There is a growing interest among economists, policyrnakers and others in establishing back offices in rural areas as a means to combat rural unemployment. Back offices are decentralized operations of service and manutacturing companies involved in activities such as data processing, medical transcription, publishing, customer service, telemarketing, andtinancial services. Forexample, the FBI fingerprint verification off ice that Senator Byrd was instrumental in bringing to Clarksburg is a back office operation.

Because back offices do not involve extensive tace-toface client contact, companies do not have to locate them near their clients. As a result, back off ices are increasingly being viewed as a viable means of combating unemployment in rural areas. Given the relatively high unemployment rates in West Virginia's rural areas, a study of back offices and their potential for being a part of the solution to West Virginia's unemployment problems is both appropriate and timely.

Although advances in telecommunications are making it possible for many companies to locate their back offices tar from their clientele, rural areas still face a number of difficulties in attracting back offices. For example, private telephone lines and digital switching, essential for computer-to -computer communication, are expensive to install in rural areas. The regulatory trend away from blended or uniform pricing and toward cost-of-service pricing also raises the cost of installing telephone lines in low-density settings (Bradshaw 1990; OTA 1991).

Another difficulty facing rural areas interested in attracting back offices is that many companies are beginning to offer new specialized computer services that require intense company-client interaction. This may cause some

Carla Dickstein is a former Research Assistant Professor with the Regional Research Institute located at West Virginia University. She wishes to extend her special appreciation to Greg Sayre, member of the West Virginia House of Delegates, who conducted several of the telephone interviewswith companies having backoff ices in WestVirginiaand overseas.

companies to favor urban over rural locations (Howland 1991).

A third obstacle facing policyrnalkers in rural areas who are interested in attracting back off ices is overseas competition. Telecommunications technology transcends national borders and permits global competition for data entry and back off ice services. As a result, rural communities in West Virginia must compete not only with other rural communities in the United States for back offices butwith developing countries as well. Moreover, many of these developing countries have made massive investments in telecommunication infrastructure, most of it financed by bilateral and multilateral lending organizations.

West Virginia's Back Office Initiatives

West Virginia's Governor's Off ice of Community and Industrial Development (GOCID) and C&P Telephone Company are placing top priority on attracting back offices to West Virginia. The Metro-Wheeling Network and the Huntington Chamber of Commerce are also aggressively marketing their cities as back office sites. C&P's marketing manual, West Virginia: The Location for Your "Office of the Future," cites the following five advantages for siting back offices in West Virginia:

1. A large surplus of experienced labor available at relatively low wages.

2. The relatively high quality of the available labor forceeducated, highly productive, strong work ethic, with

low absenteeism and turnover.

3. A high-quality digital telecommunications network capable of providing full end-to-end digital conneGtivity to data bases in any metropolitan area.

4. An Integrated Services Digital Network, which permits simultaneous transmission of voice, data and video over the same lines, is now available in Charleston and Morgantown, with expansion planned for other areas of West Virginia in the future.

5. Low-cost office space.

West Virginia also competes by offering an array of financial incentives available through its economic development programs, prehiring and on-the-job training subsidies, as well as tax credits to companies that invest $2 million or more in a management information services facility when such investment is purchased or leased and placed in service for more than one year.

What Are Companies With Back Offices Looking For?

An extensive search of all material written about back off ices revealed that most companies initially located most of their back offices during the 1970s and early 1980s in suburban areas that were located near large metropolitan areas. At that time, most back off ices involved bank check processing and credit card operations. They chose suburban areas because there was a relatively large pool of suburban female office workers, including college-educated women, who had the skills necessary for back off ice operations and were seeking full- or part-time work close to home. At the same time, the number of high school graduates in urban areas that had the necessary skills for back off ice jobs declined. In addition, suburban employees were generally willing to work a longerwork week than theirurban counterparts and were willing to accept lower wages than those located in urban areas. Adequate floor space fordata processing was also plentiful in suburban areas (Moss and Dunau 1986).

