fusionbposervice

The Philippines has been rewarded the year’s top business process outsourcing destination according to the National Outsourcing Association (NOA) of United Kingdom.

The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and Business Process Association of Philippines (BPAP) said that the country has already bagged the 2009 Offshoring Destination Of The Year Award at the Fourth NOA. The award ceremony was held on October 15th at London. NOA is the UK’s outsourcing trade association that gives award to top call centers. This is second time for Philippines to win this prize in the field of call center services. This year Philippines has edged out its competitors like Malaysia, Egypt, Russia and Sri Lanka for this award.

DTI said that nominees were judged on the following criteria like country advantages and business opportunities for UK companies, level of BPO market penetration in UK and other areas of call center opportunities available in the country.

Over the past few years, the Philippines has validated its status to be the world’s BPO market leader.

Even amidst the economic meltdown, Cebu remains a strong and viable city for business process outsourcing.

Sabino Dapat, chairman of the Cebu Educational Development Foundation for Information Technology quoted that they have balanced the infrastructure development with many domestic and international transportation. Today Cebu is the second largest city and is one of the fastest growing BPO destinations in the country. The city contributes about 10 percent of the national export and 30 percent of tourism sales and has the best government support.

In the education field the city has nine universities that offer IT courses that have tie-ups with BPO and call centers that hire skilled manpower. Mr. Dapat added that Cebu government alone has given a total P2 interest free loan to students who are desirous of getting a call centre job. He said that some of the reputed universities of Philippines of like University of San Carlos, University of Southern Philippines, University of Cebu, University of San Jose-Recoletos and University of Visayas.

Going with the rapid industrial make over, many business organization establish international call centers to their business process. International business process outsourcing services are among the fastest growing service industry across the globe. In fact international process outsourcing management services with a network of offshore operations have established a cosmopolitan environment everywhere. The inbound and outbound call center business process enable easy access to global associates and provides comprehensive service round the clock. Presently they are implementing advanced call handling facilities and superior phone translation skills to better serve a business process.

International call centers provide services that involve Interactive Voice Response (IVR) services that are solely carried out through web-based support solutions. Besides, they offer email handling, e-commerce, online surveys and other related online service solutions. Commonly the international call centers hold advanced computer telephony integration, call blending, and voice logging technologies to process a large volume of work seamlessly.

A premiere IT and ITES firm has decided to expand its horizons with new acquisitions in the BPO sector. CDS Global Services, a wholly-owned subsidiary of CDC Corporation is looking at an organic growth and expansion in the Indian BPO market.

The amount of money, as spelt out by the Managing Director of CDC Global Services, Rajan N Vaz, is between $15-20 million. Their target is to expand their BPO wing by the third quarter of the year. This will include two new BPO offices with a seating arrangement to accommodate 450 call center agents. They also announced about using the hosted solutions of Tata Communications in a mutually beneficial technological partnership.

CDC will be using Tata’s Instacc platform to expand their call center business activities. A point to note here is that CDC started its operations in the first quarter of 2009 with a strength of 50 call center agents only. They have two offices, one each in Mumbai and Pune.

Anthem Solutions, Inc. a managed service provider engaged in facilitating the entry and expansion of BPO companies in the country has received another accreditation from the Philippines Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) for its newest facility in Ortigas, Pasig City.

This BPO unit will be opened in partnership with country’s leading real estate developers, Ortigas and Company Limited Partnership (OCLP). Anthem Solutions is an affiliate of the leading systems integration and technology solutions provider, Diversified Technology Solutions International, Inc (DTSI).

Silver City in Frontera Verde, Pasig City, is a 22,000 sq.m building was initially used as an auto mall and events venue. The BPO unit is the newest addition to the Anthem’s roster of PEZA-certified facilities in Metro Manila and around Philippines. This includes One World Square in McKinley Hill and Fort Legend in Global City, Fort Bonifacio and Amigo Mall in IIolio. This is not the first time that Anthem has partnered with OCLP; it has set up facilities at the Ortigas building in Ortigas Center and VMall of Greenhills Shopping Center in San Juan City.

