With global logistics costs on the rise, many American shippers and supply chain service providers seek ways to reduce costs without lowering the quality of the services they provide. For a long time, these entities benefited from offshoring various administrative functions to far-flung countries such as India or the Philippines. Now, however, many companies are realizing that cultural dissimilarities and language barriers are having a negative impact on the quality of overall customer experiences. 

Reshoring full operations to U.S. soil may still be cost-prohibitive for many players in the logistics realm, but nearshoring offers a means to still save money without sacrificing capabilities. Thanks to the rise of cloud-based logistics and B2B technologies, an employee in Colombia can operate just as effectively as an employee in New York or Florida.

Nearshoring Administrative Functions with Technology

For many shippers and logistics providers, nearshoring physical logistics functions like warehousing or distribution simply isn’t practical. What many shippers and logistics providers don’t consider, however, is how much money they can save by moving some of their back-office and administrative functions to a more affordable area such as Colombia.

Consider the labor used for processes such as:

• Invoicing/Accounts Payable
• Air/Ocean Documentation
• Auditing
• Lead Generation/Marketing
• Pricing
• Inside Sales
• Customer Servie

As these functions migrate into the cloud using Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and other cloud-based HR, finance, and logistics software solutions, administrative tasks can now be performed from just about anywhere. Choosing a nearshoring destination with a tech-savvy and available workforce will significantly reduce labor costs.

Silicon Valley of Latin America

While many countries in Latin America are building out nearshoring initiatives for U.S. companies, not all are nearly as technologically capable as Colombia. Medellin, Colombia has earned the title “Silicon Valley of Latin America” for its highly skilled tech talent pool. This is good news for logistics companies seeking to nearshore administrative tasks to the area, since collaborating between the United States and Colombia will require reliable technical skills on both sides.

Medellin offers the following benefits to technologically enabled companies seeking reliable nearshoring options: 

• Communication is key to any business venture—especially when cloud access is critical to success. As a software development hotspot, Medellin has the internet and mobile infrastructure in place to facilitate reliable digital business relationships.

• Skilled talent pool. Medellin has a large population of bilingual, well-educated young professionals eager to work with American companies. With more than 150,000 professional and technical graduates matriculating from Colombian universities annually—as well as a steady pipeline of international students studying in the U.S. and returning to Colombia after graduation—there is no shortage of qualified candidates for skilled, white-collar jobs.

• Real-time collaboration/communication. Since Medellin operates on Central Standard Time, workers located in Colombia share a work day with U.S. business partners. This facilitates real-time communication and streamlined business operations without the unnecessary time delays experienced when offshoring operations further away.

• Data security. While third-party access is always a primary area of security concern for most companies, Medellin’s knowledgeable tech workers and reliable infrastructure ensure that private business data shared on the cloud remains safe and secure.

Nearshoring to Medellin with Linkoast

For over 15 years, Linkoast has been helping shippers, 3PLs, NVOCCs, freight forwarders, and carriers across modes to reduce their administrative costs by nearshoring critical business tasks to Medellin, Colombia. In 2018 alone, we saved our clients a combined total of $355,000 in office space rent and $1,950,000 in salary costs.

We are so confident in our ability to save you money and drive efficiency for your operation that we don’t require a long-term contract. With only a month-to-month arrangement, we will hire skilled, educated employees that work only for your business. We handle all HR functions, onboarding, training, and support.

To learn how nearshoring your cloud-based logistics functions will save you money and enhance your business capabilities, please contact us through the form on our home page.