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Cebu Daily News

CEBU CITY, Philippines – Eight call center workers who lost their jobs a few days before Christmas have filed a complaint of illegal dismissal against the company before the National Labor Relations Commission in Central Visayas (NLRC-7).

NLRC-7 Administrative Officer Fe Cabigon said the employees who are in their 20s filed the complaint against SL Temps which holds office in General Maxilom Avenue in Cebu City.

She said the workers claimed they were only informed about their status last week.

The workers are seeking separation pay and 13th month pay.

“No reason was given why they were dismissed but it could be due to the global economic crisis,” Cabigon said.

She said the workers told her that more dismissed workers will file a complaint in the coming days.

Among those who filed the complaint are Randylou Vincent Regidor, Glenise Paulo, Roxanne Senarillos, Leslie Ann Yu, Victor Daria Jr., Cindy Bautista, Daniel Gavas and Sabrina Simonette Tabano.

The case was raffled off on Tuesday to executive labor arbiter Julie Rendoque.

Cabigon said the arbiter would summon both parties for a hearing next year.

The incident comes amid difficult times for several companies which cater to foreign markets, particularly in the Mactan Export Processing Zone (MEPZ) in Lapu-Lapu City.

Around 100 workers of the Lear Automotive Services in the MEPZ area filed a complaint of illegal dismissal, saying they were sacked without prior notice.

Other companies implemented shortened work days and work rotation to cut costs and sustain their operations. /Correspondent Jhunnex Napallacan

Jerome Aning
Philippine Daily Inquirer

MANILA, Philippines–Despite the lingering global economic crisis, major Philippine business process outsourcing (BPO) providers, mostly contact center operators, have been aggressively recruiting new staff, a labor group said on Sunday.

According to a survey by the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP), at least 23 BPO providers are still hiring new personnel, mainly contact center agents as well information-technology and administrative support staff.

“A number of BPO providers are drafting additional staff on account of expansion, while others are requiring fill-in personnel due to attrition, or the loss of employees,” TUCP secretary-general Ernesto Herrera said in a statement.

Among the firms enlisting new staff are the following:

Aegis PeopleSupport Inc. Affiliated Computer Services Inc. APAC Customer Services Inc. Convergys Philippines Services Corp. Dell International Services Philippines Inc. Deutsche Knowledge Services Pte. Ltd. eTelecare Global Solutions Inc. Hinduja TMT Ltd. HSBC Electronic Data Processing Philippines Inc. ICT Marketing Services Inc. JP Morgan Chase Bank N.A. Philippine Customer Care Center NCO Group Inc. NuComm International Inc. PeopleTalk Contact Solutions Inc. Stellar Global Solutions Inc. Synnex-Concentrix Corp. Telephilippines Inc. TeleTech Holidngs Inc. Telus International Philippines Inc. VXI Global Solutions Inc. West Contact Services Inc. WinSource Solutions Inc.

Herrera cited the case of APAC, which has been in the process of recruiting 1,000 agents and support staff, including those meant for deployment to a new contact center in Tacloban City.

He also cited Deutsche Knowledge Services, which has been recruiting 900 financial, business and accounting associates to provide back office support to its global financial operations, as well as ICT Marketing Services, in the process of hiring 400 agents, including those meant for deployment to a new contact center in Cabanatuan City.

Most of the firms require only two years of college education or “some college” for prospective agents. He said even high school graduates with exceptional English or foreign language skills could readily qualify for employment, according to Herrera.

The TUCP survey also shows that a number of BPO providers have a “desperate need” for contact center agents or back office staff with bilingual or multilingual skills.

Among these firms enlisting bilingual or multilingual staff are PeopleSupport, Convergys, Synnex and Telephilippines. They are scouting for full-time or part-time staff that can speak Spanish, Cantonese, French or Japanese.

WinSource is also looking for electronic mail support agents who can write in Spanish, Korean or Japanese, as well as outbound contact center agents who can speak Mandarin, Spanish, Korean or Japanese.

Meanwhile, the global manufacturing and technology giant Emerson Electric Co. is also looking for in-house contact center staff that can speak French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, German, Finnish and/or Russian, according to the TUCP.

Mary Ann Ll. Reyes
Philippine Star

The 25 leading operators of contact centers in the Philippines reported P68.5 billion or $1.67 billion in aggregate revenues in 2007.

