Big ticket BPO firms to employ 8,000

CEBU, Philippines – At least four to five big names in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and Information Technology (IT) are expected to open up offices in Cebu to employ at least 8,000 people.

Cebu Investment and Promotions Center (CIPC) managing director Joel Mari S. Yu said that these "five-star" names in the world's BPO and IT sectors are just the initial result of Cebu's successful bid of becoming an "emerged" BPO investment destination in the world as recently declared by Tholons.

According to Yu, these are a combination of expansion and new entry of these IT and BPO giants in the world, and these are; JP Morgan and Chase, IBM, Dell, HP, Accenture and Floor Daniels.

Yu said JP Morgan, which has now over 600 employees, expressed interest to increase its manpower in Cebu to 2,000 by next year. Accenture on the other hand, has recently inaugurated its second facility in Cebu at the Cybergate building in Fuente Osmeña, IBM which has an existing outsourcing here will also expand its manpower-based by next year.

Dell, HP and Floor Daniels are the new big names that will add to the BPO and IT sector in Cebu, strengthening the province's capability to host "five-star" BPO and IT investors.

At this point, Yu said Cebu is no longer suffering from building and office-space shortage, as developers have already built building facilities for BPO companies. Some are ready-to-occupy facilities, while some are still under construction.

With the manpower issue, Yu said the pro-active stance of Cebu to improve the man-power capability initiated the local government unit (LGU) and private stakeholders, such as the Cebu Educational Development for Information Technology (Cedfit) has give a relief to the manpower problem, as the academe sector is already working hand-in-hand with the players.

What is good in Cebu, Yu said is the pro-activeness of both government and the private sector to arrest the top concern of manpower supply in the BPO/IT sector here.

At present, the industry is supply about 32 thousand seats. This number is multiplied by three with the 24-hour operation. That makes it an average estimate of 96 thousand people working in the outsourcing in both voice and non-voice services.

Early this month, global outsourcing and investment advisory firm-Tholons, declared Cebu as the number eight "Emerged" BPO investment destination in the world.

For this year, Tholons , introduces its concept of Point of Scale Resistance (POSR), a method which allows comparison of cities across geographies and regardless of their scale. POSR measures an outsourcing location's "ability to scale and sustain", highly considering the employability of a country's labor pool.

POSR is the country's critical point wherein established companies in the country will face ramp-up issues if their respective current headcount has achieved the POSR limit. Thus, a higher POSR value translates to fewer challenges in searching for employable talent to deliver outsourcing services. With the POSR, the crucial matter in deciding the best outsourcing locations has transitioned from scalability to employability.

The slow recovery of the global economy unfolds new niches of outsourcing services for global outsourcing locations to venture into, such as Engineering Services and Health Information Management. Further, more established locations are moving up the outsourcing ladder, gradually transitioning into higher-value services and venturing into specialization in delivering services for specific verticals (e.g., Retail, BFSI, etc.).

These trends points to the essence of the employability of the labor pool for high value and specialized services. If there is a significant lack of employable talent, a large scale will not be a differentiating impetus but a stumbling block for a successful outsourcing industry.

"We will be expecting more big names in the BPO sector in the world to look at Cebu, as a location. In the last few years, when were only named as an emerging destination for BPO, big companies only considered the emerged sites such as Manila, making us as an alternative destination. Now, we are 'ripe', and is bound to attract big ticket investments in the BPO and IT investments," Yu concluded. (FREEMAN)