On May 22, Indigo Events, together with Summa Magazine and Thought Leadership, launched the Business Connections in Miami series at the Northern Trust Bank in downtown Miami. Ian McCluskey, CEO of Miami-based Thought Leadership International, organized and led the panel. The event, which began at 8 a.m., sold out, attracting representatives from companies such as PepsiCo Latin America and Auxis. The launch of Business Connections is integral to the success of businesses themselves, as products and services don’t sell themselves, but are sold through people and the relationships that are built. Now with business being more international than ever, events like Business Connections are very important for connecting the business communities of Miami, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, Peru and the Dominican Republic. The topic of the morning was nearshoring, moving  or merging services such as finance and call centers, from places like India and the U.S. to the Caribbean, Mexico and Latin America. It also refers to merging service centers scattered through several Latin countries to just one. The South Florida companies were particularly interested in this practice to cut costs, improve services and improve location closeness. L. Antonio Patao, the vice president and CFO at PepsiCo Latin America, spoke of the benefits of nearshoring for his company after he opened a shared services operation in Mexico, which has reduced PepsiCo’s costs by 1 to 1.5 million. Another Miami-based corporation, Ryder System, moved their service center from Malaysia to Jamiaica to cut costs and improve service. India was once the dominant location for outsourcing, but Latin American telecommunications and infrastructure has improved over recent years, emerging as an increasinly attractive alternative. Our next Business Connections event will be in Guatemala on June 14, when our focus will be "Innovation y Entrepreneurship: En busca del Steve Jobs chapin.