A North American security company, running its monitoring from a back office in the Philippines. It had become a problem on three fronts. A language barrier they worked around daily. A bill that kept rising. And distance: checking on their own operation meant a twelve-hour flight and a lost weekend.
Under all of that sat the real issue. In monitoring, the job is judgment: knowing what to escalate and what to leave alone. They were getting the opposite. Alerts pushed up the chain that never needed to be. Situations that should have been loud, handled quietly. They were paying a premium for a team that responded on paper and not in practice, and they said so plainly: don't take what we have as the standard. This is what we need to fix.
So they asked one question. Not "build us an operation." Just: would a security back office in the Dominican Republic be viable?
We priced the operation they needed, not a template: ten operators covering 24/7 in three eight-hour shifts, two to three on the floor at a time, with a manager, payroll and HR administration, an accountant, a lawyer on retainer, and an office. We included what Dominican labor law attaches to an employee, including the Christmas salary, paid vacations, social security, and a funded reserve for severance and notice. Then we set that beside two other numbers.
The first was the United States, the same team at a $20-an-hour planning wage for alarm and central-station operators, fully loaded, with a manager, an administrator, and a modest office. A conservative estimate; a coastal market pushes it higher.
The second was a BPO, and this one wasn't an estimate. The client collected nine quotes across Santo Domingo and Santiago for the same specification. The figure below is the median.
| Ten operators, 24/7, three shifts | Per month | Per year | Per operator |
|---|---|---|---|
| In the United StatesEstimate. Ten operators at $20 an hour, fully loaded, night differential included, with a manager, an administrator, and an office. | $65,030 | $780,360 | $6,503 |
| In the Dominican Republic, through a BPOThe median of nine quotes for the client's specification: ten production seats plus managers, scheduled backups, and a trainer/QA analyst, which the BPO structure prices as fourteen billable seats plus a backup. | $44,265 | $531,180 | $4,427 |
| In the Dominican Republic, as their own operationModeled as a client would run it. Operators at the rates paid here, night premium and coverage included, transportation, statutory costs and reserves, a manager, administration, an accountant, legal counsel, and an office equipped to run 24/7. The per-operator figure carries all of it. | $17,278 | $207,336 | $1,728 |
United States, $65,030. Ten operators at $20 an hour, loaded 30% for employer taxes, workers' compensation, health and retirement benefits, and paid leave. A 10% night differential on six of them. A manager at $65,000 and an administrator at $50,000, both loaded. A ten-seat office and utilities.
Through a BPO, $44,265. The median quote as received. Spread over the ten operators the client needed covered, $4,427 each; spread over the fifteen seats billed, about $2,950 each.
As their own operation, $17,278. Four groups, each checkable against Dominican statutory rates: people ($7,608), statutory costs and reserves ($3,041), management and administration ($4,890), facility ($1,739). There is no bench on payroll; absences are covered by trained on-call backups paid only when they work, and an open position refills in under two days. Pesos are converted at the client's bank rate, not the headline rate. The monthly figure excludes one-time setup, which the client buys directly and owns.
The full build, line by line, is something we walk through in person, because the useful version of it is the one built for your operation, not this one. Request an assessment and we'll do both.
The BPO saves real money against the US. It also costs about two and a half times what the same operation costs to own, because a BPO price bundles management, recruiting, QA, facilities, redundancy, overhead, and profit, and you pay for the bundle whether you use it or not. Own it, and you carry only what your operation needs. Here, that's $323,844 a year against the BPO.
One operation's figures, one set of quotes, one wage estimate. Yours will differ. That's what the assessment is for.
They wanted to look at Santiago, on the assumption it would be cheaper than the capital. For this operation it was the wrong call. Around-the-clock coverage needs reliable overnight staffing, and Santiago meant a thinner pool, fewer people prepared for the work, and fewer strong English speakers. The one argument for it was a cheaper office, and that didn't hold either: we found space in Santo Domingo for roughly what they'd budgeted for Santiago.
What Santo Domingo gave them instead is the thing a 24/7 operation depends on at 3 a.m.: people. When a position opens, including an overnight one, it fills in under two days with candidates we'd stand behind. Some of that team came from Santiago to take the job.
That's why they trusted us. They had contacts here, they checked what we'd said, and it held up.
The build was never the risk. The switch was. This was a live operation serving real clients around the clock, and it had to keep serving them while it changed countries.
So we didn't flip it. The new team shadowed the old one for two weeks: same alerts, same procedures, same clients. They learned the business, not a script. By the end, the new team knew the work and the old team had quietly become the backup. Then we cut over. We'd planned for things to break. Nothing did. Their clients never felt the change, and it has been running since.
A BPO will tell you you're welcome to visit any time. It's true, and it's also the tell. Arrive unannounced and watch the floor rearrange itself. That isn't dishonesty. It's what renting a seat at someone else's table looks like.
When it's your operation, there's nothing to rearrange. Walk in at any hour and see your own team. The cameras are yours. If someone needs to go, you make the call. If you need someone in, you bring them in. Within the law, nothing about it needs anyone's permission.
And because it's yours, it gets built to your liking. Tell us you want an office five minutes from the hotel you always stay at, and that's the brief. Put your own office in it. Come down, two hours from home, and spend the day in an operation that runs the way you'd run it, with a team that's paid and treated like it's their work too. It's an extension of what you're already building. If you have a solid base where you are, you'll have one here.
We can't promise your numbers will look like theirs. What we can promise is what we gave them: a straight answer on whether this makes sense for you, before you spend a dollar building it.