by Lorie Ann A. Cascaro
Business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in the Philippines is still less than 10 years old, but BPO companies already employed more than 600,000 Filipinos and contributed almost US$800,000 million in revenue last year.
These figures were reported by Andre Fournier, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) consultant of Davao City Chamber of Commerce and Industry Inc. (DCCCII) during the recent meeting of the Rotary Club of Davao.
Fournier was happy to spread the news that only less than a month ago, Davao City was ranked number one, as the most attractive destination for BPO companies. “Four years ago, we were not even in the top 10. Three years ago we were in the top 10 and last year we hit number four,” he said.
But, the big challenge is in maintaining the number one rank, considering that other cities in the country are just waiting to surpass the line; Bacolod city and Iloilo city are number two and three respectively.
One of the advantages of Davao City in the BPO industry is that the people here have a better command of English language. However, it is not enough. They still need more training especially that BPO is not limited to call centers.
Currently, at least 45,000 people are employed in BPO companies in Davao City, according to Fournier, adding that it is already a big number. He said the chamber was able to bring in about six big call center players in the city and is expecting three more to come in within the year. “We want to bring more BPOs in Davao,” he added.
Although, expanding BPO industries in the city is “still a long way to go,” Fournier said, “we’re confident that in the next three years, we’ll be able to hit at least 150,000 employed in the BPO industries in Davao City.”
BPO is not only call center
Saying that call center industry in the city is already four years old, Davao ICT sector started the industry for two reasons. One is to ensure that Davao City has other industries rather than just agriculture and tourism. This sector wanted to broaden the scope of business in the city, having learned from experiences that when investors left, the businesses collapsed.
Another reason is to create opportunities within Davao City. They had observed that young graduates left the city for better opportunity or for the lack of it. “So we wanted to create an industry where in we can retain our people to live and work in Davao City,” Fournier said.
To address this issue, ICT sector with DCCCII tapped BPO industries which are not only composed of call centers. Transcription is another type of service sought by BPO companies. Aside from the widely known medical transcription, Fournier said they are also tapping legal, entertainment, architectural, engineering and animation.
Legal transcription is now being done in one of the big firms in Manila accommodating law firms in the US. Fournier said what the Filipino lawyer does is just research, write the brief and send it off to the American lawyer who is actually supposed to do it. He said it’s also nice to work as entertainment transcriptionist because one needs to just watch movies and encode subtitles.
Fournier added that two architects in Davao City are doing architectural transcription for companies in the Middle East. All of the floor plans and everything about the construction of buildings are already done here, he said. Indeed, there’s no need to send Filipinos overseas. He said they get contracts from Dubai, the Middle East and even Europe.
Really wanting to build BPO industry not just through call centers, ICT sector is eyeing animation as one of the biggest opportunities for Dabawenyos. “This is the industry that we’re trying to draw here in the Philippines, and especially here in Davao because we have a lot of companies in Manila and Cebu that are already doing international animation,” Fournier said. Underscoring the demand for animators, he said one video game will consume 65,000 man hours of animation, so it takes normally eight to nine years to create a video game.
KPO, next level
There are different levels of outsourcing. Fournier said they want to move to the next level, from BPO to KPO or knowledge process outsourcing. At this level, we already do accounting, human resource tasks and the like, he said. There are companies in the US whose HR departments are already in India.
“Everything will now be outsourced despite the financial crisis in the United States in the last two years. I don’t think the US is willing to let of go outsourcing,” Fournier said. Considering such idea means expecting more Filipinos to be employed in the industry.
But we have to battle with a lot of perception problems because most people do not want to work on graveyard shifts, he said. Because of time differences, there is a need to adjust to the market. Filipinos should work at their sleeping time that’s when Americans are awake.
However, there are still other clients in the global market like European, Australian and the Middle East. Fournier said a local firm has been handling clients from Australia which differs only two hours from the Philippines.
He added that there is a big demand for Arabic call centers. And so people, Muslims or not, should start learning the Arabic language to make sure they will be employed when these call centers will be established in the city.
“As much as possible, we want to keep the money in Davao City,” Fournier said. He said Dabawenyos should not just aim to be employees in BPO or KPO companies, but also put up their own and start projects which will benefit more people in Davao.
