The Philippine Brand: Best foot forward!

Friday, 15 December 2006

With an estimated $2.1 billion revenues from its BPO business for the year 2005, a 62% increase over the previous year, the Philippines is fast emerging as a preferred offshore destination.

TeleTech (NASDAQ: TTEC) is the largest call center in Philippines with 7,000 employees in its two facilities
OfficeTiger currently has over 100 employees in Manila working on legal outsourcing and the company plans to increase its strength to 1,500 by December 2007s
Motif Inc is exploring the possibility of entering Philippines by opening a center in Manila

With an estimated $2.1 billion revenues from its BPO business for the year 2005, a 62% increase over the previous year, the Philippines is fast emerging as a preferred offshore destination. The ITES sector currently employs over 200,000 people with over 100 BPO firms servicing verticals such as healthcare, legal and animation.

The country finds its niches!

The $2.1 billion Philippine BPO industry has been able to make its presence felt in the global outsourcing map, leveraging its innate strengths from the high level of English proficiency and 94.6% literacy rate.

The Philippines gained a strong footing in call center services thanks to its huge English speaking talent pool coupled with a strong cultural affinity with the US. Though voice-based customer support services form a major part of the BPO sector in the Philippines, the country has gained a strong foothold in medical transcription, legal, accounting and animation services.

Services	Companies in the space	Comments
Call center	PeopleSupport, Sykes, Teletech, Convergys, ClientLogic, Dell	With over 50 call centers, call centers form a major chunk of their outsourcing revenues
Medical transcription	SPI Healthcare Documentation, eData Services Philippines, Medscribe Asia, Northern Transcriptionworks	There are around 40 medical transcription players in Philippines
Animation	Toon City, ArtFarm, Holy Cow, Top Peg	There are around 25 firms offering multimedia and animation services
Legal services, Legal publishing	OfficeTiger, Innodata Isogen, SPI	The Philippines legal system is based on U.S. law. Most Filipino lawyers appear for US bar exams
Accounting	HSBC, P&G	The accounting system in the Philippines is based on that of the US. The country has about 120,000 CPAs and produces over 4,000 more every year. Although there are very few companies operating in this space currently, there is tremendous growth opportunity

Source: ValueNotes Research

In the recent years, Philippines has become a well-known destination for call center and medical transcription services. While the country has not made a huge mark in other verticals, recent success in legal and animation services point to a much more promising future.

The opportunity…

Interestingly, companies that have shifted services to India on a large scale are gradually trying to diversify their outsourcing strategies by having a secondary or backup location. The Philippines with its ample pool of qualified and English-speaking population is currently the second favorite destination.

On the flip side, the Philippines has its own set of drawbacks including political and economic volatility, data security concerns and the problem of scalability due to the relatively limited manpower availability. However, given the concerns regarding rising wages and talent shortages in India, the next few years are likely to be an exciting growth period for the Philippines BPO sector.

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