Opportunities in Outsourcing
Welcome to the fastest growing business in the
Philippines today. This issue of Philippines Business covers
the Business Process Outsourcing business, one of the smaller
but fastest-growing industries in the country. The tip of
the iceberg is the call center business, those industries
which serve either inbound or make outbound sales calls on
behalf of clients. This business services both foreign, overseas
clients and Philippine-based customers such as foreign embassies
in Manila (for handling appointments for visas) and government
agencies such as the National Statistics Office.
The call center business has become the job
entry point for many college graduates and the stepping stone
to careers in information technology and marketing. The far
larger bulk of the business process outsourcing work lies
in businesses which combine professional skills such as accounting
and finance, healthcare, design and engineering, human resources
development, and animation with the power of information and
communications technology. Very quietly, businesses such as
engineering design for oil pipelines or insurance claims processing
or financial reporting for global businesses or animation
for the film industry or software and database development
have taken root in the Philippines. Professionals armed with
computers and bandwidth are doing the backroom work for global
corporations.
The timing couldn’t be better as the country
needs to augment its merchandise export industries (such as
semiconductors and garments) with new service exports such
as software design and fashion design. The majority of workers
in the Philippines are actually in the service sector so the
shift to service exports is a logical one. It will provide
workers the opportunity in-country and make the same sort
of contribution which the more high-profile overseas workers
currently make. In time, don’t be surprised when BPO
workers will receive the same recognition overseas workers
presently receive.
To learn more about opportunities in outsourcing,
fast forward to Inbound Prospects and an interview with Outsource
Philippines’ Ramon Dimacali.
The publisher
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