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Knowing More about the Booming of BPO Companies in the Philippines
BPO or Business Process Outsourcing has experienced a remarkably fast growth in the Philippines, making the country a major player in the world’s BPO landscape. The boom of BPO companies in the Philippines was instigated by the great demand for overseas call centers around the beginning of the 21st century. Now, BPO companies are bringing about $1.12 Billion of revenues with 112,000 people working in them, a very sharp increase since the year 2000 when there were only 2400 people working in call centers and earning $24 million. It is foreseen that by the year 2010 the current figures would increase more than ten-fold to about $13 billion, observing the great demand for the services of BPO companies in the Philippines.
The BPO Scene in the Philippines
BPO in the Philippines mostly involves companies providing customer care, software development, medical transcription, animation and other shared services. Primarily, it is the call center industry that comprises majority of BPO companies’ activities and the largest manifestation of the BPO surge in the country. However, this is not to undermine the active participation of human resource, finance and accounting service, and information technology activities in the Philippine’s BPO sector.
BPO companies abound not only in the capital city of Manila, but throughout the nations as well, various major and minor cities including Baguio, Cagayan de Oro, Clark, Davao City, Iloilo City, Bacolod City, Cebu City, Dumaguete City, and Dagupan. According to CITEM or the Center for International Trade Expositions and Missions, the Philippines is included in the top 10 most in-demand choice among the many offshore BPO sites world wide. Currently, the Philippines boasts of the greatest number of certified accountants in the whole continent of Asia.
Recent economic surveys have shown that the Philippines has already replaced India as the number one choice among for American companies who are availing of offshore BPO operations. According to the survey, workers in the Philippines have a good advantage over those of the US primarily due to the labor cost because the minimum daily wage for Filipinos is $7, which is but a minute fraction of that in the US. Filipino workers are also better educated – Philippine call centers usually require their workers to be college graduates Majority of outsourcers also prefer Philippine workers over Indian workers in terms of customer care and interaction because of the Filipinos’ greater familiarity with the American culture and language combined with their innately compassionate disposition.
Top Services Provided by BPO Companies in the Philippines:
1. Call Center – The Philippines has grown to be the greatest contender of India when it comes to the BPO Call Center market. Being once colonized by the US, the education system in the Philippines is very much patterned after the American system, English is the major mode of instruction and the pronunciation and diction used is in the American style. The English spoken in the Philippines is quite neutral-sounding, if not American-sounding, which is very much preferred by US clients to the heavily accented English spoken by Indians (a combination of British accent and the rigid-sounding Indian intonation). Thus, even if the IT skills in India are relatively more advanced, a lot of companies looking for BPO call center services, prefer going to the Philippines.
2. Medical Transcription – with the growing requirement for medical reports, operative reports, chart notes, discharge summaries, rehabilitation notes, and clinic/hospital reports in the US, the healthcare industry has also seen the need to outsource transcription activities. Rather than waste a lot of time on paperwork, much of the medical community has seen the great advantage of delegating the tedious transcription jobs to BPO companies. The Philippines is also home to a growing medical transcription sector that is able to provide quality transcription services for off-shore clients.
3. Accounting and Finance Logistics – The Philippines is also becoming widely recognized global center for outsourced backroom operations for many corporations particularly for account maintenance, bookkeeping, payroll processing financial analysis, inventory control, tax reporting, among many other financially related processes. Again, the great advantage provided by the Philippines is its English proficiency and lowered labor costs, which is why many global companies engage in BPO operations in the country.
4. Animation – lately, the animation industry in the Philippines has also received wide recognition among many global players not only in the entertainment and advertising sector, but also in gaming. Many of the major companies have outsourced their animation projects to BPO companies in the Philippines in creating TV cartoon shows, animated motion pictures, and even computer games.
The booming of BPO companies in the Philippines is indeed a remarkable phenomenon that not only affects the country’s economy but that of the other countries as well.