During the 1980s more companies began to locate the I r back off ices in smaller cities away from large metropolitan areas because operating costs were lower there. Because the supply of qualif ied workers in urban areas was relatively small, companies were forced to offer increasingly higher wages and a shorter workweek to attract and keep qualified workers. This, in turn, caused operating costs to rise. Moreover, high land and construction costs pushed up the Gostof office leases (Harding 1986). In contrast, there was an oversupply of qualified off ice workers in smaller cities, and companies discovered that employees there were willing to accept relatively low wages and were willing to work a full 40-hour week. Space costs were also much lower. For example, United Health Care, based in the Minneapolis suburb of Minnetonka, relocated most of its processing work to three off ices in northern Minnesota and experienced a 25 percent increase in productivity. A study of the company's relocation decision indicated that the move was made possible because the area had: available management personnel or the ability to attract management personnel tothe area; commercial airservice; express mail or courier service; and appropriate telecommunications capacity (Blazar 1990).

During the 1980s telemarketing operations, which involve order processing, customer service, sales support and account management, also decentralized thier operations and joined bank check processing and credit card operations as prime functions for back offices. In 1987, approximately 80,000 companies had telemarketing operations. In 1990, that figure had increased to approximately 256,000. Most of the companies involved in telemarketing are financial companies, especially securities and commodities brokers, followed by the travel industry and small manufacturing companies. In Omaha, Nebraska, Northwestern Bell has provided special services that have at
tracted the telemarketing operations of Hyatt, Allied Vans, Avis, Marriott and many others to that area (Harding 1986). The 20,000 people employed in telemarketing in the Omaha area represent a $100-$200 million impact on their economy annually (Beatty 1988).

Rural backoffices have become more common in recent years. For example, an international weekly magazine is published by satellite linkage in northern California, and a major nationwide travel agency located its 800 number service in a small North Dakota town. Low population density and lower interference in rural areas are an advantage for those telecommunication companies using satellites and other radio-based communications systems (Bradshaw 1990).

A study of companies that chose rural locations for their back offices during the 1980s indicated that they were attracted to rural locations primarily because they viewed the work force to be reliable and of high quality. Relatively low wages was also a factor, but was not Considered a key factor in their locational decisions. The companies indicated that the main disadvantage of choosing a rural location is the difficulty of acquiring additional labor after start-up. To expand, companies often found it necessary to open new branches in nearby towns (Howland 1991).

Some rural communities have not needed advanced telecommunication capacity to attract back offices. A number of U.S. data entry companies ship the majority of their data on tapes or diskettes and use traditional telephone services to transmit other information to clients (Howland 1991). However, over the long run, these companies may not survive the increased competition from companies that are using advanced technologies (OTA 1991).

Overseas Competition

Many American companies have decided to locate their back off ices overseas. They are locating them primarily, but not exclusively, in English-speaking countries located in the Caribbean, Ireland, and Asia. Moreover, there are at least 96 data processing companies, excluding those based in Canada, operating in other countries. These companies off er their services as subcontractors to American companies, creating even more competition forAmerican communities seeking American back offices (Voshell 1990; Woodward 1990).

The dramatic reduction in the speed and cost of satellite communications since the early 1980s has made it economically viable for American companies to locate their back offices or to subcontract their back offices services overseas. The annual real cost of operating an international telephone circuit decreased from $22,000 in 1965, to $800 in 1980, to $30 in 1985 (Posthuma 1987). Moreover, the transmission capacity by satellite is now 6.3 million bits per second, more than enough for most data transmission uses. At the same time, telecommunications infrastructure has become widely available in developing countries. The World Bank and other multilateral and bilateral agencies have off ered generous financing to developing countries to build modern telecommunications infrastructures that sup port foreign investment and free trade (Sussman 1991 a, 1991 b; Le nt 199 1).

Although the increased availability of telecommunication technology and the reduction in its expense has been important, the driving force toward the globalization of back office services are demographics and labor costs. In the decade ending in 1995, the number of people between the ages of 18 and 24 in the U.S. work force, the prime labor market for back office operations, is expected to fall by 17.5 percent. American companies are already experiencing diff iculty in attracting and retaining qualified labor for back off ice operations. For example, job turnover in the claims off ices of U.S. insurance companies exceeds 30 percent a year. In contrast, the population of young workers in third world countries is rising, suggesting that companies seeking employees for back offices will have an easier time locating them in developing countries than in the United States (Hotopf 1988). For example, the pool of unemployed and underemployed labor in the Caribbean is so much greater than in rural America that companies locating there have no problem expanding their operations after start-up (Howland 1991).

