ECCP to hold 2nd IT quality seminar in January

Philippine information technology (IT) companies will discover how to crack Europe’s rich IT market during a seminar on European quality standards now open for registration.

The second "European Foundation Quality Management (EFQM) Training Program" set for January 2006 seeks to train Philippine IT firms in the quality standards necessary to break into the European market.

Research firm IDC estimated the European IT market at $198 billion in 2004, mostly in business process outsourcing (BPO), for which the demand is growing at 15 percent annually.

A project of the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (ECCP) and the European Commission (EC), the EFQM program seeks to identify Philippine IT firms committed to comply with European quality standards.

Ester Costanzo, capability-building services head of the EC-funded ECCP ComQuaL (Common Quality Language) Project, said both EFQM and ComQuaL are effective go-to-market approaches needed to materialize strategic business relationships between Philippine and European IT firms.

She said Philippine IT firms should embrace EFQM and other quality standards such as SQMS and ISMS because European IT companies will only outsource products and services if they get assurances that an offshore service provider would consistently deliver quality outputs on time, and that appropriate measures are being taken to preserve the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information.

"This goes well beyond sales and marketing. This speaks of having an independently assessed stamp of approval for quality of delivery," she said.

SQMS, or Software Quality Management Systems, is the ISO 9001:2000 process-level standard, while ISMS stands for Information Security Management Systems.

ComQuaL provides Philippine IT firms with both capability building and business facilitation.

Companies interested in joining the 2nd EFQM Training Program can e-mail [email protected] or call ComQuaL at 814-0500.

Over 20 managers from IT companies such as MISNet Inc., Radix Systems Services Corp., Systema Computer Solutions Corp., WebWorks OS Inc., and Zimplizity Solutions Corp. attended the 1st EFQM Training Program held earlier this year.

These companies were trained in EFQM, SQMS and ISMS and are now implementing TQM with coaching provided by ComQuaL.

ComQuaL also participated in the Outsourcing Forum held at the Bitkom Event in Germany last September.