Zamboanga City helps Philippines
become an outsourcing champion
text TMCnet

The Philippines is a choice location for outsourcing contact center services, followed closely by India, China, and Malaysia. Presently there are more than 50 contact center outsourcing providers in the Philippines – and more call center and business process outsourcing firms are expected to set up operations in the country due to its willing, cost-efficient and trained manpower.

The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) reports the country’s largest call center and outsourcing firm, Cyber City Teleservices Limited (CCTL), has gone to Zamboanga City in search of call center agents as it seeks to fulfill its expansion program in the Philippines.

CCTL is the largest customer relationship management call center in the Philippines. It employs around 5,000 agents for its operations at Clark Special Economic Zone in Pampanga province in Luzon, as well as its affiliate, G-Com Limited, in Davao City in the southern Philippines.

Councilor Milabel Velasquez thinks that the peaceful law and order situation in Zamboanga City attracts many labor firms from Manila and other provinces to come and hire more people.

“Our peace-keeping efforts are moving forward and everybody is working hard to sustain the current situation and we are on the right track,” she said.

The city boasts of competent professionals and their unique ability to speak and understand both English and Spanish. Other call center firms have recruited hundreds of locals in previous years.

Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas believes that the Philippines has become the favorite destination of many American call center and outsourcing firms due to the Filipinos’ affinity with the American English language and culture.

The Department of Trade and Industry expects BPO contractors to fully employ as many as 800,000 Filipino workers by 2010. It also noted that many local call centers here are subsidiaries of large corporations publicly listed in the United States, including Sykes Enterprises Inc., Convergys Corp., People Support Inc., and ICT Group Inc., all of them listed either at the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ stock market.

Experts feel that the necessary ingredients for spectacular growth in the outsourcing industry are, in fact, already present in the country. It is now only a matter of improving what the country has and maximizing what is present.

Some people feel that Philippines even has some advantages over India, like it being a smaller country, and, hence, offering more ease to control operations. Moreover, a skilled workforce is the country’s greatest asset and here the people have both productivity and passion.

Florida-based Sykes has 17,130 employees worldwide, with over 6,000, or 40 percent, based in the Philippines. Ohio-based Convergys has 66,300 workers across the globe, and 5,300, or about 8 percent, are Filipinos.

California-based People Support, whose global operation is based in the Philippines, has all its 3,800 employees in the country, except for some officers in its US head office. People Support’s Pennsylvania-based ICT Group has 13,850 workers worldwide, with 1,400 working in the Philippines. (TMCnet)