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THE
investors are willing, but the talent supply is weak.
This is
the predicament that the local business-process
outsourcing (BPO) sector faces as it seeks to grow to
its full potential of achieving a 10-percent share in
the global outsourcing and offshoring (O&O) market by
2010, with an estimated annual revenue share of about
$13 billion.
“Getting
the right talent supply is really the hardest,” said
Oscar Sañez, chief executive officer of the Business
Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP), at the
sidelines of the services Philippine 2008 Global
Sourcing Conference and Exhibition at the
SMX Convention Center
in Mall of Asia, Pasay City.
According to the BPO blueprint launched about 100 days
ago, Sañez said the industry would need to hire another
600,000 full-time employees up to 2010 to achieve its
goal.
This is
a formidable task considering the industry’s employment
figures only grew by about 90,000 in 2007 to 299,168
total full-time employees (FTEs).
The
call-center industry, or the voice segment of the sector
in which the Philippines is considered among the world’s
best, contributes 198,000 FTEs to the total, followed by
nonvoice back-office works with 40,156 FTEs, software
development with 29,188, transcription with 16,824,
engineering services with 8,000 and animation with
7,000.
The BPO
sector also still has a long way to go in terms of its
revenue goal for 2010 as it ended 2007 with only $4.875
billion, with the contact centers again contributing the
majority at
$3.6 billion. This was tailed by software development
with $423 million; nonvoice back-office with $398
million, transcription, $197 million; engineering
services, $152 million; and animation, $105 million.
Sañez,
in his presentation at the event, said the 50-percent
growth in revenues is on track with the road-map
projections. However, the manpower growth is “slightly
less than expected.”
Still,
Sañez said the sector has high hopes that its growth
projection on the employment side will still be
achieved, “even if there is not a single silver bullet
solution to it, but a combination of many things,
institutions and people working together.”
He
added, “the good thing is everybody is engaged 100
percent to the task ahead. We should be able to achieve
that target.”
To
improve on the availability of qualified labor force,
Sañez said the different business and nongovernment
organizations Tesda, the Task Force on Education,
Department of Education, Commission on Higher Education,
academe and the different industry groups have launched
separate initiatives.
For
instance Tesda, through a P350-million funding from
Malacañang, has committed to produce 40,000
ready-to-hire graduates for the industry.
For the
software-development segment, which is projected to grow
by 50 percent this year, there is the Expanded Learning
on Information Technology Services program with seven
institutions serving as pilot schools: Jose Rizal
University, Technological Institute of the Philippines,
University of the East, Emilio Aguinaldo College, ACSAT,
Asia Pacific College and Far Eastern University.There is
also the Advanced English Proficiency Training program
for the contact centers and other O&O industries. The
participating schools are UE, JRU, Emilio Aguinaldo,
Philippine Women’s University and DLSU, with ICT, ePLDT,
eTelecare, Convergys and Teletech as partner contact
centers.
Sañez
said there is no problem on the demand side, especially
with the feared recession in the
US
posing more investment opportunities and American firms
expected to be looking at outsourcing more of their
operations for better cost efficiency. |
