India vs the Philippines: Where is the Future of Outsourcing?

For years, India has led the global outsourcing industry primarily through its huge pool of IT graduates and British-influenced culture. Today, more and more American companies as well as other multinationals are transferring their operations from India to a driven BPO competitor from Southeast Asia: the Philippines. While India still has the larger share of the pie, the Philippines is rapidly catching up to the outsourcing giant because of its crucial key advantages: better infrastructure, customer-service-oriented workforce, and deep appreciation, understanding and effective practice of the English language and American culture.

We pit India and the Philippines head-to-head to know which is the wiser choice for outsourcing or offshoring operations and who has the future in their hands.

Great Numbers – The main strength of India is its numbers. Every year, 120,000 IT professionals enter the Indian workforce because of the education system that emphasizes science and mathematics. Bandwidth in India is also commendable due to their private undersea cable and the state-owned Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited. Telecom rates are quite low as a result of the industry’s privatization. Furthermore, software development remains a very lucrative business in India, attracting established IT companies such as Microsoft, IBM, HP and others.

Suffering Quality – For all its advantages, India may be quickly losing its momentum as the leader of the BPO industry. According to a survey conducted by Kelly Services Inc. with headquarters in Michigan, India is losing its position as the number one choice of US companies for backroom operations. These companies are supposedly looking at the Philippines first because of the country’s superior quality in output. India also has a problem with its staff turnover at 31%, with 67% of its workforce transferring to other competing call centers. As a consequence, staff tenure in India is staggeringly low at only 11 months. South Korea has the longest staff tenure with 24 months, followed by the Philippines at 19 months.

Poorer English Accent – More importantly, while many Indians do speak English, their accent is still too thick, which may result in difficult conversations with frustrated customers. This could be one of the factors in the decision by Tampa-based Sykes Enterprises to move some of its call center operations from Bangalore to the Philippines, as reported by The Motely Fool, a commercial website about investment and finance, and the Tampa Tribune

Ideal Environment – The Philippines is fast catching up to India in terms of servicing the growing BPO market. Compared to India, the Philippines’ telecom infrastructure is vastly better and companies are more safely set up and maintained because of the stable environment, increasing economic incentives and highly skilled human resources. American, European and Australian companies that have already outsourced to the country are currently saving 40% to 60%, which translates to boosted profits and capacity for expansion.

Top-notch Workforce – There is also no debate over which workforce produces output with the higher quality. For instance, in terms of call center operations, Kelly Services in Michigan found out that the Philippines has the highest agent productivity in the region. Filipino call center agents handle an average of 107 outbound and 98 inbound calls in a day compared to Indian call center agents who can only handle 78 outbound and 73 inbound calls per day. In fact, looking at the bigger picture, the Philippines trumps India when it comes to the general quality of its workforce. The Philippines is currently ranked number one in the availability of knowledge-based jobs and workers in the whole world. Moreover, in terms of labor quality, the Philippines is ranked 4th among all Asian nations as a study by US-based Meta Group concluded.

More Westernized Professionals – The key to the Philippines’ recent hammering of India may be its deeply entrenched American influence. The country was colonized by Americans for 48 years and today, Filipinos live highly Westernized lifestyles, involving watching American TV shows and movies and speaking the English language in all its schools and branches of government. Filipinos are prized by their American employers by their excellent American accent, which is oftentimes indistinguishable from real American English. The customer-service orientation of the Filipino labor force also proves to be a huge plus, as attested to by Mitchel Chang, Philippine site manager of Tokyo antivirus software company, Trend Micro, which employs over a thousand people in the country. According to him, Filipino professionals are service-oriented, responsive and passionate and speak strong English.

Literacy Rate – The high quality of the Philippines’ workforce is sustained by its impressive literacy rate of 93.4% according to the United Nations Development Programme. India pales in comparison with a mere grade of 61.0%.

Diverse Outsourcing Opportunities – Like India, the Philippines offers offshore software development, call center operations, Web development, and other IT services. But it doesn’t end there. Over the recent years, the Philippines has been doing excellently in the global animation market, which is growing because of the increasing popularity of 2D and 3D animated shows, movies and games. Major animation studios like Marvel, Disney, Warner Brothers and Hanna Barbera have already established offices in the Philippines, as well as Japanese anime studios like Toei.

Another very promising industry is outsourced medical transcription, which thrives in the immense medical talent pool of the Philippines. The large number of nurses, medical technologists, doctors and specialized medical transcriptionists in the country has been able to meet the increased demands of US hospitals, which are now required by the law to convert medical records into data format.

Numerous large companies have already set up operations in the Philippines, such as MSN-Microsoft, AT&T, IBM, Washington Mutual, Sallie Mae, Expedia, Intuit, Transunion, Alltell and Bellsouth. More and more small and medium-sized American companies have also chosen the Philippines as their BPO headquarters of choice.