Another factor leading companies to choose overseas locations for their back offices is that the prevailing wage differential between developing and industrialized countries continues to increase. As Table 1 indicates, data entry costs in the Caribbean, China, Europe and the Philippines are far lower than in the United States. Interviews with executives from twenty-two companies that have located their back off ices overseas confirm that it is less expensive to operate their back offices overseas than in the United States. A U.S. government study revealed that total labor costs for back offices located overseas were about 75 percent of those paid in the U.S. (OTA 1985). It has been estimated that as many as 25 percent of the major nongovernmental back off ice employers will use overseas laborto reduce operating expenses by 1995 (Metzger 1989). If this

prediction is accurate, several million clerical positions will be exported to other countries over the next five to seven years, eliminating a large portion of the entry-level jobs available to Americans who lack a college education.

Telemarketing companies are the major exception to the recent trend toward locating back offices overseas. Since some of their operations involve oral communication with clients, they prefer to hire employees that have a neutral Midwest accent rather than a foreign accent. However,the differential wage rates are also expected to attract some telemarketing companies to overseas locations, especially for processing orders rather than for direct selling (Santoro 1987).

Although the trend toward establishing back offices overseas will continue in the near future, the long-term trends are more questionable. Increased use of optical scanners and machine- readable documents that convert printed pages to the computer screen is eventually expected to replace manual labor (OTA 1985). Optical charaGter recognition (OCR) programs can recognize the data scanned and use artificial intelligence to file or store it. Imaging technology converts printed orpicture images from paper to the computer screen or transmits it through facsimile (FAX) machines or by satellite. Often the two systems are used together. American Express has already implemented electronic scanners in its credit card billing operation, resulting in a 90 percent reduction in its labor costs to do monthly billings (Markoff 1988).

Despite advances in image technology, at the present time it is far from perfect even on typewritten materials and is of little use in converting handwritten pages or microfiche files. Scanning documents with font changes result in error rates above 10 percent (Howland 1991). The technology is expensive and must be designed specifically to read the document entered. Thus, scanning is feasible forAmerican Express but is less cost-effective for small data entry companies working on short-term contracts.

Conflicting technological and market trends make the future of overseas data entry uncertain. As the price of optical scanning comes down, it will become more cost effective for companies to hire skilled programmers to design scanning systems at the home office. However, overseas locations may retain their competitive advantage because they off er a surplus of highly trained programmers to design more complex scanning systems. The pool of computer programmers in the United States is shrinking relative to demand. An even greater shortage of programmers is expected in the next few years because fewer college students are training in the field (Brandt 1991). Moreover, entry-level wages in the computerfield are rising faster than inf lation in the United States and job turnover is very high here (Goff 1990). Recognizing the shortage of programmers and fearing an escalation of labor costs as companies compete for qualified programmers, many U.S. companies have already started to locate their software development and maintenance facilities in Ireland and in developing countries to take advantage of the lower wages there (Ludlum 1987; Tagare 1989; Goff 1990; Brandt 1990).

One factor that may serve to counter the attractiveness of locating back offices overseas is the growing demand for a quick turnaround time for data processing due to increased business competition. This trend benef its domesticruralareas. For example, Lexis, a legal research service based in Dayton, Ohio, began its overseas keypunching operations in 1970. However, it has cut back its data entry operations in South Korea, China, the Philippines and Jamaica to about a third of its work because of delays in shipping, clearing customs, and inaccuracy of the work (Burgess 1989; Howland 1991). Nonetheless, overseas sites also recognizethe need for quick turnaround time and are leasing special transmission lines to achieve 24-hour turnaround through electronic transmission of data via satellite (Hamilton 1990).

