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Welcome to Inside Outsourcing: The Outsourcing Week in Review
THE WEEK IN REVIEW
Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Benjamin Diokno said that the possibility of a long-drawn-out pandemic is one of the key risk factors that could derail the Philippines’ recovery from its deepest economic slump in recorded history. As anticipated, total foreign investments (FI) approved by the Philippine government plunged by 68.8% in the second quarter of 2020, as revealed by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). According to PSA data, the FI in April to June was down to P15.5 billion from P49.6 billion in the same period in 2019. Despite this, the PSA is expecting as many as 73,000 new jobs to be created from investment pledges made by both Filipinos and foreign investors at the height of the lockdowns in the first and second quarter of the year.
The Philippines is working hard to maintain growth as it looks to tap new markets such as Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka for much-needed investments. In addition to these countries, Information Technology and Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP) President Rey Untal said that the Philippines has also been reaching out to the United States, Canada, Ireland, and Australia through trade missions and investor meetings.
Information Technology-Business Process Management (IT-BPM) industry players have been encouraged to reinforce their ties with academe and expand operations across the countryside to spread economic opportunities amid the pandemic. According to IT-BPM consultant and former managing director of the Cebu IT BPM Organization Wilfredo Sa-a, IT-BPM players should strengthen their links with the academe industry, as “we can never discount the impact of real collaboration between academe and industry to have a steady supply of qualified talents.”
When it comes to provincial expansion, Sa-a suggested that IT-BPM companies can build pop-up sites in different towns and areas outside the metro to generate employment and stimulate economic activity in the province, adding that companies that expanded in the countryside are able to maintain operations especially during this time of pandemic. Supporting this idea is Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) Director General Charito Plaza, who raised a petition asking President Rodrigo Duterte to declare all public lands in Mindanao as economic zones to ensure progress and development in the country’s second largest island. Plaza proposed that proclaiming idle lands in Mindanao as special economic zones will create social progress, development, and peace and prosperity.
The Department of Tourism (DoT) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) company Concentrix Philippines has teamed up to offer over 10,000 job openings to tourism workers who lost their jobs due to the pandemic. In a statement, the Tourism department said that the partnership with Concentrix would help displaced tourism workers by “opening posts for customer service representatives, technical support representatives, frontline/specialists, supervisors, trainers, managers, and others for the human resources and recruitment, finance, IT, and marketing sectors.”
Studies have shown that COVID-19 infections are occurring in higher frequency across workplaces, transportation and specifically BPO companies. In effort to inspect and enforce compliance with health protocols, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) inspected 40,943 establishments and found only 31,000 were compliant with the Occupational Safety and Health Standards law and the national guidelines to combat the spread of COVID-19. In line with this, the Department of Trade and Industry in Davao Region (DTI-11) said it has intensified its monitoring of BPO firms, dine-in restaurants, salons and other establishments to ensure compliance with health protocols to contain COVID-19.
Overseas, the fast-growing Probe Group, an Australian-Philippine outsourcing upstart, has made it into Australia’s Top 500 Companies list compiled by IBISWorld. The esteemed list ranks Australia’s largest companies and also tracks those with fastest growing revenues – which included Probe Group. Probe Group has made headlines recently for merging with its rival outsourcing outfit Stellar to create a new outsourcing behemoth with over 12,000 staff. Outsource Accelerator’s Derek Gallimore recently interviewed Probe Group’s CEO Andrew Hume about their recent M&A activity on the Outsource Accelerator Podcast. Topping the list this year is the mining giant Hancock Prospecting which ended the 11-year reign of packaging manufacturer Visy to become Australia’s largest private company.
In other BPO news, Indian firm Wipro has won a new IT contract from Marelli to deliver automotive engineering services. The firm will leverage its EngineeringNXT framework and automotive engineering expertise to establish a software engineering factory for Marelli. In addition, the IT firm also announced a partnership with software company ProcessMaker on Monday for delivering innovative workflow management to Wipro’s customers in Latin America. The collaboration will leverage Wipro’s proprietary technology platform iCaaS (Intelligent Content as a Service) along with ProcessMaker’s Workflow automation platform to deliver Cognitive Content Automation solutions to customers.
BPO firm Personiv recently donated $10K to their partner, Miracle Foundation, to help orphans in India. Personiv CEO David Lesniak said that the company “will always give back to its three pillars: A Focus on Quality, A Focus on People, and a Focus on Giving Back.”
Wednesday, September 16, 2020
NEWS THIS WEEK
15 September 2020
- PH seeks Germany’s help in Wirecard probe – read article…
- FDI pledges sink deeper into two-year low in second quarter – read article…
- Wipro and ProcessMaker partner up for efficient workflow management – read article…
14 September 2020
- PH BPO industry eyes new overseas markets – read article…
- DoT, Concentrix partner up to offer over 10K BPO jobs – read article…
- Investment pledges seen to create 73K jobs – read article…
11 September 2020
- Full economic recovery “unlikely” without a vaccine – IMF – read article…
- Long-drawn-out pandemic a key risk to PH economy – read article…
- Approved foreign investments plunged in Q2 – read article…
- Cebu IT-BPO firms urged to reinforce academe ties – read article…
10 September 2020
- DTI-Davao intensifies workplace monitoring – read article…
- Australia’s 500 biggest companies revealed – read article…
- Almost 10k businesses failed to comply with health and safety standards – DOLE – read article…
- Petition filed to declare Mindanao idle lands as ecozones – read article…
9 September 2020
- Personiv donates $10K to help Indian orphans– read article…
- PH to shrink by eight per cent this year – Fitch – read article…
- Wipro wins IT contract from Marelli for automotive engineering services – read article…
- IT-BPM countryside expansion encouraged to stimulate economic activity – read article…
8 September 2020
- India to add six million jobs in massive IT push to become a $1T digital economy – read article…
- Infosys to acquire Kaleidoscope Innovation – read article…
- PH unemployment down to 10% in July – gov’t – read article…
