A place where equality and opportunities merge
With nearly 140,000 employees, Atento is one of the world’s largest customer relationship management and business process outsourcing companies. Although it serves the global market, its operations are largely concentrated in Latin America.
The company, which is present in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Uruguay, frequently shows up at the top of lists of best places to work for in the region.
One of the reasons for Atento’s stellar reputation is the opportunities it provides women, who make up 64% of its workforce. Under a project backed by a revolving credit facility of up to $50 million from IDB Invest, the company plans to pursue an EDGE certification, the leading assessment standard for gender equity and inclusion in the workplace.
In turn, the financing from IDB Invest will enable Atento to replace shorter-term obligations with longer-maturing debt as well as provide working capital for new service contracts that will demand hiring and training more staff, expanding call centers and acquiring IT equipment.
Atento also plans to step up its investments in developing next generation services involving technologies such as artificial intelligence, data science, automation, and machine learning.
“This is our initial deal in the BPO/CRM arena, and we expect it will be the first of many investments to promote the export of business services from Latin America and the Caribbean,” said IDB Invest project team leader Daichi Tsuchihashi. “There are huge opportunities to capitalize on the trend towards digitalization as well as to help firms gain efficiency and productivity through more responsive customer service and process automation.”
“Atento is a leading BPO company with a deep commitment to inclusion, equality and diversity. We believe this project will be a great example for other companies not only in the BPO segment but also in the telecommunications and technology sectors so they can follow Atento´s best practices in the promotion of inclusion, equality, diversity and regional integration, which are pillars of our Vision 2025.”
IDB Invest project team leader, Daichi Tsuchihashi.