Back Offices in West Virginia

Interviews with executives from five companies located in West Virginia were conducted to determine the viability of back offices here. The companies interviewed included:

1 - AT&T Credit Center, located in Charleston, collects bills forthe Northeast, Virginia, and WestVirginiaand operates a nonsubscriber credit card center for customers without residential telephones.

2. Chilton Research Services, also located in Charleston, provides survey research services.

3. Medical Claims, Inc., located in Ravenswood, processes medical claims.

4. Courser, located in Wheeling, provides telemedical transcription services for hospitals and doctors in the tri-state area, transcribes doctor's dictation either

from hard copy or over the telephone, anddeliversthe hard copy or downloads the transcription from computer to computer.

5. Keydata Systems, located in Beckley, is an information-processing company that provides software and management support, automatic data processing,

4

and data conversion services, primarily forthe federal government.

All of these companies, except for Courser, currently operate back offices in West Virginia. Executives at Courser were interviewed because their company provides services that are very similar to those conducted in back off ices. The FBI fingerprint verification office in Clarksburg was not included in the survey because it is a government back office and does not have a choice of moving overseas.

Executives at the AT&T Credit Center indicated that the company decided to locate its business collection and nonsubscriber card centers in West Virginia because of a readily available pool of labor, attractive labor costs, and relatively inexpensive off ice space. They indicated that the company had suffered from high job turnover in large metropolitan areas but that problem had been reduced since moving to West Virginia, primarily because it was able to recruit a higher-caliber employee here. Many of their employees hold college degrees. They also were convinced that it was likely that the higher labor retention rate here would continue in the future because West Virginians generally do not want to leave the state to look for better positions elsewhere. Since it has located in West Virginia, AT&Thas consolidated itsfivecenters intotwo. Its Charleston center survived because of high productivity, lowabsenteeism, and reduced operating costs.

AT&T employs a total of 480 people in its combined functions in West Virginia. The workforce is unionized. Weekly salaries for senior off ice clerks and credit representatives range from entry pay of $224 per week to $423 per week. Accountant representatives earn slightly more.

Chilton Research, based in Radnor, Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia, located its first facility in Kanawha City in 1988 and, based on its success there, opened another facility in Charleston in 1990. The f irstfacility does customer satisfaction surveys for Bell Atlantic. The second facility is one of two that does custom data collection and ad hoc surveys for large companies such as AT&T and IBM. Executives there indicated that the main reason they decided to locate their back offices in West Virginia was the pool of qualified labor. The company first opened a facility in Allentown, Pennsylvania, but soon closed it because the labor pool was insuff icient. They also indicated that the cost of labor was not an important location factor. Workers in West Virginia start at minimum wage of $4.25 an hour, compared to $4.50 an hour in Philadelphia. The company does not pay benefits. Chilton looks for diversified work to keep its labor force but is not always successful. Employment levels range from 25 to 200 people depending on its contracts at any one time. Chilton executives indicated that West Virginians are more dependable, have a higher work ethic, and do better quality work than most otherworkers in the Northeast.

State-ot4he-art telecommunications in West Virginia was a precondition but not a determining factor in the company's location decision. Telecommunications had to be comparable to Philadelphia. Government incentives were negligible to the location decision. The company has still not taken advantage of subsidies available for its Charleston off ice. Initially, Chilton had some concern about their employees'West Virginia accents adversely aff ecting its telephone surveys but has found that the softness of the accent is appealing for interviews, especially with business people.

Medical Claims Inc. is a small family company based in Quincy, Massachusetts. Finding qualified laborwas a problem in the Boston area, and the company had considered locating a back office in rural New England. Instead, Ravenswood was selected because it provided high-quality labor at cheaper costs than New England. Equally important, the owner's sister lived across the river in Ohio and would become the manager. Ravenswood was preferable to Ohio because it was possible to draw frorn a larger labor pool from Parkersburg and Ripley. They considered the Ohio side of the river as too rural. The company started in February 1989 with five workers to supplement its Boston operation. It has now moved its entire claims processing department of 30 people to Ravenswood as well as its computer programming and accounting departments. The Boston office handles sales, underwriting, and customer service.

