One of the well-known benefits that Mexico offers U.S. clients looking to outsource IT, BPO, and other key services is its location. Unlike India and the Philippines, for example, Mexico is a quick flight to the south. But one less-discussed benefit is the geographical dispersion of service providers throughout the nation.

In terms of companies running contact centers, this helps in multiple ways. Not only does it offer various options in terms of service specialization and culture, but the wide range of markets spread across the country keep labor costs and competition for workers lower than in other countries with highly centralized markets, according to Juan Manuel González, ICT industry manager at Mountain View, California-based analysis firm Frost & Sullivan.

“The Mexican industry has a significant distribution throughout the country, with significant presence of companies in a variety of cities outside Mexico City, such as Monterrey, Guadalajara, Puebla, and Tijuana, among others,” said González. “This marks a competitive advantage of the Mexican industry compared to others that are much more concentrated in capital cities, such as Peru and Chile. In these cases, the industry is facing increased competition for talent and, subsequently, a bid by the rise in turnover levels and wages.”

Mexico’s location benefits do not stop there. The time-zone similarity also means that companies from New York to San Francisco can reliably talk to their suppliers below the border in real time — to get real answers. There have been some time-zone benefits associated with India and the Philippines in the past as well. Company executives outsourcing to these Asian markets could, for example, log off at 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time and know that the Indian or Filipino IT workers would have that day’s requests processed and completed by the time the U.S. firm was clocking back in the next day.

But as the typical services sought have transitioned from being push-button solutions to higher-level work that requires more collaboration, this “night-shift” productivity gain is becoming less of a benefit and more of a headache for many. “I have loads of project work that requires someone to be there, usually during the East Coast hours, and I don’t get that availability, obviously, from an offshore provider,” said Iris Trout, vice president and global senior testing director at TD Bank, in a panel discussion at Nexus 2015 in July. “So nearshore gives me that collaboration and availability that I can’t get from someone from Asia.”

Of course, anyone with a map can see that Mexico isn’t the only nation that shares time zones and short flight routes with the United States. Countries throughout Central America and the Caribbean can boast the same benefits. But in this case, González notes that Mexico still has many other positives that these small nations will never be able to match. “In terms of cost, proximity, and cultural affinity, most of these countries are staunch competitors of Mexico,” he said. “However, the main advantage of the Mexican industry lies in its greater scalability and availability of labor.”