According to Catanduanes Rep. Joseph Santiago who chairs the House information and communications technology committee, “this is the first time that we’ve actually managed to put together the reported revenues generated by some of the largest players in the contact center sector.

Santiago, a leading congressional supporter of the country’s information technology-enabled service industries, noted that the P68.5 billion does not cover the entire contact center sector

The former National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) chief said he could easily name at least 25 other contact center operators here whose 2007 revenues were not readily available, and were thus not included in the list.

He said the P68.5 billion in combined revenues reported by the 25 large contact center operators translated to $1.67 billion at the end 2007 exchange rate of $1 to 41.14.

“This gives us a better sense as to how large the contact center sector, which is driving the broader business process outsourcing industry, has become,” Santiago said.

“To put the $1.67 billion in perspective, overseas Filipino workers sent home through the banking system an average of $1.37 billion monthly from January to September this year. So the $1.67 billion is easily more than one month’s worth of remittances,” he pointed out.

The top 25 contact center operators and their corresponding 2007 revenues are; eTelecare Global Solutions Inc. (P7.1 billion); Sykes Asia Inc. (P6.4 billion); PeopleSupport Philippines Inc. (P6.1 billion); Convergys Philippines Services Corp. (P6 billion); HSBC Electronic Data Processing Philippines Inc. (P3.6 billion);

ICT Marketing Services Inc. (P3.6 billion); Telus International Philippines Inc. (P3.3 billion); IBM Business Services Inc. (P2.7 billion); Advanced Contact Solutions Inc. (P2.6 billion); Telephilippines Inc. (P2.5 billion); ClientLogic Corp. (P2.5 billion);

Dell International Services Philippines Inc. (P2.4 billion); INFONXX Philippines Inc. (P2.3 billion); Deutsche Knowledge Services Pte. Ltd. (P2 billion); Cyber City Teleservices Philippines Inc. (P1.9 billion); APAC Customer Services Inc. (P1.8 billion);

Parlance Systems Inc. (P1.6 billion); JP Morgan Chase Bank N.A. Philippine Customer Care Center (P1.5 billion); ePerformax Contact Centers Corp. (P1.5 billion); Sitel Customer Care Philippines Inc. (P1.4 billion); West Contact Services Inc. (P1.3 billion); Hinduja TMT Ltd. (P1.2 billion); Sutherland Global Services Philippines Inc. (P1.1 billion); Synnex-Concentrix Corp. (P1.1 billion); and Vocativ Systems Inc. (P1 billion).

Jeffrey M. Tupas
Inquirer.net

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY, Philippines–Small players in the call center industry here are losing their employees due to aggressive poaching by dominant players in the business process outsourcing industries of Cebu and Manila.

Engr. Elpidio Paras, owner of the Arriba Telecontact Inc., has said small firms have become training grounds for talents who eventually move to bigger companies for higher pay.

“Bigger companies are willing and ready to offer very huge incentives and salary packages, including contract signing bonuses and financial assistance for their relocation. These attractive packages are something that we cannot afford,” said Paras.

“Good and skilled people are being poached. These are people in whom we have already invested money for training and skills improvement. After they are armed with the necessary tools, they leave us in exchange for better pay…and we could not afford the high cost of counter-poaching,” Paras added.

Small companies here have been forced to shut down their operations largely due to loss of human resources. That Cagayan de Oro City is located in Mindanao has turned off potential investors, according to Eliza Pabillore, director of the Department of Trade and Industry for Misamis Oriental.

“We have not yet been successful in getting the big ones. The first time we joined road show, we got a lot of inquiries. But when they learned that Cagayan de Oro is in Mindanao, they backed out. We are plagued by the image (that Mindanao is a troubled region),” Pabillore said.

She said business players in Cagayan de Oro must try to dispel notions that the city was “part of the conflict areas of Mindanao.”

Paras said the entry of more investors would pressure local players to improve employment packages and provide workers with bigger opportunities not only for higher pay but also experience.

The only large BPO company in Cagayan de Oro today is Synnex-Concentrix, a company that bought what was known as Link2Support. It offers voice-based services, software development and systems integration, web and multimedia development, knowledge management and product life cycle management.

Along with Arriba and the BPO offered by Capitol University, Synnex-Concentrix provided employment opportunities for many Mindanaons. But industry players said Synnex-Concentrix, the California-based information technology supply chain service provider, trimmed down their employees to fewer than a thousand from its almost 1,500 strong workforce.

