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Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Philippines: A Comprehensive Guide

Have you heard of BPO companies, but you’re not sure if they can help your organisation? Are you struggling to hire the right people for your business? Do senior staff spend too much time on non-core business activities? Maybe you struggle to fill specialist roles within your company or simply can’t afford to hire them? If you answered “yes” to any of the questions above, then this guide to business process outsourcing is for you.

That’s where BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) can make a huge difference to your operations. Simply put, it is the contracting of the operations and responsibilities of a specific business task, such as web development or contact center operations, to a third-party service provider.

When it comes to business process outsourcing, business owners have found many advantages in choosing the Philippines as an ideal location to hire their remote staff. World class BPO companies in the Philippines in various industries follow this business model.

Outsourced is a leading BPO in the Philippines providing dedicated remote staff and offshore staff services. With a focus on quality, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness, we help businesses streamline their operations, expand their capabilities, and achieve their goals.

What Are BPO Companies?

Quite simply, BPO companies source, recruit and onboard new employees for your company. These employees work full-time offshore (ideally in the Philippines) and are dedicated solely to your organisation. Whether you want a single employee to manage your payroll or an entire call centre managed by the team at Outsourced, business process outsourcing is a proven way to access specialist staff at an affordable price.

In fact, you can save up to 70% of the cost of hiring locally, when you hire any of our BPO services in the Philippines. This is one of the biggest reasons why BPO is one of the fastest growing industries around the world – because it’s a cost efficient way to grow and expand your business without blowing the budget.

But even though cost savings is a huge benefit of outsourcing, it is not the only reason why companies hire BPO companies. In fact, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Quality is an even bigger reason:

BPO Services – Quality Over Cost

In any kind of business, there are two major factors that could spell the difference between failure or success. The first is cost, and the second is quality. Managing cost while maintaining or increasing quality can be a very tough challenge.

business outsourcing

Offshore Outsourcing, also known as offshoring, is one of the best solutions available to business owners who want to become more cost-effective without sacrificing quality. Through this process, companies can provide a top quality service to their clients while keeping their expenses at bay.

Sadly, the most common misconception about outsourcing is that its only purpose is to cut corners on wages. Although this was a primary incentive in the beginning, it’s become an initiative companies have been using without prioritising the cheap labour factor.

For some businesses, the core question is not how BPO services can be implemented to save money, but rather how it can help in making money for the business. Rather than investing the nuts and bolts of creating the necessary foundation and infrastructure in-house, money is seen as better spent on certain outsourced jobs; giving managers and directions more time to focus on important decisions to maximise business growth.

But how exactly are companies using business outsourcing services to drive quality and growth? How does it maximise success? Outsourced has found four main reasons why leading companies have been using remote staff that does not involve cost-cutting reasons:

To tap into global talent for BPO services

Information Technology is a universal knowledge pool and it’s almost foolish to limit your location range to just your local area when recruiting talent. Some of the best developers or web designers may be situated kilometers away and it’s important to recognise this. Don’t let the fact that they’re in a different country deter you from exploring outside of your geographical range.

If you’re thinking about hiring PHP developers, front end development, Java developers and wordpress web developers, start looking at recruitment agencies who provide the necessary assistance to help you tap into this global talent. This will allow you to research effective communication strategies to accommodate offshore staff so you may start building up your business to the level it has the potential to be at with top of the range employees from all over the world.

To build partnerships that both capture value and reduce risk

Even though outsourcing risks have increased over time, the key to limiting these certain situations to exert control and implement strategies to ensure there is little to no communication or operations issues. Viewing external staff as valuable strategic partners helps all parties to work seamlessly together and maximise cooperation, regardless if they are long term or contracted staff. Quarterly reviews together help openly target key concerns from both ends and build a solid corporate relationship.

To establish a unique image to the company name

As new markets emerge, companies need ways to establish a presence before their competitors. Outsourcing IT has become increasingly popular as the digital era presents itself more and more as a dominant figure, and it’s become an essential priority for an outsourcing company to sell a unique brand to their name.

Although outsourcing may not be an uncommon thing to present to clients, the fact that you can offshore less important tasks will allow you to focus your energy on building up a quality company with a one-of-a-kind look, feel and partnership for your clients.

In addition, don’t be afraid to bring in your offshore staff into your advertising strategies. By selling the recruitment strategies, the quality of your offshore staff and how to boost morale despite being in a different country, it shines a positive light on you as a director. It shows potential customers that you don’t see your offshore staff as a way to cut costs, rather you still see them as a valuable part of your team.

This is extremely attractive to customers as it makes them feel good about possibly working with a company who treats their staff with respect and dignity.

To reinforce company culture

People are often under the impression that moving work overseas may dilute or undermine the company culture. However this is far from the case. By outsourcing repetitive administration duties which do not require a staff member to physically be near you allows your in-house team to focus on bigger projects and implementations to increase the face-value of the company.

