“Not only is the infrastructure highly reliable, but staff demand wages that, while rising, are almost incomparably low.”

Nestled two hundred miles south of Taiwan and less than twenty miles east of Malaysia, lies a collection of islands in the South China Sea that is fast becoming marketing’s next great outpost. With a population of 87 million and the third largest English speaking population in the world, the number of foreign companies setting up or using the intellectual property of the Philippine’s work force is changing from a trickle to a stampede. Accenture, Amex, AOL, Citibank, CMG, Dell, IBM and Nortel are just a few names to have set up front and back-end operations in the last few years. 

The reasons are straightforward.  The Philipines has one of the highest literacy rates in the world (94%) and a workforce that, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, consistently ranks as among the best in Asia.  Add the fact that the country supplies 385,000 new young professional graduates each year as well as churning out 70,000 IT specialists, the outsourcing prospects are immense.

For a British company, the Philippines offers an outstanding outsourcing location at a fraction of normal costs.  Not only is the infrastructure highly reliable, but the eager and highly educated workforce demand wages that, whilst rising, are almost incomparably low.  All of this combines to make the Philippines hugely attractive not only for private companies but also UK Government departments.  Even some DVLA back-end data operations are processed in Manila.

Surprisingly, many UK companies have been slow to embrace the Philippines and have preferred to either bring back-end operations in-house or to outsource them to India.  Yes, India is a little cheaper, however the country has a number of unique problems that the Philippines simply doesn’t suffer from. In fact India now considers the Philippines to be its most serious competitor despite the island nation having less than a 10th of India’s population and a higher cost of operation.

For full service bureau operations, the advantages of the Philippines are so obvious that we have chosen the country to host our data centre.  In addition, virtual and fixed IP VPN links allow us to manage UK data operations and facilities remotely, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.  Factor in the significant cost efficiencies coupled with the high calibre of personnel it provides a proposition which is very difficult to ignore. Now all that needs to be done is for someone to fix the traffic congestion!

Author:  Barry Baker, Operations Manager
Source:  Precision Marketing Magazine
Publication Date:  25 August 2006