IT Outsourcing (Colombia)

This programme is part of CBI’s Country Programme Colombia. The goal is to help Colombian IT Outsourcing (ITO) and software companies to do more business in Europe. Most of the companies in the programme already export in the region, or to the United States. But they have little or no experience on the European market. The European market offers good opportunities.

The European market is the second biggest market for ITO in the world. But Europe has a shortage of people with IT skills. Because of that, outsourcing is now normal for European firms, even small ones. Also new technologies are spreading in areas such as mobility, social media and cloud computing.

This means there are good opportunities for Colombian companies to sell ITO services in Europe.

Project details

This programme began in 2014 and will end in 2018. In the first year, we selected and audited participating companies. The purpose of the audits is to find out a company’s strengths and weaknesses.

After that, we began to give the companies training and coaching. We invited them to Europe to get a better understanding of this market. We are also working with business support organisations to strengthen the sector as a whole.

The final phase in the programme is market entry. An important topic we are working on is online and offline presentation. We are helping these companies to improve their websites and to make sure they can communicate well in English. Most of them are more familiar with Spanish. We are also working on corporate social responsibility (CSR).

The main focus in market entry is on exhibiting at leading trade fairs, such as CeBIT, Mobile World Congress and Mipcom.

Project participants and products

A total of 7 companies are taking part in this programme. The group consists of small to medium-sized enterprises and producer groups from across the country. They offer software products and services such as IT Outsourcing, cloud, mobile application development, virtual reality applications, and digital animation.

Meet the participants

• You can contact CBI to get in touch with these exporters.
• Another possibility is to meet these potential suppliers at the next big trade fairs we will attend with them in Europe. For more details, contact CBI.

Partners

We are working with several partners in this programme:

• ProColombia, a government export promotion agency and our main partner
• Fedesoft branch association
• INNpulsa, a government trade and innovation promotion agency

With these partners we are achieving several goals with this sector, including:

• Improving the sector-wide Colombia, Bring it on campaign
• Conduct further research on the Banking and Finance & Health vertical markets in Europe, as Colombian IT companies already supply these markets
• Offering a Train the Trainer programme in Colombia so that more local experts will know how to coach IT companies in exporting to Europe

Get involved as an importer

Are you a European importer interested in ITO services or products from Colombia? If you are, you can contact CBI to get more information, or to meet with potential suppliers who have been trained for export to Europe.

Get involved in this project