Christopher Johns is certainly well-traveled. For more than a decade, he has started ventures in places like Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines.
His latest company is SupportSave, an outsourcing services provider for small and mid-sized customers.
I recently had a chance to interview him:
Some background on your company?
The company got its start in November 2004. Our founders strongly believed that the trend of outsourcing should not only benefit Fortune 1000 companies. So they set out to create a business model that makes outsourcing affordable to businesses of any size.
We thought the Philippines as the most suitable destination for our services because of the strong language skills, minimal accent and affinity towards American culture.
Your general take on your space?
We expect a few more years of hyper growth and continued shifting of voice-based services from India to the Philippines. As the market matures, there will be a greater push toward developing a service model to target small and mid-sized businesses to continue the growth. However, this may be difficult as the cost structure of the established providers will not allow them to price their services attractively.
Rival PeopleSupport recently got a takeover offer. Your take?
$15 a share is certainly a very low offer, and for PeopleSupport to be considering it makes me question the deal all that much more. If we had access to funding we would happily offer $16-17 a share and it would still be a steal.
Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook
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