- March 28, 2024
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Several Gulf Coast-based manufacturers have gone away from outsourcing production work overseas in recent months, concerned about quality issues.
The trend could now spill out to customer service-focused companies that do most of the work over the phone. At least that's the case with Vengroff, Williams and Associates, a Sarasota-based commercial debt collections and management consulting firm.
In fact, the company recently won two new debt collection contracts with Fortune 500 companies through a business pitch that included replacing jobs in India with Sarasota-based employees. “In reality, the performance [in India] just wasn't there,” Vengroff, Williams and Associates CEO Mark Vengroff tells Coffee Talk.
Vengroff says the Sarasota staff is so good at the work that one person locally can do what it takes four or five people to do overseas.
Vengroff backed that up with a payroll statement: The company has hired 27 people in Sarasota since early November, and Vengroff says the plan is to hire at least 35 more people by the end of January. The company already has 250 employees in Sarasota, who work out of an office just east of downtown.
The new clients are in the medical manufacturing and software industry, but company officials declined to elaborate. Debt collection services for big global firms aren't new to VWA, however, because the firm's client list includes names like Ford, Kodak and Walt Disney.
Vengroff says the company has other bold plans for 2011, in addition to bringing jobs to Sarasota from India. For example, the company recently launched a medical billing services division it plans to market to hospitals and large medical groups.
The firm also plans to grow its unit that helps companies manage accounts receivables owed by the federal government. That last one, taking money back from the federal government, is truly a mission Coffee Talk smiles upon.