Non-voice seen key to grow Manila’s BPO market share

RECOGNIZED as the top destination for voice contact center business, the Philippines must take advantage of the stronger projected growth in the non-voice sector to expand its share in the global business process outsourcing market, an industry leader said.

“The last decade belongs to contact center. This new decade belongs to total outsourcing in the country,” Benedict Hernandez, BPO service delivery operations lead of Accenture, said in an interview.

The country’s IT-BPO Road Map to 2016 sees the sector growing its workforce to 1.3 million and generating $25 billion in revenues by 2016 from the current 500,000 and $9 billion, respectively. Despite the huge growth, this will be just equivalent to a 10-percent share of the global market.

“I think we should protect our market in voice and keep growing it, but the industry opportunity as seen by the association is now cast in technology outsourcing,” said Hernandez, who steered the first Philippine-based call center eTelecare Global Solutions to become a $200-million operation with over 10,000 employees.

Hernandez said the opportunities presented by total outsourcing would allow the Philippines to showcase the country as the best source of the best finance, accounting and technical professionals, more than its perceived reputation as a “lower cost destination” and the haven of “telephone operators.”

“If you think about India and the Philippines, the cost for voice in the two countries is in the same range. Then you will ask why it grew at a much faster rate here? This is not just about cost. There’s something [bigger] at play here,” he said.

Quality talent supply will not be a problem because of the massive number of fluent English-speaking Filipino graduates armed with university degrees who can perform complex legal, financial, and analytical work.

“Anything to do to improve the quality of education, [making sure that] our graduates have job relevant skills—those are the most important things to take care of,” said Hernandez.

Accenture has invested heavily on its workforce, partnering with universities and colleges to help them offer courses aligned with the needs of the industry. The company eventually ends up hiring some of the students who took these programs, Hernandez said.

Accenture claimes to have “unrivaled scale and diversity,” positioning it to capitalize on the growth story of the total outsourcing business. On top of its comprehensive range of IT or technology services, it claims to have the most diversified BPO services, both voice and non-voice: customer care, finance and accounting, health administration, insurance, utilities and customized solutions.

Accenture also outsources healthcare-related services, or what Hernandez called as “care BPO,” playing on the abundance of qualified Filipino nurses, who often look for greener pastures overseas.

“We’ve created a really interesting choice to the graduates. There is a thriving, fast-growing and high-paying opportunity that exists here. [They] don’t have to go,” he said. –KRISTA ANGELA M. MONTEALEGRE REPORTER, Manila Times