He still remembers all the way back to his high school years in Sariaya, Quezon when he had to walk for an hour from his family’s farmhouse to the highway where he could get a ride to high school, the Joseph Marello Institute in San Juan, Batangas. That was a long time ago. The boy, Gerardo S. Dumael, has come a long way from those days, having become a successful career man in faraway Mindanao.
“I didn’t come from a rich family. I grew up on a farm,” said Dumael, site director of Concentrix Davao, a Synnex Corporation Company, the largest business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in Mindanao.
Growing up in a family of seven, Dumael, Sir Gary to his co-workers, said his parents were involved in trading of agricultural supplies. His mother, Leonida, sold fertilizer and seedlings to farmers in their locality while his father, Ildefonso, provided the logistics, particularly transportation of harvested farm products to market.
That’s how his exposure to trading began. But, getting into college was not easy for him. While his mother, together with his siblings, worked hard to support his studies, he was a working student.
His daily routine started at six in the morning to work as a new account assistant for Urban Bank in Alabang, until 12 noon. That was his routine for two years. From one to five in the afternoon, he attended classes in college, and from seven in the evening until 12 midnight, he worked in a food chain. On Saturdays and Sundays, he trained with the school’s tennis team.
Dumael earned credits in Psychology and Education at the De La Salle University, and in Philippine Studies at the University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City.
Fresh out of the university in 1995, he was hired by Pure Foods Corporation, a well-known consumers company as human resource recruitment assistant. After five months, he was made a regular, promoted and transferred to the trade marketing department in their Davao City office to handle Mindanao operations. Eventually, he was re-assigned to consumers marketing.
Moving to a city with a rural setting unlike Metro Manila, he said, “I’m more accustomed to a provincial setting for easy and comfortable living than in a metropolis.”
Before joining the BPO industry, he had worked in big consumer companies for years where he learned marketing, sales, business development, and products development. These companies sold personal care, food and information technology (IT) products.
Later, he was hired by a local knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) industry, Stradcom Corporation, in 2000 where he worked as an implementation manager for projects of the Land Transportation Office in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, regions 10 and 12.
After more than two years there, his exposure to BPO began at call centers selling Dell computers – Ambergris Solutions (now TELUS International Phils., Inc.) and Teleperformance in Manila.
He started out as a team captain (TC) in Ambergris Solutions. “As a TC, I took calls regularly and did quality assurance(QA), transactional quality monitoring for my agents. So that I would exactly know how my agents should handle calls, I also needed to practice,” Dumael said.
“Most of the time, when one of my agents was challenged in one metric, I would take the call for that particular agent. It’s like, “You watch and learn.” So, I was not only giving target but I showed them how to do it,” he added.
Dumael pointed out that in order for a captain to maximize the performance of an agent, the former has to show that he or she also has the skill. “That’s the key element in coaching. You cannot coach if you don’t know how to play.”
A year of experience gained as a team captain led Dumael’s becoming an assistant center manager, a position that was “parallel to the operations manager’s post in our organization, the Teleperformance, sometime in 2003,” he said.
“I attribute everything to my bosses and mentors from Teleperformance. They gave me more than sufficient exposures in the field of training, performance management and best practices in BPO settings,” he said.
In 2004, he joined Concentrix, formerly Link2Support, in Cagayan de Oro City as operations manager after being trained in Manila for the position. After only eight months in that position, he was promoted to senior manager. In September 2006, the company planned to put up another site in Davao City and he was assigned to start the operations. In December of the same year, he was designated as the site director.
“Having been through three position levels,” he said, “there’s not much change in the day-to-day functions except for the layers of responsibility. Heretofore, I was handling the operation in business processes according to the statement of work or the contract with the client and staff development.”
Being the site director, he is accountable for the profit and loss of the business, making sure that all resources of the site, which includes human capital, financial and logistics, are well-planned and well-utilized.
Dumael attributes his success in making it to the top level of a “100 percent people-oriented” company to his ability to handle people–1,300 employees, to be exact—from senior manager to call center agents. He said, “Communication is the key. If there’s something that my people need to know I make sure that the materials and resources are delivered to them.”
He believes in one thing in terms of maximization of the agents’ performance. That is, “Everyone deserves to know how they are performing and to be given a chance to improve.”
For him, education is another key. His mantra, “The lack of discipline comes from failure to educate, meaning that before one gets sanctioned for a bad performance he or she deserves to be educated first on know how to do it the correct way,” adding that “It’s not really about ‘what’ to do but ‘how’ to do it; how to get the good scores and eliminate the poor scores.”
Although occupying the highest position of the company, Dumael never hesitates to talk directly to the agents.
“Concentrix has a very flat structure. If there are times that I need to talk to agents I do. No barrier. I practice open door policy. Everyone can talk to me on any issue, be it performance, target or scores. Sometimes in case of grievances, I deal with a lot of issues like that, including personal problems,” he said.
With his extra time in the office, he made it a point to do mentoring and coaching for personal growth of those next in line. “It’s for them to be prepared to handle more challenging tasks and to make them ready for any changes in the company,” he added.
After all, who knows that one of them may assume Dumael’s position someday. But, does he have any plan working outside BPO?
His answer: “Not for now. When you are a brand manager you’re like a little GM of that brand, so, now that I’m managing the site, it’s like I own this site and I treat Concentrix Davao as my own. I hold myself 100 percent accountable for its profit and loss, performance scores, and day-to-day business.”
What about pursuing the dream of owning a company? His answer: “For now, I think I will have to maximize all the potentials of the site first and make sure that I apply what I have learned and give back to the company what it has given me.”
Having spent 90 percent of his career life in Mindanao – not in a metropolis, so to speak – Dumael believes that he is still competitive. While he has been influenced by various sources like his American bosses and previous mentors, he keeps himself updated on the best practices in the industry.
“I read a lot. Even if we don’t get so much exposure compared to our Manila counterparts in terms of training, the internet has helped me a lot to keep abreast of the latest trends on BPO practices. I attend a lot of web sessions and online trainings.”
For more than a decade, Dumael has lived in Davao City with his sister, Nenita Quilang, and her family who finally decided to relocate here after a few visits. His three nieces and five nephews—whom he sends to school—are his constant companions at home.
“I consider my nephews and nieces as my immediate family. That’s where I get my strength to make sure that they get good quality education. I make sure that I’ll be instrumental in their success in the future,” Dumael said.
Two of them are high school students of the St. Paul College-Davao campus along the diversion road; two at the Mindanao Kokusai Daigaku, Mamay Road; one in grade school, also at St. Paul, one employed with Concentrix and another one out of school.
Dumael, still a bachelor at 40, dreams of going back to the family farm where he grew up. “I would probably apply some good business practices from brand management and people management on my own farm. I think these make a very good combination to a success of farm,” he said.
He recalls that each time he visited his folks at home in Quezon, people there would request him to spare time for business consultation. Sometimes, he would give lectures on how farmers can eliminate middlemen and find direct access for their goods to market. Being inclined to business development, product management and trade marketing, he now knows how farmers can earn more.
“If I should fail to go back to Quezon province, I probably would want to settle down and retire in Samal (Island Garden City of Samal),” he said, adding that he has already acquired some properties there.
“I would want to see myself going back to a farm. That’s my long term objective. And I’m working towards it. I hope to save enough money in order to make that dream come true. I don’t think that will be too far in the future. Five years are too long to realize that dream That’s my plan for the next five years,” he said.
With his credentials and vast experience as a career man, there’s no doubt that Gerardo S. Dumael will still end up as a happily successful farmer—five years from now. Hopefully, raising his own family.