With all of these positive qualities going for the Philippines, all signs point to the tide of battle shifting soon in its favour. Reading from all present indications, the future of outsourcing or offshoring is clearly not India, but the Philippines.

Offshoring Inc. was on the hunt for the most brilliant PHP Programmers in the country once again during the 2010 emPHPeror Cup PHProgramming Competition last April 24, 2010. The competition was arranged by PHP User Group Philippines (PHP UGPH), a non-profit organization of Filipino programmers and a very active partner of Offshoring Inc. Representatives from Offshoring Inc. attended the colourful event to entice the country’s most intelligent and creative PHP Programmers to join the growing world-class team of Offshoring Inc.

“It was a successful event with 18 competing teams… a total of 42 PHP Programmers, both students and professionals,” said Cherrie Ann B. Domingo, President of PHP UGPH. Sponsored by Microsoft Philippines, the fierce contest awarded 5 winners with cool cash prizes. Participants had the option to go solo or team up as a pair or trio in order to bag the top prize.

Offshoring Inc.’s delegation consisted of Billy de Guzman, Marketing Specialist and Executive Assistant, and a group of IT students from different schools currently fulfilling their on-the-job (OJT) requirements at Offshoring Inc.’s headquarters. Through activities like these, the trainees not only learn how to practice their IT skills but also to connect with other IT professionals and enthusiasts in the country. Offshoring Inc.’s delegation was warmly welcomed to the event and Billy even received the official committee t-shirt from PHP UGPH. Offshoring’s representatives handed out flyers and talked to a couple of interested individuals about how the best Programmers, Web Designers, and other IT professionals in the Philippines are currently serving clients from around the globe through the company’s pioneer staff leasing services.

PHP UGPH has worked with Offshoring Inc. in several promotional activities to pool together the most brilliant Programmers in the country, as well as further boost their interest and skills in different programming languages. The organization provides support for LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) and open-source enthusiasts in the Philippines and actively supports the development and use of PHP and FOSS (Free/Open-Source Software) web-based applications through events such as the 2010 emPHPeror Cup PHProgramming Competition.

The powerhouse duo of Offshoring Inc. and PHP UGPH is a critical shelter for both young programming students and well-experienced professionals in the Philippines. The two organizations are consistently looking for more opportunities to join forces and push the country as one of the global leaders in programming.

Offshoring Inc. is pushing the envelope once again in the outsourcing enterprise by trying to reach out to more prospective clients around the globe. This time, Offshoring Inc. is offering the famous 5-Day Free Trial without signing any contracts or agreements!

Want to test how effective and efficient Offshoring’s highly skilled professionals are? Avail of the 5-Day Free Trial now and start on your path to making huge profits in no time.

You can check out Offshoring Inc.’s website at www.offshoring.com to see our available staff. Choose an employee and view his profile to see if he fits your requirements. If he has the qualifications you’re looking for, contact our Sales Department at sales@offshoring.com to avail of the 5-Day Free Trial during which you can assign some tasks to your chosen employee to see if he can indeed work for you.

With the high level of our staff hired through a strict screening process, we’re sure you’ll get what you need from our staff!

Here are very short profiles of our available staff. For a more detailed lists of their proficiencies and experience, click on their pictures.

Kent Bryan V. Blanche is a Junior Media Manager. He’s highly skilled at reviewing and editing videos, assigning optimized keywords and coordinating with a team to resolve technical issues. He’s also very adept at creating social media accounts and submitting optimized videos.

Carlito A. Casas is a Senior Writer. He’s seasoned in writing detailed and creative reviews, descriptions, copies and similar materials. His intensive Web research results in SEO articles that quickly climb search engine results pages (SERPs). You’ll have no difficulty communicating to Carlito because he has above-average written and oral English skills.

Glenn Evan B. Comanda is a Junior SEO Specialist who has improved rankings of various sites through various off-page optimization strategies. He also qualifies as an SEO Specialist with expansive knowledge in social media optimization, article syndication, keyword assignment, link wheel program, blogging and metatags.

Anne Maisie M. De Leon is a Junior Writer. Anne has a solid Mass Communication educational background. She has written several creative and high-ranking “how-to” articles for different clients using her fluent English grammar skills. Anne is knowledgeable in MS Office applications such as Word, Excel and Powerpoint.

Levi D. Jimenez is an Intermediate Graphic Designer. He’s skilled in translating and converting landing page designs using 5 different languages: French, German, Italian, Spanish and English. His expertise includes Macromedia Dreamweaver, Adobe Photoshop, Image Ready CS, HTML and CSS. Levi is a seasoned Web Designer and has designed numerous banners and templates for various clients.

There are only a handful of other tried and tested outsourcing companies out there who can make this offer, so go grab it now. See why hundreds of clients all around the world have boosted their profits and production through the world-class staff-leasing services of Offshoring Inc.

