and procedures.
Do you consider yourself an innovator? Why?
Yes, we help our clients build innovative solutions and Sieena has received innovation awards for the work we have done in the past few years. Our work is to find innovative ways to use technology to satisfy our client’s business needs.
About the Company:
Sieena is a Nearshore software development firm specializing in market research, entertainment and startup companies. We help our clients use technology to get ahead of their competitors. We achieve this by using our vertical expertise and the experience obtained by delivering successful engagement for more than 6 years.
Sieena is a certified Microsoft Gold Partner with competencies in Business Intelligence, Collaboration Portals, Software Development, Web Development and Data Management. More than 90% of our staff is certified and we have won multiple awards for innovation and design. We leverage our development center in Monterrey Mexico to provide competitive pricing to our clients.
For more information visit http://www.sieena.com/
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Monday, March 8, 2010
Why is it important to know how to interpret non-verbal Communication for recruiting?
I have been recently attracted to all social behavior studies, call it in person or online, I did not study a psychology related major but when you have to interact with people pretty often you tend to get interested in these subjects. As a recruiter knowing how to see what people are “not saying” can help you in making a much more efficient decision, this doesn’t mean - that you will know when people are lying - but that you will know when to find yellow flags and make more inquiries about it.
Just like when they say about people talking to you, and rolling their eyes to the right means they are making things up and when they roll them to the left they are remembering something, or if they are looking away from you while talking they are not being truthful. I don’t honestly paid attention to it, mainly because I can never tell my right from my left!, but the important thing is, everyone is different and lately there has been a great deal of studies mentioning that eye contact is not a sign of people telling lies.
To read the full article click here.
Just like when they say about people talking to you, and rolling their eyes to the right means they are making things up and when they roll them to the left they are remembering something, or if they are looking away from you while talking they are not being truthful. I don’t honestly paid attention to it, mainly because I can never tell my right from my left!, but the important thing is, everyone is different and lately there has been a great deal of studies mentioning that eye contact is not a sign of people telling lies.
To read the full article click here.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
How to Create a RESTful application using MVC Rest library
By Fernando G.
Overview
First off, we need to have a quick overview of what REST means to the development community, and we can start by what does REST stands for? It stands for Representational State Transfer. Right, it did not help a lot, right?
In the SOA era, we have Service Oriented Systems interacting between them exposing Services, some applications act as consumers and some as producers. At the end, a Service Oriented Architecture allows an organization to create a well thought and organized set of libraries being used uniformly among all of the participants with no redundancy of business rules and specially having a single set of Services. Well, not always the case. It results extremely painful when the Services are done in different technologies; Interoperability between the different implementations is the major issue among Service consumers and producers. Another problem is that development teams do not take in considerations to other areas of the company. This ends up with duplicate Services because they do not provide what the potential consumers need, it is too painful to reuse.
Well, REST style architecture is one alternative to SOA. REST is all about identifying Resources and not Services. These Resources are Stateless, Cacheable and in consequence are stable, scalable, with high performance and simple.
Asp.Net MVC
Microsoft saw a huge potential to MVC pattern for web development. They already tried with a library called Microsoft User Interface Process (UIP) implementation back in 2003, but it was not very popular among developers so it lost track and its last update was version 2 in 2004.
To read the complete story click here.
Overview
First off, we need to have a quick overview of what REST means to the development community, and we can start by what does REST stands for? It stands for Representational State Transfer. Right, it did not help a lot, right?
In the SOA era, we have Service Oriented Systems interacting between them exposing Services, some applications act as consumers and some as producers. At the end, a Service Oriented Architecture allows an organization to create a well thought and organized set of libraries being used uniformly among all of the participants with no redundancy of business rules and specially having a single set of Services. Well, not always the case. It results extremely painful when the Services are done in different technologies; Interoperability between the different implementations is the major issue among Service consumers and producers. Another problem is that development teams do not take in considerations to other areas of the company. This ends up with duplicate Services because they do not provide what the potential consumers need, it is too painful to reuse.
Well, REST style architecture is one alternative to SOA. REST is all about identifying Resources and not Services. These Resources are Stateless, Cacheable and in consequence are stable, scalable, with high performance and simple.
Asp.Net MVC
Microsoft saw a huge potential to MVC pattern for web development. They already tried with a library called Microsoft User Interface Process (UIP) implementation back in 2003, but it was not very popular among developers so it lost track and its last update was version 2 in 2004.
To read the complete story click here.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Top10 Reasons To Consider Monterrey It Solutions Alternative - Nearshore
Check out this SlideShare Presentation:
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