Medical Claims sought people with medical knowledge who could evaluate charges for medical operations. It offered attractive salaries and hired medical and dental secretaries away from local physician and dental practices. Inexperienced workers start at $11,000 per year. The average claims processor earns between $12,500 and $13,000. The first group of employees trained for three months with a person brought from their Boston office. Now employees have sufficient medical background that other claims processors can do the training. The company sought government assistance but received no subsidies for start-up or training.

Courser had outgrown its office space in Claysville, Pennsylvania, and relocated to Wheeling in January 1990 because of government incentives, proximity to the National Technology Transfer Center at Wheeling Jesuit College, and potential clients located in the Wheeling area. The Ohio Valley Business and Industry Council offered favorable financing and future capitalization for expansion, renovations of office facility, and rent reductions. Courser is working with the National Technology Transfer Center to reduce its turnaround time by accessing dictation over the phone in a shorter time period. Several potential clients in the Wheeling area provided some added incentive for Courserto locate there, but Wheeling only comprises about five percent of its total market. Labor availability and costs were not primary factors in selecting Wheeling, although a well-trained laborforce has since become a concern forthe company's expansion. The company's payroll has grown from 8 to 25 since its move to Wheeling.

Courser has been hiring people with medical backgrounds who are f amiliarwith the vocabulary of patient care. Its workers have come from the local hospitals, including some of its clients. This "pirating of workers" has caused resentment and, in one case, refusal of a local hospital to contract with Courser. Courser off ers incentive pay based on productivity. Hourly wages of their nonprobationary workers range from $7 to $13 an hour. This is higher than hospital wages, but the hospitals offer an outstanding benefits package. At Courser, employees must pay fortheir own group health insurance. The company has attracted married women who already have benefits through their husbands' policies and can earn more there.

Although Courser has targeted regional markets, it is now bidding nationally for federal contracts. It wants to expand its Wheeling facility rather than setting up branch offices. It will need a larger pool of qualified workers and has been working with local colleges to setup a training program for medical transcription.

Keydata Systems, based in Hyattsville, Maryland, opened a data entry office in Beckley, West Virginia, in September 1990. The company was looking for a large pool of trainable people. The labor market in the Washington metropolitan area for skilled workers was very tight and employee turnover was high. Keydata's work varies considerably and requires a wide range of turnaround times. Usuallythework turns around in three days. Much of it involves editing and proofreading work up-front and is not straightforward data entry.

Executives at Keydata Systems indicated that the company selected a West Virginia location for its back office because of its proximity to Washington, D.C., the relatively high educational level of the average West Virginian, and high unemployment. Keydata also became aware of advantages of doing business in West Virginia from Software Valley, a Morgantown-based organization promoting software and computer-based companies in West Virginia. The company chose Beckley because of its accessibility to two interstate highways and an airport. There was also a very desirable facility available at an industrial park next to the airport. Keydata ships its completed tapes by air freight and does not rely on telecommunications, although it has telecommunications capability if it needs ft.

Keydata received state government assistance through the Governor's Guaranteed Workplace Program, which coordinates all prehiring and on-the-job training subsidies available from various state agencies. Keydata requires workers to take a one month training course without pay, Those who achieve a satisfactory level of accuracy and speed start at $6 per hour with full benefits. Thesubsidies were critical for assuring early productivity and minimized Keydata's start-up risks.

Keydata isthe largest employer in Beckley, with 167fulltime workers. Eighty-five percent of their workforce was unemployed at the time of their hiring. The company tries to avoid layoffs by taking marginal contracts that keep the workforcebusy. Employee turnover has beenverylowat 15 percent compared to the industry average of 40 percent.

Why West Virginia?

Four out of the five companies that located in West Virginiawere primarily attracted to West Virginia becauseof the quality and dependability of itsworkforce. WestVirginia's relatively low wages were also a consideration for some companies but clearly a secondary factor in their decision to locate here.

None of the companies that located in West Virginia considered overseas locations. AT&T has overseas locations for manufacturing equipment but not for services. Moreover, theircredit center involves direct customer phone contact. It considered only domestic locations because of the superiority of thetelephone infrastructure and the desire to avoid foreign accents. Chilton Research found enough potential problems managing remote offices and could not imagine an overseas location doing intensive telephoning.

