IBM establishes training facility in Philippines

IBM Philippines and the Board of Investments (BoI) have signed a memorandum of understanding for the establishment of a training facility for multilingual BPO workforce. BoI managing head Cristino L. Panlilio said the project called ‘Philippines as the Global Leader in Multilingual BPO’ seeks to further enhance the multilingual Filipino talents for BPO posts.

Panlilio said that because of the facility, IBM expects to be able to ramp up its BPO operation in the country to 3,000 agents before end this year from the current almost 1,000 people. “The trained talents could find jobs in BPO companies with the need for other foreign languages but the IBM is the biggest catcher,” he said.

Proservartner Point of View: Following the report by IBM last year that described the Philippines were the no 1 location for BPO, we were quite cynical in concluding for IBM a focus away from India and towards the Philippines. Interestingly enough, IBM have been increasing their focus in the Philippines and this acquisition has three key implications to the market:

• IBM aim to develop significant language capability in the Philippines to support European languages such as French, German and Spanish. The plan for the region is to be a viable alternative to Eastern Europe for certain language requirements
• Where there is an opportunity to do so, IBM will be pushing the Philippines model to their client base and expect their Philippine footprint to increase faster than any other over the next 18 months
• Rather than locating deliver centres in particular regions based on language dependencies, providers are now playing “market maker” by developing the language capabilities in low cost regions. Historically, buyers pay a significant premium for European language provision (including French, German, Spanish, Dutch and Nordic languages) – this can be reduced by significant capability developed in regions that have provide low cost but not renowned for their European language skills