By Remedios V. Lucio
Contributor
February 9, 2010

The Philippine business-process outsourcing (BPO) industry has definitely grown over the last couple of years. Recently, during the 10th e-Services Global Sourcing Conference and Exhibition held at SMX, the revenues were reported to have significantly increased by 19% to $7.2 billion since 2008.

“It’s been a good year, especially in the second half of 2009, when the recovery started to kick in,” elaborated Gillian Virata, Business Processing Association of the Philippines executive director for information and research.   BPAP reported that the continuously growing sector provided more than 70,000 jobs for Filipinos last year. Meanwhile, the knowledge-process outsourcing industry also earned $1.19 billion.  It had increased by 35% in its revenues since 2008.  However, the IT sourcing sector lowered by 5.5%.  Experts foresee a possibility of attracting newer markets in animation, ESO and transcription this year.

According to the Global Services/Tholons Top 50 Emerging Outsourcing Cities report last October 2009, Philippines is considered as the second offshore nation following India.  Makati is the top location for HR outsourcing and Cebu is the number one emerging global outsourcing city.

Moreover, chairman Charlie Villasenor of the Procurement and Sourcing Institute of Asia said that “outsourcing and offshoring is all about supply management.”  He believed this was considerably one of the best years of e-services because there were more suppliers and buyers who attended the event.

He also said he believed in the talent, guts and resources of Filipinos thus leading to a possibly successful leadership in the BPO sector.  “We are getting a lot of global attention…and what I keep thinking about is that [the world] has finally found that the Filipinos have something more to offer than call centers.  And procurement BPO is a big part of it.”

Data privacy law was also discussed during the press conference.  Monchito Ibrahim, commissioner of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology, explained the importance of creating the Department of Information and Communications Technology to ensure the protection of important company data. He said it will be a way for the Philippines to measure up with other countries around the world.  “[BPO] can expect more support from the government especially in developing new markets,” Ibrahim said.

Last February, Salmat opened its BPO Solutions Center in Manila.  Dr. Philip Hadcroft, general manager of strategy at Salmat, said it will represent their strong commitment to the country’s BPO industry.  The company’s services will include “call centers, computer programming, web content management, data entry” and “IT-enabled services.”

Currently, there are 100 employees in their Mckinley Hill office.  They are expecting to grow to 800 employees in three years time.  He further noted that the facility was bigger than what they had expected.