BULLISH ON the business process outsourcing (BPO) prospects here, a US BPO firm is expe
cted to employ more workers as it doubles local capacity in the next 12 months.
Brisk business in the outsourcing and call center industries are encouraging investors like New York’s Sutherland Global Services to expand even with an economic slowdown and a weak dollar. In fact, the Business Processing Association of the Philippines wants to increase local companies’ global market share to 10% from 4-5% by 2010, a goal that would need a one million-strong workforce.
New York-based Sutherland Global Services said it would be investing over P1 billion in the country for its 12-month expansion, hiking the number of its employees by as much as 2,800.
In a telephone interview, Sutherland Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Dilip R. Vellodi said the company is spending a total of P1.5 billion for local expansion despite the peso’s strength.
"The Asia-Pacific region will continue to be an engine of growth for Sutherland and the Philippines is an integral part of that," Mr. Vellodi told BusinessWorld.
"Although we could not be totally exempted from the strengthening of the local currency, the impact has been minimum to none because of the measures we have taken," he said.
To offset the peso’s strength, Mr. Vellodi said Sutherland has been employing currency hedging strategies, improving productivity and adjusting prices.
"We are quite pleased with the productivity level of our operations and employees in the Philippines... We are looking at an annual 40% to 50% growth in employee count and that will go linear with our revenues," he added.
Asked how Sutherland will accommodate the increased employee count, Mr. Vellodi said it was premature to speculate if the additional employees would be housed in a new facility or distributed among the existing ones.
After three years since it started local operations, Sutherland now has four facilities in Manila, Clark, Davao and Camarines Sur, employing 5,600 people. This, Mr. Vellodi said, would increase by a minimum of 2,000 people to 7,600 people during the expansion period.
In an interview last Wednesday, Sutherland Country Manager and Vice-President for Service Delivery Craig Bauwens said the company is eyeing new sites in Iloilo and Tarlac.
"Why not expand out of Manila? What we are considering are the level of language skills and the partnership with the local governments," Mr. Bauwens said.
But before investing in a new call center, Mr. Bauwens said the company is first going to complement the required capacity of newly opened centers in Davao and Camarines Sur.
Sutherland has over 21,000 employees worldwide divided in 22 centers in India, the Philippines, US, Canada, Mexico and Eastern Europe. It offers back office and customer support services to Fortune 1,000 clients in sectors like information and technology, retail, financial service, banking, insurance, health care and telecommunications.
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