A GLOBAL business process outsourcing (BPO) company in Davao City noted a growth in the BPO industry with the growth of their teams, accounts, and clients that they handle.
Concentrix Davao Site Director Ellen Jane Ferenal-Garcia, who was a guest at the Habi at Kape at Abreeza Ayala Mall Wednesday, said their Concentrix branch at Damosa I.T. Park, Lanang, has yet to build a 450 seating capacity facility that will accommodate 900 agents.
Concentrix, one of the pioneering BPO companies in Davao City, had been in the industry for more than 10 years.
“We’re already exploring, looking at other buildings because right now we have active communication with at least three clients from the USA who visited us and have actually shortlisted us to be part of those who might qualify to be their vendor. The decision is something we are waiting for for the next month or so,” said Garcia.
She said some of their clients are ending their contracts with BPO companies in Costa Rica and India to transfer to Davao instead.
Garcia said during the presscon at Habi at Kape in Abreeza Ayala Malls Wednesday, that at the moment they have more than a thousand existing employees and they are catering to major clients from different parts of the globe especially America, Canada, Australia, and Japan.
Concentrix was invited for a business to business dialogue, together with other business establishments in Davao, during the visit of Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Davao City.
Garcia said Concentrix felt grateful to be the only BPO company invited for such an event. Through this, she said, Japan investors present during the event had started to take more notice of Davao City especially of the BPO industry.
“They never realized that we have such a big Japanese resource in Davao. If they hire a BPO in Japan, they actually spend more than hiring a Japanese-speaking agent based in Davao. So that has opened a lot of opportunities for us because they realized they can really do business outside of Japan and Davao is a very viable option because we have a very good resource. We have a very big pool of work force in Davao City,” said Garcia.
She said the change and better knowledge that people have now about the BPO industry is also one of the major reasons of its growth.
“It’s very different now maybe because a lot of people are more knowledgeable what the BPO industry is. When I started, it was a big challenge because people had very little knowledge of what the industry has. They asked why you would work as a phone operator when you have a degree. But I think those days have gone by. The people are pretty much educated of what kind of work we do. Not everyone can work in a call center. It was so different now from how it was 10 years ago,” she said.
With the increasing demand for workforce, Garcia said anyone can actually apply to be a call center agent even high school graduates, as long as they can speak the English language. She added that their company provides the appropriate training.
Asked on President Donald Trump's pronouncement to pull-out American investments in foreign countries, Garcia is confident that this is highly unlikely.
She said American clients will actually lose in the long term if they decide to bring their business onshore. She reasoned out that this is the reason why companies invested offshore because they were not gaining profits in their home base.