Top Ten Roles Outsourced to the Philippines

Derek and Arnold will discuss the top ten jobs that are normally and popularly outsourced to the Philippines.

Summary

• The Philippines outsourcing sector is huge in the Philippines now. The Philippines is a world leader in the BPO industry.
• Here are the Top 10 jobs that are outsourced to the Philippines

1. Customer Service
2. Financial Services
3. Virtual Assistant and Admin
4. Software Development
5. Graphics and Web Design.
6. Content Development and SEO
7. Sales and Marketing
8. Data Entry and Processing
9. Human Resources and Recruitment
10. Medical Transcription.

• The Philippines is the number one call center destination in the world and one of the reasons for that is the high penetration of English proficiency and also a very neutral accent.
• VAs are very important to help you with admin work, so business owners can focus on more important things. However, business owners should learn how to work with people remotely.
• Medical transcription is a booming opportunity for Filipinos due to the surplus of nursing graduates in the Philippines every year.

Key Points

• Getting a VA to do the administrative task so you won’t get stuck doing grunt work the whole day. You should also train yourself to learn how to work with a VA remotely.
• Filipinos are proficient English speakers and they have a neutral accent making the Philippines one of the go-to call center destination for outsourcing counties.
• There’s a huge talent pool in the Philippines just waiting to be tapped they can help companies leverage their business.

Resources

• outsourceaccelerator.com/podcast/episode16

Transcript

Derek: Hi, and welcome back to another episode of the Outsource Accelerator podcast, my name is Derek Gallimore and I am joined today with my cohost, Arnold San Miguel.

Today, we talk about the top ten outsourcing roles in the Philippines. So, the Philippines employs about over a million people in outsourcing and it has a lot of very significant specialties within that, so, there is a lot of depth in some of these specialties.

If you want any of the transcripts then go our show notes, you will find that at outsourceaccelerator.com/podcast/episode16.

Arnold: Today we are gonna be discussing about the top ten jobs that are normally outsourced to the Philippines, so, before we have already discussed what’s outsourcing, what’s the benefit of it but now we are gonna dive a little bit deeper, in the sense that; what jobs can we really outsource to the Philippines, what are we famous for?

Derek: Fantastic. And obviously, the Philippines outsourcing sector is just massive now, it’s a massive part of the Philippines, and the Philippines I see as world leaders in business process outsourcing which has taken a part of a business process and doing it over another country at greater efficiency and lower costs, so, these guys are the experts. So, what are the top ten jobs done here?

Number one, we have got customer service functions, so, very clearly, that is their specialism and most probably as well because that’s what’s been happening for longest. When outsourcing started, the first functions that were brought over typically from the US were customer service and by that we mean voice, email and chat, it’s referred to as voice over here but obviously, that’s telephone and any kind of telephone service.

Philippines is the number one call center destination in the world and I think significantly, the reason for that is, while there is a lot of reasons that we discussed before but, huge, high penetration of english proficiency and also a very neutral accent. The accent does lean towards American which is fantastic for Americans, it doesn’t suit the English clientele so much but at least it’s a very agreeable and very neutral accent.

Well, what are your other thoughts on the customer service Arnold?

Arnold: Yeah. I think one good thing is that actual knowledge transition, we are heavily influenced by the western culture and that gives us the unique advantage of relating to the product or service that we are supporting and I think that’s a very good reason why we are, I think, the number one in terms of customer service.

Derek: Yeah, it’s huge. Absolutely. And this is big over here, there is about a million people employed in this sector and all of the big companies, certainly any international conglomerate have an office here, so, it’s absolutely on the radar. And of course, customer service does entail or capture a lot of other broader functions as well.

What’s number two on the list?

Arnold: Yeah. The next one is financial services, so these varies from payroll accounting services down to bookkeeping, so, this is another service that the Philippines is good at. There are a lot of accounting graduates that is being produced on a yearly basis.

And there are certain companies that really just specialize on providing financial services at its core function without anything else and that’s what makes it unique.