Medical Claims Inc. located its back office facility in West Virginia primarily because of its high opinion of the workforce, the relatively low cost of labor, and family ties to the area. The company's volume is too small to warrant the expense of an overseas operation. Courser only sought locations in Ohio and Pennsylvania within its regional market area. It never entertained moving overseas although it recognizes the possibility of providing transcription services overseas.

Most of Keydata's contractwork is with federal agencies. The federal government requires security checks on employees and does not permit its work to go overseas. Keydata also noted other disadvantages of an overseas location: management and cost of shipping data, stability of foreign governments, reliability of power supply, and ability to find the quality of labor needed for more complex work.

Conclusions and Policy Recommendations

West Virginia cannot compete on cost alone for lowerskilled back off ice data entry operations. Caribbean or Asian countries can do it more cheaply. Overseas work quality, particularly in the Caribbean, has varied from very high to substandard. However, there are a number of overseas companies, parlicularly in Ireland and in the Philippines, that have achieved both low cost and highquality work.

West Virginia is in a good position to compete for data entry operations that are restricted in location, such as federal government work, or possibly utilities that are more sensitive to overseas service locations. Companies that require a short turnaround time also cannot easily move their back offices overseas. These include payrolls accounting applications, and company orders. Rural co~mu_ nities may also be at a comparative advantage when companies must transcribe handwritten documents requiring quick turnaround time (Howland 1991).

Functions requiring personal customer phone contact, such as customer relations, surveys, and sales through telemarketing cannot easily be moved overseas. West Virginia has already begun to build a favorable track record in this area. Both AT&T and Chilton Research have been willing to go on record about productivity gains in their West Virginia offices and support the state's recruitment efforts. However, if too many companies locate in the same areas in West Virginia, the competition for the same labor pool will drive up labor costs to the point where the area will become less desirable for future back office investment.

Even if West Virginia targets higher-skilled services and trains workers accordingly, it is not immune to overseas competition. For example, Ireland is a tough competitor for large corporations' back offices, particularly those in the insurance industry. Many American insurance companies, including New York Life, Cigna, and Metropolitan Life, have already located back offices there (Wilson 1991). Insurance companies consider the Irish labor pool for claims work superiorto any in thiscountry, in terms of size, training, and loyalty. Their perception of American high school graduates is that theywant upward mobility andwill not stay in these jobs. Moreover, the Irish Development Agency (IDA) has aggressively promoted and subsidized back office operations there, making it difficult for anyone to compete with Ireland for the back offices of large insurance companies. As a result, West Virginia should not focus its resources on attracting the back offices of larger insurance companies. Instead, it should target small companies, like Medical Claims Inc, that lack suff icient volumetowarrant an overseas location.

The justification for state subsidiesto attract backoffices to West Virginia is tenuous. Theoretically, economic development programs should offer subsidies at the margins to induce behavior that would not occur otherwise. For example, subsidies should be offered when there is a reasonable expectation that the subsidy will attract companies that would not otherwise locate in West Virginia or will cause companies located here to expand their operations. However, identifying those companies where subsidies will make a difference is difficult. The interviews with West Virginia company executives suggests that there is cause for some reservations.

Only one of the companies interviewed in West Virginia considered government incentives a critical factor in their location decision. However, several company executives did note that providing up-front training subsidies would reduce front-end risks and make it easier for management to justify its choice of locating a site in West Virginia. Training subsidies may make a difference for companies that require higher-skilled workers. Nonetheless, it is likely that these companies would have located a facility without the subsidies because of the other labor advantages that theycited. One West Virginia back office that initially sought government assistance ended up financing its own training program. The facility is successful and has expanded operations.

In summary, overseas competition is a real and growing threat to West Virginia's efforts to attract back off ices. West Virginia must find niches in the back off ice marketplace to compete successfully. The state should continue to promote West Virginia as a potential site for back offices and target its resources to ensure that back offices are spread aroundthestate. Otherwise, companies will bid up the price of labor in specific areas and firms will exit as fast as they entered.

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