Paras hinted that even a big company like Synnex-Concentrix had difficulties coping with the competition for higher pay.

Considered a small company, with barely a hundred employees, Arriba Telecontract Inc., started in 2005 and provided a round-the-clock calling and answering services to clients in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. It is offering telemarketing, answering service, lead generation or the matching of consumers and decision makers, and market research.

Paras said the “shrinking of the talent pool” must be addressed. He revealed that not many graduates could meet the qualifications of the BPO firms.

“We have to admit that the quality of our graduates is something that is also problematic. The best ones are being pirated and those who are left for the local players are the second best,” he said.

From January to November, he said they were able to interview more than a thousand applicants from various universities and colleges in Cagayan de Oro and the nearby towns but so far, the BPO firms got to employ only more than a hundred who passed the quality test.

Lawrence Casiraya
INQUIRER.net

MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) assured jobs will be forthcoming for nearly 900 ex-workers of call center firm Advanced Contact Solutions (ACS).

In an earlier statement, Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) chief Ernesto Herrera urged the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) to address these displaced workers who were reportedly retrenched after its client PRC, a teleservices firm, declared bankruptcy.

CICT commissioner Monchito Ibrahim, however, clarified that not all of these workers were laid off.

“I’ve talked to the president of ACS myself and he indicated that this falls within the normal 20 percent attrition rate call centers experience every year,” Ibrahim told INQUIRER.net.

The company employs around 4,000 workers spread throughout six facilities, including those located in Laguna and Batangas.

According to the TUCP, employees who lost their jobs represent one-fifth of ACS’ workforce.

But Ibrahim said some of these workers have resigned voluntarily as part of the normal attrition routine in call centers.

“Our message to these people is that they should not worry because the industry still needs thousands of workers. They should be absorbed by other companies so long as they are competent,” Ibrahim said.

Business Process Association of the Philippines (BPAP) chief Oscar Sañez, meanwhile, said such “changes in our client line up” is expected because of the current global economic crisis.

“Some US companies are being acquired by other companies, some are absorbing other companies and some are undergoing major restructuring or closing,” he said in an e-mail response to INQUIRER.net.

“This means some of our clients will expand rapidly as they acquire more companies, outsource more and some clients are also downsizing or even closing. The client mix will change and we are anticipating that,” he said.

But companies abroad will become more pressured to outsource to cut costs and improve efficiency during the crisis, the industry executive said.

“This is a good opportunity for the Philippine government to organize a more aggressive marketing campaign and more trade missions abroad,” he said.

Lawrence Casiraya
INQUIRER.net

Editor’s Note: Updated to correct figures in the story.

MAKATI City, Philippines – India’s Essar Group said it has completed its merger with US-based contact center firm PeopleSupport including operations in the Philippines.

The acquisition first announced in August was valued at approximately $250 million or $12.25 per share. This resulted in the merger between PeopleSupport and Aegis BPO Services, which is under Essar Group.

Aegis-PeopleSupport will now target the domestic market, according to Aparup Sengupta, managing director and global CEO, in a briefing here.

“We are going big on our domestic business in the Philippines,” Sengupta said. “Like the local market in India. We are seeing similar conditions here such as increased consumer spend.”

Gupta said Aegis’ domestic outsourcing business in India alone employs about 15,000 people.

Bong Borja, Aegis-PeopleSupport Philippines country manager, likewise believes there is now demand for call center services from industries, such as telecoms and retail.

“We can run daytime shifts for local customers to maximize our existing capacity. Having a sizable domestic business also cushions the impact of dollar depreciation in our foreign business,” Borja said.

Building a local client base, he admitted, would mean targeting a different labor pool and entail a different salary structure.

Borja added: “The salary structure could be different first and foremost because night differential pay will not apply. But we are seeing that there are people willing to work during daytime shifts.

Gupta, meanwhile, said this development does not mean the company is shifting its focus away from the US market due to the current economic slowdown.

“What we are saying is that like India, we are adding local capability and not building something new that cannibalizes our existing business,” he said.

Aegis-PeopleSupport has combined revenues valued at $450 million. It operates more than 30 delivery centers in India, Costa Rica, US and the Philippines.

Lawrence Casiraya
INQUIRER.net

MAKATI City, Philippines – India’s Essar Group said it has completed its merger with US-based contact center firm PeopleSupport including operations in the Philippines.

