One such business which has been successfully making this argument to multinational companies since moving to the Principality in 2000 is Conduit. From its UK base in South Wales, Conduit provides outsourced customer service and sales support for a range of household names including Vodafone, BSkyB and BT Global Services.

The man who convinced these companies to outsource to Wales is Neil Evans, the west Walian ex-marine who heads up Conduit’s UK operations. Neil explains how he continues to persuade his clients they’re better off letting a Welsh based outsourcer look after their customer service capabilities: “Any company looking to offshore is looking to save money full stop. However the irony is that many of the economic benefits that made off shoring to India such a draw in the first place have been eroded. Last year, Indian inflation rose to 11% - anew 13- year high – which has remained above the government’s target and continues to weaken the economic argument.

Infrastructure costs are on the up and in the past couple of years undersea cable have been damaged at least twice affecting the time-critical transfer of important data. The cost to businesses of being out of action for any significant amount of time can totally outweigh the savings made by off-shoring in the first place. “An understanding of the idiosyncrasies of culture, language, and accent and business practice are the key to successful outsourcing relationships. There’s nothing more frustrating than talking to an agent who doesn’t quite grasp that Liverpool Street Station is in London or who can’t decipher a lilting Welsh accent.”

The offer that persuades clients to outsource with Conduit is grounded in the history of the company. Both Conduit and its parent company, US based kgb group, have a long background in both retail and Wholesale Directory Assistance (DA), owning and operating some of the world’s leading DA brands such as 118118 in the UK. Neil explains how the skills acquired cutting teeth in this business helps Conduit bring companies to Wales today: “DA has some unique characteristics, such as the fact that the average abandon rate is typically under four seconds and hence you have to develop a dual culture that you answer every call and get it right every time.

We’ve brought over this culture into our outsourcing business and developed a reputation for ‘guaranteed performance’ based on unique planning and forecasting tools and processes, together with good old fashioned real-time management. At Conduit, we concentrate on productivity and output to ensure our clients get the most bang for their buck. We have developed an approach based on our ‘net economic value’ to the potential client.

This aims to quantify not just our direct cost as a supplier but to put a monetary value on our incremental performance in terms of efficiency, productivity, quality and delivery on key performance indicators such as first opportunity resolution, customer satisfaction, conversion rates and reduced leakage costs.” “We then compare this to whoever we’re up against for business whether that’s an existing internal function or an outsource competitor in the UK or abroad and aim to get and grow ‘daylight’ between us and them. We’re building our commercial model and commitments accordingly around this and it’s one that our clients like BSkyB and Vodafone love.”

So much so in fact that Conduit has recently penned a framework support contract with BSkyB. After rapidly mobilising inbound and outbound telesales teams to launch Sky Broadband, Conduit teams are currently helping customers upgrade their packages (something with more and more of us are doing in the recession) creating 350 jobs in Cardiff with another 250 roles predicted to be created in the future.

Its not just Neil who is willing to pontificate on the merits of working with Conduit; his clients have been at it too. Dave Rumble, the Sales Director for the UK’s largest digital pay television platform vouched: “Conduit showed flexibility and responsiveness in responding to our specific need and it was clear they were on our wavelength. Their culture of unrivalled quality at a competitive cost base made them to right choice as our outsourcing partner.:

Conduit’s ‘net economic value’ argument has worked for Vodafone in the UK since 2004 in customer management and before that, back to 2002 in providing its Directory assistance services. As their largest outsourced partner, 800 Conduit employees handle over 50 million talk minutes per annum for the mobile phone company. Thanks to the introduction of some innovative real time revenue activities, Conduit has generated Vodafone as additional £4.8 million per annum on features and benefit opportunities such as handset insurance, roaming tariffs, mobile internet and second sims – all he more remarkable when you consider they run a predominantly inbound customer service line. When you see figures like these, Conduit’s economic value proposition seems hard to argue with.

Happy customers like these have seen Conduit’s south Wales based workforce rise to 1500 employees, up 600 on this time last year – a remarkable success story when the newspapers have been full of redundancies and closures on a daily basis. Turnover in UK & Ireland was 56M in their last audited accounts.

The future looks bright for Conduit. Neil plans to safely deploy a number of new contracts while building Conduit’s UK footprint through constant process evaluation and improvement and innovative solutions such as unique two way text message applications which will leave them ahead of the competitors, whether they happen to be at home or abroad.