Hunter Howard (MBA '99)
Exploring Opportunities in Sri Lanka
By Kim Weaver Spurr

NC Kenan-Flagler alum Hunter Howard left a five-year career at Dell in January 2004 to co-found MediGain, a company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, with a subsidiary in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Howard, COO of the medical accounts receivable management company, says Sri Lanka provided the company a first-mover advantage when it decided to open a call center there. Labor costs are lower in Sri Lanka than India.

“Three years ago, Bangalore had 11 call centers; now they have 140. You’re seeing increasing pressure for employee wages in India, and employees are jumping from call center to call center. With overdevelopment of call centers there, we were concerned about employee retention,” he says.

Agents at MediGain’s Sri Lankan call center are college-educated and have to become experts in the field of U.S. health care. They must undergo 240 hours of soft skills training to develop cultural, behavioral and functional, sales and closing, listening and keyboard skills, among others. Because it’s a 24-hour operation, and to minimize attrition, the company provides employees with meals and transportation service if they work the late shift.

As an MBA student, Howard got a taste of international business in the summer of 1998 when he accompanied Kenan Institute Director John D. Kasarda on a global immersion trip to Southeast Asia. As a result of contacts made on that trip, Howard participated in a pilot exchange program with the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS). While at CEIBS, Howard worked with Dell on analyzing the market for its China launch strategy for home and small business desktops and laptops.

“My time at UNC Kenan-Flagler had a tremendous impact on my decision to launch MediGain,” he said. “My background is in marketing and business strategy, but the overall general manager focus that UNC provided me has helped me to understand the global responsibilities and critical functional areas of starting a business.”

And Dell was a great training ground for understanding how to build an efficient operating model, Howard says.

Howard knows that outsourcing is a complex, multifaceted and politically charged topic, and he cautions companies to be careful about moving critical aspects of their business off shore. Yet outsourcing also is part of an inevitable historic economic migration, he says.

“There will be challenges as some companies are looking at outsourcing more integral, cross-functional areas within the company, where there exists the potential for greater cost savings but also operational issues that could have negative effects for a company,” he says.

“Economists universally believe that outsourcing is good for the U.S. economy. For global gross domestic product, this is stimulating jobs. But when a small town is dependent on a certain employer, and that employer moves its facility overseas, that can cripple a town. These are the tougher decisions corporations have to make when weighing economic benefits with being a good corporate citizen.”