The acquisition first announced in August was valued at approximately $250 million or $12.25 per share. This resulted in the merger between PeopleSupport and Aegis BPO Services, which is under Essar Group.

Aegis-PeopleSupport will now target the domestic market, according to Aparup Sengupta, managing director and global CEO, in a briefing here.

“We are going big on our domestic business in the Philippines,” Sengupta said. “Like the local market in India. We are seeing similar conditions here such as increased consumer spend.”

Gupta said Aegis’ domestic outsourcing business in India alone employs about 15,000 people.

Bong Borja, Aegis-PeopleSupport Philippines country manager, likewise believes there is now demand for call center services from industries, such as telecoms and retail.

“We can run daytime shifts for local customers to maximize our existing capacity. Having a sizable domestic business also cushions the impact of dollar depreciation in our foreign business,” Borja said.

Building a local client base, he admitted, would mean targeting a different labor pool and entail a different salary structure.

Borja added: “The salary structure could be different first and foremost because night differential pay will not apply. But we are seeing that there are people willing to work during daytime shifts.

Gupta, meanwhile, said this development does not mean the company is shifting its focus away from the US market due to the current economic slowdown.

“What we are saying is that like India, we are adding local capability and not building something new that cannibalizes our existing business,” he said.

Aegis-PeopleSupport has combined revenues valued at $450 million. It operates more than 30 delivery centers in India, Costa Rica, US and the Philippines.

Anna Valmero
INQUIRER.net

MANILA, Philippines – Business process outsourcing firm APAC Customer Services Inc. is investing P100 million for a call center branch in Leyte, which will house up to 1,000 employees.

Located at the Leyte Academic Center (LAC) in Palo, the 35, 000-square-feet campus will be APAC’s fourth site in the country, and Leyte’s first call center.

“Leyte is our top choice for our provincial strategy due to its fiber optic backbone, talent pool and government support,” said Doug Almond, APAC vice president for international operations, in a briefing.

Initially, the branch will employ 140 professionals for its first client program slated to begin in January 2009. Hiring for the new facility will start in November.

According to Leyte Governor Carlos Petilla, “The province produces about 6,000 graduates per year from a dozen reputable universities, a talent pipeline that is enough to support large-scale BPO operations.”

Petilla said Leyte has an industry-academe forum which allows businesses to explicitly define their employee qualifications and work with the academe to meet this.

The academe, in turn can revise its curriculum offerings to fit these qualifications and help ensure their graduates get jobs based on their expertise. One segment of this forum is grooming graduates to become qualified BPO professionals.

Three other contract bidders applied to set up a call center at Leyte but Petilla said they chose APAC due to the company’s long-term commitment to tap the local talent pool for its operations, as evidenced by the number of seats it wants to operate in the center.

Based on the agreement between APAC and the Leyte provincial government, the BPO company would lease for three years an area at LAC.

Petilla said the renovated LAC campus is a PEZA zone so the government will not tax APAC for at least six years.

He said the province will benefit from the investment from the jobs it will generate and the increase in disposable income people will spend in the province.

At present, the Leyte government has no plans to increase the target of hiring 1,000 employees for its budding BPO industry.

Petilla said they want to make sure the province can provide enough graduates to meet the existing demand before increasing its targets.

Almond said that depending on how the Leyte campus will perform as support center to its U.S. offices, APAC is open for expansion in the region in which Leyte belongs.

Almond said APAC is bullish on its prospects in the Philippines, especially with its provincial strategy plan.

“We are in an aggressive growth phase in the Philippines. Under the provincial strategy program, we aim to achieve 80 percent of our growth over the next five years in the provinces,” the APAC executive said.

About 95 percent of APAC clients are from the U.S., which is now under a financial crisis.

Almond said this will not hinder APAC to continue growing in the Philippines because the company’s financial accounts only comprise 5 percent of its total portfolio.

APAC handles accounts in markets such as healthcare, business services and logistics, publishing, travel and telecommunications.

Currently employing over 8,000 contact center professionals, the NASDAQ-listed BPO firm already operates three sites in Manila, two in Alabang and one in Quezon City. It also operates nine contact centers in the U.S with over 4,000 employees.

Steven Music
CNET News

People who listen to MP3 players for only five hours a week at a high volume may be doing permanent damage to their hearing.