OCLP Chief Operating Officer, Rex C. Drillon II said that, as a corporate citizen we look forward to boost the economy of the country by providing world class facilities that will attract BPO companies to set up offices in Philippines that in turn will provide job opportunities for Filipinos.

The new building is expected to be fully operational and leased to the capacity. It is expected to house at least 3,000 agents for BPO unit.

Tamil Nadu, 8th Sept, 09: Since the inception of BPO revolution in India during the late 90’s, not many organization had an idea that rural India which lacks basic amenities like drinking water, electricity and road connectivity will ever be able to handle BPO services.

But almost a decade since then, the state governments of Southern India are working aggressively to promote rural BPO concept not just as an employment generation scheme but as means to groom the BPO ecosystem. Governments in all southern states have either launched various schemes or are in the process of developing models to encourage private companies to set up BPO units in rural areas.

The rural BPO units have thus created a huge employment opportunities for the socially backward classes, school and college drop-outs and graduates who have lack of job opportunities in their areas.

Santosh Babu, MD of Electronic Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT), the IT arm of government of Tamil Nadu said that, rural BPO concept might not be new concept in the Indian context. Only a handful of them are running successfully with the help of large corporate houses and NGO’s. Presently the company is trying to create job opportunities for the youth who are standard 10^th dropouts or above by providing them respectable job opportunities in their areas.

Manila, Philippines, 3^rd Sept, 09: Less than a decade very few people could have imagined that Philippines would become business process outsourcing (BPO) powerhouse. This is second sought BPO destination after India. It has vastly larger talent pool, a longer industry track record and number of BPO services.

Infact, till 2001 Philippines was known as nascent call center industry. It only employed no more than couple of thousand employees engaged in low value-added work like answering phone related to technical queries through an inbound call center.

Gregory Domingo, former managing director of the Department of Trade and Industry’s Board remembers the exact moment when the tide turned in Philippines favor. He said that, they were in US during the President’s trip in late 2001 and his boss had decided to invite some officials of IT research firm Gartner for meal.

Over dinner, both the trade officials briefed Gartner officials and analyst about the potential of the country to become one of the BPO locations, banking on Filipinos traditional strengths and the varieties of BPO services it can provide.

The trade officials pointed out that Philippines had proficient English speakers, fluency in concepts of accounting, engineering, technical infrastructure and affinity to the culture of United States. This could be helpful in providing different BPO services.

Almost overnight major companies started to set up their BPO units. From 1,500 employees, the BPO industry is now setting sights to hire as many as million workers.

IQor-a US-headquartered business process outsourcing (BPO) contact center firm appears to be performing corporate alchemy by providing its staff generous wages and benefits. This BPO firm is also successfully competing against offshore companies and operations that has enabled it to grow its American staff by 50 percent.

According to BusinessWeek, iQor pays salaries and bonuses to its employees that are nearly 50 percent above the industry norms, with best of its contact center agents making it more than $1, 00,000 per year. It also provides universal health insurance to its American employees.

iQor also has its business process outsourcing operations in Canada, the Philippines and the U.K. It has increased its revenues at 40 percent clip for past four years. According to the reports of the media firm, it handles financial services and industry specific tasks for some of the major names like BBC, CapitalOne, MetroPCS Communications and DirecTV.

As a result of which iQor has added nearly 3,000 jobs in U.S where it has 12 locations and houses nearly 11,000 employees. This has helped to create a number of business process outsourcing firms. The company recently issues a release announcing that hire more 100 agents in the next two months at Columbus, Ohio Center.

iQor business process outsourcing firm has set an example for other call centers. The company has successfully won major business contracts in a highly competitive and cost driven market like telesales and other BPO services and at the same time be generous with their employees.