Ten-Year Review on Offshore Outsourcing Landscape

Offshore outsourcing has come a really long way right back from where it started. Like any other success story, everything has its own humble beginning. As of now, the world has two of the largest business process outsourcing sectors- India and the Philippines. These two countries have been considered as the most ideal places to outsource a business because of its cost and labour effectiveness.

The Philippines have started Business Process Outsourcing way back in 1992. However, the industry has reached its massive success within the last ten years. Started mainly as a call centre industry, the main jobs were all about customer services, transcriptions and data entry. The first BPO company had only 5,000 seats for employees and was located in the National Capital Region of the Philippines. Most of the clients were offshore and from western countries because of the high labour costs. Outsourcing to the Philippines meant huge savings and more opportunities for business expansion as a company may hire more employees with the price they’re paying for only one back home.

The Philippines’ offshore outsourcing performance made a huge impact when it has increased its annual performance of 46% in 2006. This boom is because of the constant demand of offshore call centres. Aside from that, majority of the services offered involve IT professionals performing system design and software application development, as well as application management and maintenance.
As of now, the country’s business process outsourcing performance stays on the positive scale and is continuously increasing. The country already has 20 ideal sites that offer thousands of jobs for its citizens. At the same time, this setup also benefits the client as it projects an easier and faster way to expand a business’ operations.

Offshore outsourcing has done an immensely excellent performance in the past ten years and it still is going on strong. Business analysts in the country believe that this industry is here to stay for a very long time. With the continuous advancement of technology together with the Filipinos’ exceptional work ethics, the country keeps on luring potential clients. Overall, Philippine BPO is forecast to earn between US $11 to 13 billion and to employ 900,000 additional people in 2011.