A team of nine experts on the European Union’s Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks is expected to release that finding in a study Monday, according to a report in the International Herald Tribune.

The EU entity also points out that young people may be doing damage to their hearing that may not surface until years after the exposure, according to the newspaper.

“Regularly listening to personal music players at high-volume settings when young often has no immediate effect on hearing but is likely to result in hearing loss later in life,” the newspaper quoted the report as stating.

“Some authors stress that if young people continue to listen to music for long periods of time and at high volume levels during several years, they run the risk of developing hearing loss by the time they reach their mid-20s,” the report said, according to the newspaper. “Among young people, there are many reports of temporary or persistent tinnitus induced by loud music, but very few studies have focused on the relationship between the use of personal music players and tinnitus.”

The concern over hearing led a Louisiana man to file a class action lawsuit against Apple, claiming that the company had failed to take adequate steps to prevent hearing loss among iPod users. The suit, filed in 2006, charges that the iPod music player can produce sounds of up to 115 decibels, even though some studies suggest that listening to music at that level for 28 seconds a day can cause damage over time.

The suit seeks monetary damages to compensate for the hearing loss suffered by iPod users, as well as a share of Apple’s iPod profits. The suit also seeks to force Apple to offer a software upgrade to limit the iPod’s output to 100 decibels, as well as provide headphones designed to block out external noise.

While the report noted that the use of personal music players can be “beneficial when performing boring and repetitive tasks,” the report’s authors warned that threats besides hearing loss loom for their users.

“It may be a hindrance for complicated tasks that require thinking. Music can distract the listeners and isolate them from their environment, which can be very dangerous when driving or walking on busy roads.”

kgma_news@yahoo.com

The Philippines’ position as the most-favored location of choice for call center and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) got another boost today with the launching of a new technology that will slowly move BPO work in the country to the higher end of the value chain.

iQor, one of the premier global BPO companies in the world, through its President and CEO Vikas Kapoor, demonstrated to the President the new technology called “FeAther” that allows iQor to flexibly and securely deliver calls anywhere in the world to any of its call centers as well as agents who work from home.

The multi-million dollar investment, developed at Clark Freeport Zone, underscored the power of the technology to create new job opportunities for people in remote rural areas as well as those who prefer to work at home due to travel constraints.

“My biggest challenge in the industry worldwide is attracting good people and there are many people who want to work in this business and would be terrific at it, but who are unable to do it because they don’t have physical access or they don’t want commuting,” Kapoor said.

With the new proprietary technology, Kapoor explained that it “will vastly increase both flexibility and security for our clients. They no longer need to choose a specific location for their work, and can simultaneously access the best workers anywhere in our global footprint, or use qualified workers who do not wish to commute to a call center.”

“When a call center agent’s fingers touches their keyboard, iQor’s network uses biometric identification to determine who they are, what systems they can access and what calls they can handle. It, therefore, allows call center services to be securely handled by any worker in any of iQor’s centers worldwide, as well as to people who have high speed Internet access at home,” he added.

Kapoor said the new technology “literally treats an agent in the world like any agent in the US, India or United Kingdom.”

Kapoor also said the Philippines is iQor’s number one overseas destination, thanks to the vision of the President and her determination to create a business-friendly environment.

Kapoor added that compared to other centers in the world, its call centers /BPOs here are performing extremely well because of the availability of the best people and performance.

“The Philippines has a systematic competitive advantage in the business and that’s why I’m bullish about the Philippines,” he said.

For her part, the President said she was “happy about it (new technology) and that people are putting a lot of investments here.”

At a meeting in New York City in June this year, the President and Kapoor announced the opening of iQor’s third call center in the Philippines that will create 700 new jobs.

iQor plans to hire 300 new employees at its new Center of Excellence at the Clark Special Economic Zone before the end of the year and will add the remaining new hires by the end of the first quarter in 2009.

This growth will bring total jobs created by iQor in the Philippines to 2,500 since the opening of its first call center in the country in 2005.

This is iQor’s second call center within the Clark Special Economic Zone. The first Clark Center opened in August of 2006 with 50 employees and after only two years, it reached full capacity at the facility and has now opened a new state-of-the-art 32,000 -square foot Center to meet growing client demand.

Kapoor said the expansion of the company was due to the Philippines having the lowest unit costs, the highest quality and the lowest attrition rates in the world.