The world’s call center capital is the Philippines, however it will need more graduates and better trained professionals if its to be a major force in the broader outsourcing market where growth is in providing research and analytics for the legal, healthcare and financial industries. The Philippines has overtaken Indian in running call centers, helped by an affinity for the language, culture and work ethic of the United States, its former colonial master.
Lots of Filipinos offering a wonderful ” Have a nice day” while working the graveyard shift to answer calls on behalf of multinational clients clients such as Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase now far exceeds India’s 350,000 and the governement wants to double the market to $25 billion by 2016, employing 1.3 million workers.
However, to do that the Southeast Asian nation must convince investors it has more to offer than just a huge pool of talent speaking English with an American accent.With the 90 percent of that in non-voice work providing more complex skills and services in research and analytics for lawyers, doctors and bankers , the research firm everest group has forecast the global business process outsourcing industry could be worth $220-$280 billion.
Non-voice work accounted for just over a fifth of total BPO revenues of $10.9 billion, however a third of the Business Process Outsourcing workforce or around 220,000 people. President and CEO of outsourcing services provider SPi Global, Maulik Parekh said that the goal is aggressive yet achievable as long as they know one thing that what got them here that wont get them to where they need to be.
Parekh said that a lot of the focus of the tripartite relationship between the government, private sector and educational institutions has been about English language skills. They need to start to focus on how they can have a thriving healthcare, human resource, finance, publishing, IT-related BPO and procurement. India is expected to continue to dominate in outsourcing with their first advantage and skills in software development yet the Philippines has its eyes on the non-voice market’s potential.
Partner at Everest, Nikhil Rajpal said that while some providers leveraging the Philippines for non-voice functions, the scale of work is relatively low. But, tremendous market potential exists if service providers can successfully manage talent-related constraints. The Philippines must ensure it has a steady supply of professionals and highly skilled workers to offer the more complex, added-value services to meet clients changing and increasing demands with China, Latin America and other Asian markets such as Malaysia that also making strides in outsourcing.
The number of local university is growing at only 3 percent and there were only 5-8 percent of it are hire-able based on the government data, highlighting a need to re-engineer the country’s educational system. The Philippines has a 10 year basic education system which the government is looking to extend by two years, by adding a pre-school kindergarten program to match its Asian rivals.
Gregorio Domingo a Trade Secretary said that the challenge is to be able to supply the human resources to support the industry both from the entry level to middle managers and executives. In China, the country turns out 470,000 accountants, engineers and nurses however that figure is dwarfed by the 4 million college graduates in India and 2 million in China.
REFERENCE:
http://tcdn04.abs-cbnnews.com/-depth/03/09/12/more-just-talk-ph-eyes-broader-outsourcing-role
