Tips on Business Process Outsourcing in the Philippines

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Manila BPO outsourcing

A recent survey identified Manila of the Philippines as a leading destination for Business Process Outsourcing and a coveted spot for global outsourcing ahead of India’s National Capital Region, Mumbai and Bangalore.

The Philippines has quickly affirmed its place in the global map as the premiere destination for the Information Technology – Business Process Outsourcing (IT-BPO) sector. Eight sub-sectors make up the composed of the country’s IT-BPO industry: knowledge process outsourcing & back offices, call centres, animation, game development, software development, medical transcription and engineering design.

In addition to the cost benefits, the country has a longstanding reputation as a destination for outsourcing also because of the many economies of scale it offers.

With so many businesses leveraging these attractive benefits in the Philippines, it’s only natural that you’d want to join this community and outsource some of your business functions here. But, how can you ensure you get the most of your outsourcing in the Philippines?

Capitalise on the lower cost of labour

Businesses often outsource services overseas to leverage the comparative cost benefits characteristic of countries with lower costs of living.

When it comes to the Philippines where a local worker earns only about a third of the salary that their foreign counterparts earn, the biggest comparative cost advantage for you is in the country’s labour.

Though there are a lot of other costs that are likely to come alongside the lower cost of labour in the Philippines, the idea is to capitalise your gains where they are most rewarding. Besides, the lower costs of labour are always likely to be the result of lower costs of living, meaning that you’ll have lots of areas where you can enjoy other cost related trade-offs.

Use tools and analytics to measure performance

Being a burgeoning industry, there’s the looming temptation for businesses to presume that everyone who claims to be the right professional can actually offer the services you are looking for.

Like in any other economy around there world, the Philippines’ Business Process Outsourcing industry is likely to attract lots of unscrupulous people who’ll want to take advantage of unsuspecting businesses.

In today’s technology controlled world, it shouldn’t be difficult to determine true from false. Let technology work for you. And in this case, your go to technology is in the form of the many tools and analytics that help you measure performance.

Embrace the diversities inherent in people
It’s common to find many businesses involved in outbound BPO vouch for the use of scripts and aliases as well as train the outsourced locals on the foreign accents so they can sound like particular groups of English speakers.

This is particularly common with customer service or call services.

What such companies are doing in essence is try to automate the human element – especially with the fact that such interactions are normally characterised with heavy reliance on already written scripts.

As a result, the agent is limited to reading paper instead of absorbing and giving customers feedback based on their own professional understanding of the situation. It’s advisable to avoid such approaches as you may only end up losing customers when all they receive every time are default responses rather than quality effort to resolve their problems.

Approach business process outsourcing with moderation

The Philippines may be popular with this kind of outsourcing but the fact of the matter is, Business Process Outsourcing industry is still experiencing significant growth. Such growth momentum only means that there are a lot of opportunities to succeed.

You should therefore not be swayed by desire to take advantage of every opportunity available. Spreading yourself around only creates more room for your failure. Approach the industry with an informed mind after researching and developing a solid, strategic business plan.

If you have some experience in BPO then use it to form a working business development strategy to maximise your chances of growth. It pays to take your time to look around the market to be sure that the people you surround yourself with are the right people.

Don’t immerse yourself into what other people say can work. You can listen, but take your time to weigh in on all that your inner voice is advising you on.

With these tips, you can be sure to launch a very successful investment in the Philippines’ BPO industry.

 

Tips on Business Process Outsourcing in the Philippines

  • Approach business process outsourcing with moderation
  • Embrace the diversities inherent in people
  • Capitalise on the comparative labour cost advantage
  • Use tools and analytics to measure performance