A Profile for Success: What Makes a BPO Executive Tick?
By Paul Catiang

The rapid expansion of the BPO industry in recent years has generated an ever-growing buzz of excitement in the Philippines. Its expected 70 percent growth for this year alone has inspired a flurry of optimism from the Philippine government and the industry itself. In the face of such growth, however, one needs to take a step back and identify the qualities needed in the leaders who drive the industry. Mario Biscocho, Vice President and Managing Director of John Clements, shares his thoughts on what BPO leadership should be.

The BPO Executive as Manager

“The BPO industry is a service business,” Mr. Biscocho begins. “Therefore, a strong customer-service orientation is of the utmost.” Whether dealing with callers inquiring about their insurance or hospitals in need of quick and accurate transcription services, a BPO organization needs to readily adapt to the needs of its clients, and it all begins with its leader. “You’re dealing with varying pressures, and as the leader of this enterprise, you must be able to know where the client is coming from, appreciate the pressures that they are experiencing, and instead of having an antagonizing position, be able to understand and work with the client so that those expectations and deliverables are met.”

Corollary to this, flexibility and resourcefulness would also come in handy. As a young industry, the BPO industry will be encountering a lot of problems for the first time. “You must be able to glide with the challenges, be flexible, and make do with the resources you have,” Mr. Biscocho adds.

“Cost is a major consideration for locating a BPO operation here in the Philippines and also the reason why clients in the US, Europe and elsewhere are contracting the services of BPO companies in the first place. To achieve cost optimization in running a BPO here, the leader must be able to ensure efficiency in the operations—he must be astutely process-driven. You need to tighten the processes. At the end of the day, what counts is the volume of business that you are able to take in and how you are able to manage the processes and maintain a healthy bottom line,” Mr. Biscocho expounds. This scale applies to any industry, and BPOs also need to protect margins, control processes and take in as much work volume as it can handle. Leaders need to maintain their organizations’ efficiency in order to sustain the industry’s growth.

Managing people is also on the top of any successful BPO executive’s priorities. Expansion and attrition are persistent and very real concerns in the industry, and addressing these falls under the executive’s purview. Mr. Biscocho states, “Managing growth is also important for a BPO executive. Sometimes people get burned out because their leaders are extending them too much, and sometimes too thinly. The pace by which the business runs is so fast, and you need people to go with you to drive the business. These people are probably not yet ripe; the willingness is there, the drive is there, but simply because they’re too young or have had limited depth and breadth of management experience. This is one of the key areas that needs to be addressed by the industry leadership down the road.”

Given the rapid growth of the industry, sometimes premature promotions have become necessary, and executives can only hope that their new middle managers and team leaders can cope with the added responsibilities. They would be well advised to build their teams, upgrade their capabilities and develop their leadership skills to adapt to the ever-increasing demands of the industry. “Once the business has stabilized,” predicts Mr. Biscocho, “that’s when you bring in more people and bank more on the management-leadership experience more than the industry experience. Right now, the demand is for people with industry experience, but later on, you can bring in people such as MBA graduates and other management executives who will eventually move up in the organization.” People from other customer-service industries would also do well here, and they will only need to be taught the nuances and the BPO-specific skills needed.

Right now, the senior leadership is composed of mostly expatriates, and by and large headed by relatively young people from the industry—people in their late twenties and early thirties. “They probably had to learn very quickly, and their learning curve had to have been acute,” Mr. Biscocho muses. For stability and further growth down the road, seasoned leaders and managers would be needed.

The BPO Executive as Advocate

Since one of the challenges of outsourcing is providing the industry with a ready pool of qualified candidates, a BPO executive also needs to promote his industry among its potential employees. “There’s still a huge lack of information dissemination—or acceptance, probably—from the public in general. They view call centers, for example, as just answering telephones, not as a service business that can provide career development opportunities. Attracting talents, cream-of-the-crop graduates of good universities and colleges is a major challenge in the industry,” says Mr. Biscocho.

The BPO Executive as Visionary

“BPO is a people business,” Mr. Biscocho states. “The number one quality in my mind would be leadership: being able to provide direction; being able to espouse and sustain a cohesive group or unit, and moving together in one direction. You are talking here about a lot of people you would have to lead and really attend to, meaning motivate and inspire to work and go beyond what is necessarily required.”

With vision follows the drive and energy needed to pursue it. Passion, according to Mr. Biscocho, is crucial in thriving in this industry. “You must be passionate in what you believe in, and you have to exude it. You have to pursue excellence in meeting your clients’ requirements and go beyond what is expected of you.”

This kind of drive takes on a more nationalistic character, too. “You want to show that the Philippines is the best place for outsourced business, and you want to give jobs to your fellow Filipinos. That’s definitely something to be passionate about.”

At the end of the day, BPO executives are harbingers of a brighter future; they only need to survive and adapt to the challenges of the industry in this stage of its growth. It won’t be long before the fruits of their labor are seen.