Derek: Absolutely. So, the financial services is very transferrable in knowledge, so, you can get the same book keeping software in the Philippines, obviously, and all of the data is entered in there and it can be done at a lower cost. Finance and accounting especially is very transferrable because it’s a pretty standard process.

Now, obviously, there are tax considerations and you can get different contractors and companies specializing in different tax jurisdictions but there really is fantastic opportunity to get your books done and accounting services in the Philippines for a hell of a lot cheaper now.

Arnold: Yup, that’s true.

Derek: Cool. And number three then is, I am surprised this isn’t higher but it’s a virtual assistant and admin. So, I think since Tim Ferriss’ 4-hour workweek book came out, everyone knows about virtual assistants, which is fantastic.

There is a quote there saying, if you don’t have a VA or a secretary then you are one. So, if you are getting stuck in your work day doing administrative work, it’s not the best use of your time, you can get people to do that, they are very cheap. So, virtual assistant sector is a very dominant provision within the BPO sector.

Arnold: Yeah. That’s a good point and actually, that is one of the reasons why people wanted to try outsourcing, they normally take this first step wherein they outsource some of the admin tasks over to the Philippines, so, that’s a good step.

Derek: Yeah, that’s a good point, isn’t it? And I recommend people get a VA to actually help them train themselves how to work with someone remotely, so, VAs are great, they are used to doing what they do, but it might be new for someone to work with someone else who is working remotely. So, it’s great to get a VA and to actually train yourself in the skills of managing a remote worker.

Great, what’s number four?

Arnold: Yeah. The next one is software development, Philippines is actually on par with India in terms of IT and software development and the reason for this is the companies in the Philippines that focuses on software development are managed by people from US and UK, so, they are doing the oversight or the overseeing of the project but the actual people encoding are… They are the ones the Philippine is good at.

Derek: Yeah, absolutely. And again, these coding languages, development languages, they are very transferrable, very internationalized and once there is a community that understands it then all of these skills are gonna be transferred over to the developing worlds very quickly. You probably don’t have the leading edge or you certainly don’t have the leading edge in terms of the best developers I mean they’re probably all hanging out in Silicon Valley but there is certainly for bulk development work, there is a huge resource over here and I think also a lot of people would be surprised how many household brands are getting there back ends built in the Philippines and other outsourcing destinations.

Great, what’s number five? Arnold.

Arnold: Yeah. Number five is graphics and web design, so, this is more of a creative side of outsourcing and the Philippines is very good at that one. Again, the platforms or the systems that people normally use are the same across all sectors in terms of web design, Word Press is the number one source out there but outsourcing that to the Philippines is one of the good things about graphics and web design.

Derek: Yeah. So, it’s great and it’s easy to do. I think that’s one of those things people are fantastic over here but it’s about developing a relationship and an understanding with whoever you are getting to do the work, certainly understands that feel of the sight and the more creative aspects of the job spec, but that’s a huge amount and big opportunity over here for that.

So, the next one is number six, content development and SEO. There is a bit of a recurring thing in this last three or four… It’s all web based stuff and these things now are becoming truly an international language, an international protocol. So, obviously, it seems with a lot of websites, there is a huge race to get a lot of content delivered and on a site, so that Google recognize you and rank you up and obviously, there’s all the functions of SEO that go into that.

All of these things are very cheap to do except for the time element, so, there is almost no cost to SEO and content other than the time. So, if you can get a cheap cost of time with a commensurate quality, then definitely, having your content development and SEO done here is a great option.

Arnold: Yeah. Number seven is sales and marketing, this is actually good because, you know, most marketing are done by the website or social media wherein people over the Philippines are very used to and they have been doing so for the past ten, fifteen years already.

As for the sales aspect, we are English proficient, so, doing the cold calls or reaching out to different people trying to get information or upselling something is something that the Philippines is very good at.

Derek: Absolutely. It’s alongside customer service, the Philippines, probably one of their first outsourcing roles was probably cold calling, phones house; is that right? Arnold, would you suggest.

