BRACING for further negative effects of the global economic crisis, key players in Philippine business-process outsourcing (BPO) are now focusing more on operational spending than capital spending.

            This concern was evident in the results of a recent survey conducted by the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP) and Outsource2Philippines (O2P) on 25 BPO sectors with a head count of 500 and above. At least 36 percent of the respondents said they are reducing capital investments to efficiently manage the aftermath of  the global slump.

            “Low cost is no longer a selling pitch. The present situation has taught us to think of offerings that are intended for a long-term run and not only opportunistic,” explained Beth Lui, country managing director of Accenture. “Cloud computing and software as a service, for instance, may be reviewed by the industry to leapfrog their operations.”

            Cloud computing reduces the need of organizations to buy costly servers by allowing businesses to customize the applications they need for their particular operations.

            The strategy to shift resources and attention to operational spending also anticipates the 2008 report of market-research and analysis firm International Data Corp. (IDC) that in five years’ time, BPO providers will have to focus more on technical mission-critical facilities, more data to store and transmit, increase in opex (operational expenditure) and capex (capital expenditure), and increase in electricity bills.

            Many IT managers of BPOs also expect greater challenges in dealing with swelling server storage and cooling equipment cost, according to BPAP chief executive officer Oscar Sañez.

            “It is a challenge for players to deal with high power cost in our country; we’re second highest in Asia. But we’re improving our operational efficiency; in fact many of us who have operations in McKinley area (The Fort, Taguig City) are adopting the construction of a ‘green building,’” Sañez told the BusinessMirror in an interview.

            He said the government “must be aggressive” in pursuing the privatization and reforms under the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira), even as Bpap members are  “continuously working with Peza (Philippine Economic Zone Authority) on how we can work with power distributors.”

            On top of cost-management strategy in bleak times, the BPO is also haunted by the constant talent crunch dilemma, which reached proportions that are hard to ignore level.

            “Finding talent is still our number one problem,” lamented Marife Zamora, vice president and country manager of Convergys. “This refers to middle management level talents that need nurturing in professional maturity development.”

            She continued, “We are a young industry (10 years old), creating experience is the key for growth. We have them (programmers, IT) in Singapore and other Asian countries, let’s give them reasons to come back.”

            The “Pangulong Gloria Scholarship” that started in 2008 in partnership with Tesda (Technical Education and Skills Development Authority) has helped 40, 000 scholars, of which 60 percent, according to Bpap, were hired.

            The program, which aims to train near-hire applicants for contact center operations, software development, transcription and animation, has a P350-million budget this year to provide manpower assistance to the BPO industry.

            “We hope to train 60,000 people this year,” said Sañez.