IT-BPM seen key economic driver

The head of the Information Technology and Business Process Association of the Philippines or IBPAP, Jack Madrid maintained that the Informatiorn Technology-Business Process Management, or IT-BPM, sector will remain the Philippine economy's essential pillar, given its large contribution to the government coffers for its nation-building.

"This is an important message that we always communicate to our partners in the government and to our employees and to their families. What we do is more than what people think as we are not just call center or contact center work."

"The nature of what we do range from basic customer service to more complex industries such as healthcare, engineering, IT software development, and even creative industries such as animation and game development, "Madrid said in an interview with the DAILY TRIBUNE's online digital show 'Straight Talk'.

"We do not just do call center work and I think we need to respect the kind of work that we do even more than before, more than what people think it is," continued Madrid.,

Export service revenues

Madrid said in terms of export service revenues, the IT-BPM sector this year earned a growth rate of 8.8 percent, which translates to an estimated $35.4 billion in revenue, exceeding the global industry's 7.7 percent average.

"We started 2023 with 1.7 million direct jobs for Filipinos, while by revenue, in 2022 the industry generated $32.5 million, the second largest source of foreign exchange to the country, next to OFW remittances. But we are almost at par with them," he said.

"This year, we will grow over $35 million in revenues," according to Madrid, coming from close to 2,000 IT-BPM firms that are operating in the country.

US biggest client

GHe said the United States remains the Philippines' biggest client, in which over two-thirds of businesses come from US companies, serving US customers.

"That is why as the flagship association, we oversee all the different industry verticals. But you will be amazed at the number of multinational companies that have been doing very successful shared services operations here in the Philippines. You name the multinational, they are here whether it is in banking, financial services, or healthcare. Even energy. They are all here," he said.

According to Madrid, healthcare companies doing business in the country are at 15 to 20 percent, while the creative side has the smallest workforce, but is considered a sector that has large potential.

"The creative side will be quite a bit smaller than that in terms of number of employees but it's still a sector that has large potential. I think another significant sector would be the global in-house centers. These are all the multinationals who have moved their back-office operations here. Hard to classify by industry because they belong to many different industries. And then, of course, the contact center sector is still the biggest one. About 60 percent of our employees are in the contact center sector and that includes many multinational and global BPO companies who have set up operations here," Madrid explained.

Caring for employees

As contact center employees work at odd times, Madrid said the mental well-being of their employees is very important to the industry, which goes along with their aim to make the industry continue growing.

"I'm happy that our membership and our industry players are paying a much stronger focus on the mental health and well-being of the employees. Our industry relies primarily on human capital. This is very much a people's industry. It is the bedrock of how our industry has grown. So, this topic is very important. I think it's all about balance. I think balancing the demands of work and personal life is very important and nowhere was this more evident than the challenging years of the pandemic, wherein we had to mobilize our employees from working in the office to a work-from-home setup. Something that was not done before," he said.

Madrid said working from home is not as easy for Filipinos as it is for the rest of the world, as Filipinos don't typically have a home office, unlike Americans and Europeans.

Challenging transition

"So, the transition for us was quite challenging. Many of our employees don't have very big homes with an extra room to be used as an office. So, I think I spent a lot of time describing this to investors and locators because it demonstrates the agility, resilience, and survival instinct of the Filipino people," he said.

"And I think we have shown to the world that we were able to perform the work in those challenging years of Covid without any impact on productivity or customer satisfaction. We were able to perform the work so much that there was even more demand from our customers for more jobs to be done here in the Philippines," he continued.

Madrid said that during the pandemic, the ITBPM industry grew as an industry to 255,000 new jobs and will continue to grow.

The Philippines is a clear number in terms of ITBPM, next to India, but the Philippines is the number one nation when it comes to delivering customer experience, according to Madrid.