I've never rely solely on rankings even before the Personalized Search was implemented, although no matter how much I try to explain to website owners that it's not an accurate metric, they always “force” me to report the ranking details. What I want them to see is the conversion itself. Rankings are absolutely useless even before – if the traffic they gave you is not converting! This is true unless your website is solely made for Adsense earnings and do not contain real value to the users.

The ultimate purpose of an entire SEO campaign is sales conversion. As a website owner, your focus should be on this be-all, end-all purpose of search engine optimization. So next time, if you happen to receive a monthly report from your SEO Specialists, ask them if your website's visitors are really relevant and are converting and not just sucking your precious bandwidth up. If not, hammer them to do more or you're probably paying for nothing.

Glenn is currently in Offshoring Inc.’s inventory. If you want to try Glenn’s tried-and-tested SEO skills, contact our Sales Department now at sales@offshoring.com

Facebook is one of the most useful tools to launch a search engine marketing (SEM) campaign to boost your website’s rankings and create demand for the products / services that you offer. Professionals like SEM Specialists have the skills and tools to use social networking sites such as Facebook to earn money for you.

If you want to get started on your SEM campaign, here are two ways by which you can turn Facebook into a goldmine.

Get as many friends as you can – On Facebook, your Friends are potential customers as well as vehicles to spread word about your business. Get as many friends as you can by joining groups and then sending out friend requests to members of such groups. You may also create new interest groups for things like comic books, for example. You can then search using your surname as keyword and send out friend requests to the results.

Start creating pages – Facebook pages should be specific to your business or a particular product line of yours. For example, if you’re selling cupcakes, one page would be about your brand while the other is about your best-seller, such as red velvet cupcakes, for instance. These pages rank on Google although you should not rely on them for your site’s search engine optimization (SEO).

Create new groups – People on Facebook love groups, and if you build a specific group for one of your best-sellers (red velvet cupcake, for example), you can expect them to join. You can increase the activity in your group by adding relevant photos and videos or starting topics of interest to the members. You can completely control what happens in your group as you’re the admin, so don’t worry about members who want to mess up your group.

Invite friends and be more active – You’ve got to invest in time to be successful in SEM. Spend more time inviting friends to join your groups or commenting on others’ activities to increase the chances of people visiting your pages and joining. Remember also that all your posts will be shown on the “Home” page of all your members’ accounts, so always post different stuff so you’re always on their home page.

Stay busy but go slow – The last thing you want to happen is to be considered as a spammer by Facebook and kicked out. To avoid this, stay busy but try to go slow. Don’t send out more than 30 friend requests in one day and be satisfied with creating 2 pages and 2 groups every week.

SEM Specialists can perfectly handle the gradual way of using Facebook for your SEM campaign. However, if you don’t have the time to wait for the gradual results of your SEM campaign, then you can choose from two options which are available to you, which are Facebook Social Ads and Developer Applications.

Facebook Social Ads – Facebook Social Ads are even better than Google PPC in terms of its demographics. Use Social Ads to boost the page traffic of products and services you offer both in and out of Facebook.

Developer Applications – You need programmers as well as SEM Specialists in order to employ this strategy effectively. Senior Programmers can insert advertisements directly into their applications. People absolutely love entertaining and funny applications that can turn viral. If your application can sell for $1 or $2, then you will already gain huge profits by turning viral on Facebook.

Facebook is just one of the many tools SEM Specialists can use to boost your website’s ranking and make your brand more popular. Start your SEM campaign now and reap great rewards!

The general election in the Philippines on May 10, 2001 is crucial for it will determine the 15th President of the Republic of the Philippines, along with other leaders in the Philippine government. History has shown that the Philippine President has enormous influence on how much development the country achieves and where that development focuses on.

In case you’re wondering who are in the running in the coming presidential race, here’s a brief rundown of their stances on various issues.

Education: Additional Two Years?

Senator Jamby Madrigal is the only woman in the race, but she fights fiercely, especially on the issue of OFWs. According to her, the present administration had virtually legalized trafficking of OFWs to Middle East countries through the Omnibus Code. She intends to repeal the legislation if she becomes president.

The next Philippine President has a ton of other issues to deal with, and someone like Senator Manuel “Manny” Villar, Jr., the second placer in current polls, might just be the man for the job. Senator Villar has authored the most pieces of legislation among all candidates, covering a plethora of issues, including health care, housing, social services, environment and education. The final name on the list, Jesus Nicanor “Nick” Perlas, a technical consultant and resource person to the government and several NGOs, aims to touch on the same issues as Villar, although he hasn’t been in a position to actually author a piece of legislation to address these.

The future of the Philippines is at stake whoever wins in this year’s elections. Hopefully, the first ever automated elections in the country will be a success and the next one to hold the highest office in the country will lead the nation to a brighter tomorrow.