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Standing-room Only at John Clements Business Forum
On October 24, 2007, John Clements hosted a standing-room only Business Forum at the Manila Golf Club. Carol Dominguez, President and CEO of John Clements, opened the forum by saying
that the revenues that took the semiconductor industry to achieve in 30 years is projected to take the BPO industry less that a third of the time. The Business Process Association of the Philippines (BPA/P) is projecting the industry to achieve 10 billion dollars and a million people by 2010. The semiconductor industry is now at 32 billion but due to importations, but the value added that is produced in the Philippines amounts to around a third of these revenues. Mr. Robowtham’s talk centered on how HSBC has focused its efforts on placing more Filipinos in their leadership and on training them in the company’s processes, for various reasons. First, the BPO industry in the Philippines experiences a lot of churn in its recruitment, with its professionals going in and out of various call centers, leaving companies in a constant state of flux where their people are concerned. Second, he believes that the biggest way of measuring improvement is in the reduction of attrition. One of the ways of reducing attrition is, according to Mr. Robowtham, in breeding future leaders in-house to stop the churn of talent. Just this year, a group of vice presidents were seconded to out-of-country assignments as part of their leadership training. The adjustment goes both ways; as the local Filipinos learn more about the financial institution’s processes, the company learns more about Philippine culture and how best to support and empower their employees and executives in its context. Mr. Gonzalez’s talk centered on Genpact’s strong points as a third-party outsourcer. He attributed Genpact’s success to the company’s pool of suitable and abundant talent; their operational performance, which he called operationally productive with the lowest cost in terms of labor; the world-class telecommunications infrastructure in their locations; the conducive business environment, which helps in meeting business objectives with reduced risk by project planning, process baseline and solution design; and the strong presence in Genpact’s chosen verticals: financial, manufacturing and services, which are driven by client engagement for business impact. Lastly, Mr. Gonzalez spoke of Genpact’s total solution, which comes in the form of its Virtual Capture Model: Genpact makes it a point to work so closely with its clients that they offer the services of a captive contact center. Mr. Sañez spoke about BPA/P’s Roadmap 2010 and its key messages. He said that offshoring and outsourcing (O&O) is a large and growing industry with the Philippines among the top three country players today, and that there is unparalleled opportunity to grow share from 5 percent of the global market in 2006 to 10 percent by 2010. Revenues are expected to grow from US$ 3.3 billion to US$ 13 billion in revenues—8 percent of GDP. This will increase jobs from 235,000 to 900,000 direct jobs; this accounts for 10 percent of jobs created in the Philippines. Mr. Sañez gave three key themes that need to be addressed with a clear set of initiatives and an institutional framework to sustain momentum: talent, the business environment, and next wave cities. BPA/P aims to promote the industry among the talent pool and have the industry employ up to one million additional recruits by 2010. The association also plans on developing the business environment through several initiatives that will protect and simplify the current incentive process for outsourcing companies, promote the Philippines as an outsourcing destination, and work on investor support through certified setup advisors who will provide a portal and helpdesk for the association and initiate an operational excellence program. BPA/P also aims to provide services that will encourage the development of next wave cities until they have the talent pools and infrastructure needed to support the BPO industry. John Clements regularly sponsors Business Forums to acquaint executives and professionals with the various industries it serves.
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