This is an often popular strategy for the Human Resources department. By shifting the attention away from the menial admin work and offloaded to outsourced staff, your in-house HR team will see a boost in productivity and morale, finding ways to maximise their skills and talents and develop an initiative to power the workforce.

You may also delegate vital business aspects such as knowledge process outsourcing.

What’s The Biggest Benefit of Business Process Outsourcing?

Undoubtedly, the biggest benefit of outsourced BPO is organisational flexibility. By this we mean that you can maintain your core in-house staff, whilst taking advantage of an additional workforce in times of expansion or contraction. You can also hire BPO staff for specific projects and specific timeframes, leaving your core staff to continue with their existing tasks.

What is outsourcing

With a limited budget, investing in Philippines BPO helps your business to cut costs, because you don’t need to hire, train and maintain these employees yourself – Outsourced takes on these roles. BPO process outsourcing also allows your company to temporarily increase your output during periods of increased activity, keeping up with deadlines and meeting market demands.

BPO services in the Philippines are also one of the strategies that have proven very useful to start-up companies, helping them to gain traction in a competitive market by reducing their overall costs. Instead of hiring a large and expensive taskforce, a start-up company can simply hire a small core of in-house staff, supplemented by outsourced staff on as as-needed basis.

Which Industries Can Benefit From Business Process Outsourcing?

The BPO industry provides a vast range of services that are applicable to just about any business. Whether you’re a small start-up company with a limited budget, large national company that wants to expand overseas or a multinational organisation that struggles to find experienced specialists to bring onboard.

The range of BPO services that you can quickly and easily access includes IT BPO, accounting BPO, payroll BPO, operations management BPO, HR BPO, call centre BPO, healthcare BPO, web designer BPO, telemarketing BPO and so on. You can even hire geologists, architects, civil engineers, project managers, sales teams, underwriters, drafters, graphic designers, structural engineers, and the list goes on.

When these Business Processes are Information Technology (IT) based, they are often referred to as Information Technology Enabled Service (ITES) Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). So we get the acronym ITES-BPO.

In ITES-BPO, offshore staff become a natural extension to your teams. You can then utilise their skills and technology to improve your time-to-market and to meet your business requirements.

Whatever non-core services you require to move your business forward, you can access via Business Process Outsourcing.

Can your Philippines business benefit from BPO?

In the Philippines, BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) can be a great benefit to any company that requires skilled staff for labour intensive tasks. BPO process outsourcing frees your senior and in-house staff from a wide range of mundane tasks and allows them to refocus on your business’s core activities, aimed at growing and expanding your business.

As a leading BPO company in the Philippines, Outsourced specialises in finding the right people for the right job, at the right time for the right salaries. With outsourced BPO, the team at Outsourced identifies, recruits and hires skilled staff who work for your company in a variety of different areas.

Philippines BPO – back office recruiting

Back office or admin BPO can include finances and accounting BPO, payroll and data entry BPO, marketing BPO, HR staff BPO, personal assistant BPO, and IT services or data management BPO. Outsourced provides the equipment and infrastructure for these employees who work remotely for your company; admin BPO staff are concerned with the internal operations of your company.

Philippines BPO – external services

BPO services in the Philippines can include staff who interact with your target market, for example call centre BPO, pre and post sales BPO, email support BPO, live chat and telephone support BPO, order taking BPO, complaint handling BPO, event registration BPO, appointment scheduling BPO, and so on. As a BPO outsourcing company, we select only the most qualified and experienced staff for your company.

BPO-philippines

Why The Philippines for Business Process Outsourcing?

The Philippines is one of the world’s leading providers of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services. With its highly skilled and motivated workforce, competitive rates, and excellent infrastructure, it has become a preferred destination for a wide range of BPO activities ranging from customer service to IT support.

Here are some of the reasons why the Philippines is the world’s most popular BPO destination:

The Philippines is the third largest English speaking country in the world (in terms of English speaking population). This level of language proficiency translates into smooth working communication with minimum to zero barriers.
The Philippines every year there are thousands of fresh college graduates particularly in the IT, technology, marketing and administrative field. There are also seasoned workers who have the experience to take charge of teams or manage end-to-end projects. This presents a huge opportunity for foreign businesses to utilize this endless pool of talent.
The Philippines is conducive to the outsourcing industry. The culture is hospitable, and the country welcomes foreign business investors with open arms. This is because business process outsourcing (BPO) contributes a great deal to the country’s yearly gross domestic product. Offshoring is a win-win for both the business investors and the locals who are working in the Philippine BPO field.

Facts About The BPO Industry In The Philippines (Infographic)

Based on research, the BPO industry in the Philippines has an estimated workforce of 1.3 Million workers, according to Nexford University. This figure is growing by approximately 8% to 10% per year since 2019, contributing nearly $30 billion to the economy each year.

The BPO Industry In the Philippines

These statistics highlight the growing BPO industry in the country and the Philippines’ position as a preferred outsourcing hub compared to India or Mexico.