Arnold: Yeah. I think that’s apparent in the broadband industry wherein they try to upsell certain upgrades to the existing phones that people have before.

Derek: Yeah, absolutely. So, that is a very valuable niche, it’s not so prevalent now but there is a whole, probably, twenty years of experience here, a very experienced call centers and staffing that are still doing outbound sales and things like that, so, it’s a lot of value here still.

Number eight, data entry and processing; what do we think of this? That is basically, I refer to this almost as a human computer. I think a lot of these will soon go when they better develop AI and things like that, but this is the highly repetitive functions of getting data and processing it. To be honest, there is probably no better place than here to do it.

And certainly, if you get a company that are used to high volume data entry and processing, there is huge opportunity.

Arnold: Yup. Number nine is human resource and recruitment. This is very interesting, you know, not all companies outsource human resource and recruitment because they believe that that’s a very special aspect of their company like they want to be able to be involved in that part of the recruitment stage.

But the Philippines is actually good at that like they are very well versed in the recruitment process. The HR polices for a country might differ but the transition of knowledge is gonna be easy because, again, of the educational background that the Filipinos had.

Derek: Absolutely. It’s more rare, sort of, social field; isn’t it? (HR) I think it really depends… It is number nine and so, there is obviously a huge demand, it’s probably more focused on the bigger conglomerates where they can cut out processes of HR, which can create hundreds of hours of work, certainly, and it’s a massive industry.

Great. And the last one and number ten is medical transcription. This is a specialized outsourcing vertical, basically. So, it’s very similar to the financial services, it’s basically a BPO function, an outsourcing function but they refer to it as a specialized vertical where they are actually adding value or greater value than just being a broad services provision.

Medical transcription, obviously, is quite a highly technical field and you need to know quite a lot about what you are writing about and there is a high requirement for accuracy. The Philippines, I would dare guess, is very good at this because they actually have a huge amount of nursing graduates, and a huge amount of graduates that don’t work in nursing because of the low pay. So, that’s a booming industry over here; do you have any experience or thoughts on that?

Arnold: I will just add on to what you have mentioned about nursing graduates, we produce about tens of thousands nurse graduates on a yearly basis. And actually, nowadays, most of them are taking up nursing just to be able to get into this kind of industry afterwards. Wherein the pay is much higher and it relates well to what they learned.

Derek: Yeah. It’s quite an interesting concept, isn’t it? Like there is a lot of nurses over here getting trained in the Philippines and also a lot of accountants getting trained in the Philippines to serve other countries remotely?

And so, you are getting a lot of accounting graduates now as well that are not learning Philippine tax law, they are learning American, or Australian, or UK so that actually, they are effectively an accountant trained in another jurisdiction sitting in the Philippines and that’s when it becomes pretty powerful and exciting.

Anyway, we will wrap up now, so, the top ten, I will read the top five out and you do the next five. Number one is customer service, number two is financial services, number three is virtual assistant and admin, number four is software development and number five is graphics and web design.

Arnold: Number six is content development and SEO, number seven is sales and marketing, number eight is data entry and processing, number nine is human resources and recruitment, and number ten is medical transcription.

Derek: Great. And just a recap, I suppose, there is a million people employed in this country and there is a huge amount of skill and experience.

If there’s roles that you are looking for, then look at these top ten list, it can provide an indication of where there is a huge pool of skill just waiting and possibly, could help you to leverage your business, so, there is great opportunities here. Anyway, that’s great.

Thanks Arnold.

Arnold: Thanks guys, have a good day.

Derek: Okay. So, I hope that gave you some insight into the major roles in the Philippine outsourcing scene. If you want our show notes, go to outsourceaccelerator.com/podcast/episode16.

See you next time.

Listen to more podcast episodes here:

1. Kris Buckham – High Touch, High Value Outsourcing Service
2. Lester Tay – Inception of Atticus Solutions
3. Mike Grogan – Creating Habits and Success in Employees