Friday, June 29, 2007 BPOs need higher investments in technology to keep ahead
THE need for the Philippine call center industry to go beyond offering voice services will help the country inch above Vietnam and gain global competitiveness.
This is why Marnie Tolosa, Microsoft Philippines Inc. principal consultant, is urging call center firms, including start-ups, to invest more on available technologies in the market today.
“Firms must invest in technology vis-a-vis customer service,” Tolosa said.
Apart from location and the pool of human resource personnel, principals in the call center business are also on the look out for a strong technology infrastructure base, he said.
“Ninety percent of calls are technology driven so the technology used among call center agents should be up-to-date if the Philippines wants to be above its competitors,” Tolosa said.
Allocation
In an interview yesterday during the Cebu Business Summit sponsored by Microsoft, Tolosa said small-scale players may allocate about 10 to 15 percent of their revenues investing on technology and innovation.
Medium- to high-scale firms must “extensively” apportion 30 to 50 percent of their revenues to improving current infrastructure and innovation, he said during the summit which focused on the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry.
“Progressive BPOs have extensively invested on technology in the first base of their operations,” he said.
“From voice calls, they can now support a full-line business process to include billing, credit limit checks, etc,” he added.
Tolosa said that from just mere voice service, the growth segment of the country’s call centers would include other back-end operations like handling bank transactions, among others.
“This multiplies the company’s revenue potentials,” he said.
While there are many technology innovations applicable in the BPO industry, the most commonly adopted and in demand among firms are the performance and workforce management, active directory and Microsoft’s “Dream Screen,” he said.
Solutions
Performance and workforce management assists in analyzing an agent’s performance level while an active directory allows one to directly open all needed applications in a single sign-on, reducing handling time.
Tolosa described the “Dream Screen” as a tool where information is replicated in different applications.
“Microsoft has a wide range of call center desktop solutions. We have a content management server that manages all possible contents needed by call center companies,” he said.
Tolosa said that as more call center firms and BPOs, in general, invest in technology, the Philippines will have a good competitive advantage over India and Vietnam.
With the current market conditions in India, BPO firms, mostly call center companies, have started moving their back-end operations to the Philippines seeing a huge potential to grow and expand their business here.
However, industry leaders said during the Cebu Information Communication Technology 2007 International Conference and Exhibition last Tuesday that the Philippines must not be “too complacent” over Vietnam since the latter is seen to be an emerging competitor for BPO investments. (MMM)