Background of the BPO industry in the Philippines

The Philippine BPO industry began in the early 2000s when the government sought to encourage foreign investment through its Investor Facilitation Service Program. This program was designed to help companies from abroad save money by outsourcing services and production activities to highly skilled local workers.

Since then, a number of major multinationals have established operations in the Philippines due to its well-educated and trained workforce, excellent infrastructure, competitive rates, and generous government incentives.

The BPO industry in the Philippines now covers a wide range of services including customer service, back-office operations, telemarketing, website support, IT support, digital marketing, animation, healthcare services such as medical transcription and billing, and software development.

Why The BPO Industry Is Thriving in the Philippines

BPO in the Philippines The main reason why the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry is thriving in the Philippines is due to a combination of factors:

Firstly, the Philippines has a large pool of highly educated, English-speaking professionals who possess strong communication and technical skills. This makes the country an attractive destination for international companies seeking to outsource their operations.
Secondly, the Philippines offers cost advantages compared to other outsourcing destinations, such as India. The labor costs in the Philippines are relatively lower, while maintaining high-quality output. This cost-effectiveness has been a significant driver for foreign companies to set up their BPO operations in the country.
Thirdly, the Philippine government has been supportive of the BPO industry’s growth by providing various incentives, such as tax breaks and infrastructure development. These initiatives have encouraged both local and foreign investments, creating a favorable business environment.
Fourth, the time zone compatibility with Western countries has been a significant advantage for the Philippines. This enables companies to provide round-the-clock customer support and services, enhancing efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Overall, the Philippines’ skilled workforce, cost advantages, government support, and time zone compatibility have played key roles in the thriving BPO industry in the country.

Humble Beginnings of the Philippines BPO Industry and Its Growth

The BPO industry in the Philippines began to gain momentum in the early 2000s, fueled by favorable government policies, a skilled workforce, and competitive costs. Back then, the country faced economic challenges, including high unemployment rates. However, the BPO sector provided a lifeline by creating job opportunities and driving economic growth, becoming a vital pillar of the Philippine economy.

One of the earliest instances of BPO in the Philippines can be traced back to 1992 when the company ICT Group (now known as Sykes) established its presence in the country. This pioneering move set the foundation for the BPO industry’s growth, eventually paving the way for numerous global companies to establish their operations in the Philippines.

The rise of the BPO industry in the Philippines gained significant traction a decade or so later. In fact, BPO has grown 46% annually since 2006, led by the demand for lower labor costs, a highly skilled and educated workforce, and excellent English proficiency.

As companies sought to leverage cost-effective yet skilled labor, the Philippines emerged as a prime destination for outsourcing. The availability of a highly educated English-speaking workforce, favorable government support, and improved telecommunications infrastructure propelled the industry’s rapid growth. This upward trajectory continued to attract global players, solidifying the Philippines’ position as a BPO powerhouse in the international market.

BPO services in the Philippines shines brighter in recent years

Among countries known for housing outsourced centres, it is the Philippines that have caught the attention of companies all over the world as a resourceful and valuable hub of high quality and affordable offshore staff. In fact, the Philippines has already surpassed India as the largest Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry in the world.

IT BPO Services in the Philippines Shines Brighter

Globally dubbed as the world’s BPO solutions capital, the Philippines displays a number of characteristics beyond the cheap labour costs that make the country shine above the rest, and an attractive preference for multinational companies looking at BPO services.

- Highest English-proficiency in the SEA. The Philippines is renowned for a highly westernised culture. With this naturally comes an advanced proficiency in written and spoken English, with a staggering 95% literacy rate, making it the third largest English-speaking country in the world. However what wins over global companies is their clear adopted American accent, which overcomes a significant language barrier and social stigma that foreign outsourcing presents, something that is hugely advantageous over its neighbours in the South East Asian region. This makes this particular country an attractive location for remote staff and outsourcing IT services.

- Success-driven workers attract global as well as start up companies. Alongside the skill, there has been a shift in mindset amongst the young Filipino workers. Traditionally, BPO services were limited to high-volume yet low priced work which was more than satisfactory if it meant making ends meet. However today, workers these days breaking into the IT outsourcing industry come from a new creative and entrepreneurial generation, seeking a deeper connection with innovation-driven and mission focused companies. This is significant news, especially for start ups looking to build their company from the ground up without breaking the bank. Filipino workers are proving themselves to be valuable partners in the growing tech industry, something that start-ups are beginning to notice when looking for a business process outsourcing company.

- Philippines is a fertile testing group for products and services. Given the Philippines’ unique strengths, specifically in BPO outsourced IT services, product and QA managers and found that it was relatively easy to use the Philippines as a testing ground to deploy and iterate new applications and products without any communication barriers. This is especially helpful when catering for the wider South East Asia market as the Philippines share a common ethnicity to its surrounding neighbours without the cultural barriers between them and the Western world.