New Global Outsourcing Hub - Wyoming?

/

A report from CNN discusses a new global outsourcing hub and it's not where you think.  This time it's in Wyoming.  The story discusses an innovative strategy of teaching English lessons to students in Asia using a real-time video link to classrooms.

From the article:

When it comes to call centers filled with English-speaking employees, India likely comes to mind. Not a tiny town in Wyoming called Ten Sleep, population about 300.   What Ten Sleep has is not, exactly, a call center. Instead, the town is home to a teaching center that is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There, American teachers provide real-time video English lessons to thousands of students in classrooms across Asia via high-speed fiber optic networks.

"This is more of an 'insourcing' phenomenon," said Robert Grady, managing director of Cheyenne Capital Fund, which invested $10 million in Eleutian in February. "We are creating jobs by helping the development and emergence of the high growth economies in Asia. We are the fastest private employer in Wyoming, and we are hiring at a time when job creation is priority number one."

 While this article doesn't directly relate to Finance & Accounting, it does hold some lessons:

  1. Global sourcing is just that - global sourcing.  It's no longer a discrete decision between "Onshore" and "Offshore" but rather about defining your talent needs and locating the appropriate talent pool for a competitive price,
  2. Creative minds find a way to complement the shift in global sourcing, rather than fighting it.  The company behind this operation could have complained about jobs moving offshore, but they found a way to compete.  After all, who better to speak American then Americans?
  3. New talent markets are constantly maturing and shifting.  Even now, India and the Philippines are top locations when English language capabilities are needed, but new markets continue to emerge.  And as we see in this story, sometimes the new market is an old market.
  4. Technology continues to drive the ability to source from new markets.  In this story it's the real-time video link.  In Finance & Accounting, it can be about scanning, workflow routing and Cloud computing.  Various technologies reinforce the death of distance and enable a truly global sourcing organization.

Here's a link to the full article.