Philippine Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Potential

The business process outsourcing industry has taken the whole world by storm as is now internationally recognized as the fastest growing industry in the world. The global demand for outsourcing is estimated to have an upper limit of trillions of dollars. The said demand is expected to rich around $200 dollars by the end of the decade. The biggest shares in the BPO market are being held by the customer contact services, finance and accounting, and human resource sectors.

The Philippines currently ranks 1st in the Asia Pacific and 3rd in the world when it comes to BPO services. A huge pool of very skilled and English proficient workforce is the main driving force in the Philippine’s crusade to becoming the global leader in of BPO services. And the continuous shift in the primary business requirement trend from cost-effectiveness to skills quality and competence has allowed the country to exploit the opportunities of its very able workforce.

Offshore contact centers or call centers currently form the biggest part of the BPO industry in the Philippines. The country was able to put itself in the BPO map when it grabbed the 3rd place from Malaysia in 2006 with an offshore generating revenue of more than $2, trailing only a little behind India and China. What was more phenomenal was that the Philippines was able to pose a 62% growth in just 2 years, and this exponential growth rate is expected to continue to keep rising. The Philippine BPO industry is expected to earn around $11 billion and employ almost a million people by the end of the decade.

Higher-end outsourcing services are what caused the Philippine BPO industry to elevate to global proportions. Call centers though, still form the biggest portion of the outsourcing sector. Legal services, web design, medical transcription, software development, animation, and shared services, and not the traditional low cost call centers have been the key in the Philippine BPO’s evolution to fit into the global scale. The Philippines plans to fully exploit this opportunity to be the king of the BPO Mountain. It has already taken measures to elevate its creative design talent pool, its large pool of lawyers, and its professionals in accounting and finance to a higher level.

The government has also taken various steps to prioritize making the BPO economy more enticing to foreign investors. Such act is meant to help sustain and improve the country’s ascent to the global BPO spotlight.

BPO facilities can now be seen all over the archipelago, from the most developed cities to the big provinces. BPO growth has helped trim down the unemployment rate by a huge percentage. Large, medium and small BPO businesses alike are being established tightening the competition, and thus improving the quality of services. The Philippines has already secured its spot as steady part of the top 10 choices for offshore operations in the world.

Philippine call centers have evolved from being simple providers of email response and managing services into versatile and all-encompassing business process providers having the industrial facilities and capabilities for almost all kinds of customer relations services and processes. Travel services, technical support, education, customer care, financial services, and online business to customer support, online business to business support, name them all, and Philippine call centers are sure to be able to provide. Call centers have indeed become a big industry in the country.

The Philippines continues to be the top source of business process for the Asia Pacific chiefly because of its very English proficient and neutrally accented work force, and of course its less costly labor and operational costs.

Legal and medical transcription service providers specialize mainly in doing medical reports, discharge summaries, operative reports, therapy/rehabilitation notes, chart notes, and hospital and clinic reports using the most advanced software and equipment developed in the United States. Frequent seminars and workshops are also being held to keep transcriptionists updated with new developments as well as continue to improve their skills. This is aimed to further improve the already exceptional quality of service of being able to transcribe at more than a 98% accuracy rate 1, 000 at most lines. Legal and medical transcriptions BPO also generally provide 24/7 services with a maximum of turnover period of 24 hours, and at a fastest of 3 hours in case of rushed situations.

The Philippines has also adopted a strict and tedious certification process each BPO company in the country should pass before being able to conduct its operations. This is to set a minimum quality requirement for all Philippine BPO companies and at the same time push those who will achieve certification to further improve their processes and services. The government has also declared full support to the BPO industry in recognition of its great potential. New medical transcription subjects will soon be inculcated in the curriculum of all medical sources to further increase the available workforce for the said field.

The Philippines is also rapidly becoming a global leader in outsourcing finance, logistics, and accounting services. The country has dominated the supply of shared corporate backroom operations such as accounting and bookkeeping, account maintenance, accounts receivable collection, accounts payable administration, payroll processing, asset management, financial analysis and auditing, management consulting, inventory control and purchasing, expense and revenue reporting, financial reporting, tax reporting, and other finance-related services such as financial leasing, credit card administration, factoring and stock brokering; as well as for logistics management, and cargo shipment management.

The country’s huge and rich pool of low-cost yet high performing English and IT proficient professionals is its greatest asset and competitive advantage in this BPO field. The country produces thousands of skilled and competent business, accounting, HRM and engineering graduates each year. The Philippines is also regarded as one of the top 20 in the world when it comes to global business experience. Philippine customs and traditions are also world known to inculcate good customer service orientation, superior work ethics and a high degree of loyalty to its workers. Filipinos in general are also known for their resiliency, advance degree of trainability as well as multicultural adaptability.

Summing it all up, it is evident that the Philippines has all the potential to make it big and even dominate the global BPO market. The archipelagos strategic location, its supply of low-cost yet high quality real estate, its good and continuously improving telecommunications and other business equipment and infrastructure, its expatriate-agreeable lifestyle, and its progressively IT-supportive policies and incentives are all perfect to house BPO processes.

The Philippines is internationally recognized as number one in the world in terms of availability of knowledge-based jobs and workers, and the country also ranks fourth in Asia in terms of labor quality. And as expected, Filipinos are now conquering the realm of software development and animation. And so the Philippine domination is complete, it is now a leader on all sectors of global BPO, from the lowest end customer services to the highest end web design, software development, and animation.

Filipinos greatly excel in the fast growing global market for animation. The said growth is brought about by the greatly increasing demand for animation. Animation has become very popular not just as a means of entertainment in free and cable TV and movies but also for computer games, as well as an advertising medium, a graphics medium for Internet content, and an information and educational tool.

Filipinos can offer all animation services from the start to end of the process, they can provide from full 2D and 3D animation, including pre- and post-production services such as layouting, in-betweening, clean-up, digital background production through scanning and pre-compositing, color styling, special effects creation, and digital ink and paint application, flash animation and web design, graphic and art design, mobile applications, and art and animation training.

The biggest names in the animation world like Disney, Marvel, Warner Brothers and Hanna Barbera now prefer Filipino animators and have even established their respective offices in the country.

Only next to India, the Philippines is also fast becoming a software and web development outsourcing favorite among various countries abroad. Many companies from the most developed countries in the world like America and Europe come to the Philippines to take advantage of its low cost yet high quality software and web development.

CallComInc BPO is the premier BPO provider in the Philippines and its founder and CEO Tom Green is the know network marketing sales machine and chief proponent of the revolutionary 4StepstoSuccess Action plan.