RP can have ‘growth by partnership’ with bigger players like India

MANILA - Business process outsourcing (BPO) is one industry where the Philippines is admittedly comfortable playing second fiddle to countries that had dominated the market for years, eyeing instead the “growth by partnership” with these market leaders.

Jonathan de Luzuriaga, executive director for industry affairs of the Business Processing Association of the Philippines, said that “it’s quite an ambitious goal” to catch up with the more experienced India, which began exploring the BPO industry 10 years ahead of the Philippines.

He said that the Philippines’ workforce is no match to India’s, given their total population of 92 million and 1 billion, respectively.

“You could really see a discrepancy in terms of scale,” Luzuriaga said.

Still, BPO executvies from India see the potentials in the Philippine market.

Ganesh Natarajan, CEO of India’s ZenSar technologies, said that the Philippines has been a “fast growing second player” and has shown its advancement “in terms of maturity of people and capability of its technology” over the years.

This, according to Natarajan, makes the country a great partner to countries with developing BPOs like China and India. “The Philippine [BPO] industry can have growth by partnership,” he said.

Collaboration

BPO executives acknowledged that the Philippines has had a “growing sense of collaboration and cooperation, locally and globally.”

Natarajan projected a revenue of US$1.5 trillion in the next 10 years for the Philippines if it will “match its BPO personnel skills to industry demands.”

Uma Ganesh of India’s Global Talent Track said that the local market already has the fundamental building block for an improving service industry, given “the energy, enthusiasm, and positive outlook that [the Philippines] has.”

Inspite of its lesser number as compared to India’s, the country’s population, according to Ganesh, is not a stumbling block for achieving its target growth.

Local BPO executives are targeting a revenue of $11 billion to $13 billion by 2011, and additional 600,000 to 900,000 employees. By the end of the year, the industry is expecting a “conservative” revenue growth of 23%.

All that the country needs, according to her, is to “go up the value chain” by innovating technology and methods of training and development.

Resilient industry

As for local BPO executives, addressing the issue on resiliency and business continuity is a must, as these are “basic expectations of geographies [that they are] servicing.”

“The cost of maintaining a customer is cheaper than acquiring a new one,” de Luzuriaga said.

De Luzuriaga also said that customers have apparently appreciated how BPO companies in the Philippines were able to deliver services despite the calamities that hit the country the past weeks and paralyzed most businesses.

He said work didn’t stop for BPO companies located in flood-affected parts of Quezon City, Marikina, and Cainta. They either had back-up electricity and telecommunications connections, or diverted calls to centers that were fully-operational.

Some companies provided food for employees who were stranded in their offices during the typhoon. Some even sent vehicles to pick up employees in key places to transport them to work.

De Luzuriaga said that operations of BPO companies in typhoon-hit areas returned to normal as early as Monday.

About 3 to 4 investors still come to the country every week, according to him, in spite of the Philippines being prone to calamities.“The turnout affirms the importance of BPO as a driver of growth, and the Philippines as a location of choice in outsourcing,” he said. (Newsbreak)