Vendors, telcos trying to keep up with call center boom

Lawrence Casiraya
INQUIRER.net

MANILA, Philippines–The phenomenal growth of the call center industry is forcing IT vendors and telecommunications firms to improve their products and services, company executives have said.

Luichi Robles, Philippine country manager for networking firm Cisco, said call centers now account for nearly 30 percent of the company’s local revenues, from just five percent as early as five years ago.

Aside from routers and switches, Robles said Cisco is positioning its unified communications technology and Telepresence, a videoconferencing solution, for the call center market.

“Telepresence is our response to the current green issue, especially in the contact center industry that involves executives frequently flying in and out of the country,” he said.

When asked how Cisco was keeping up with industry growth, Robles said the company has had to continuously expand its support capabilities in markets outside of Metro Manila.

For telecom companies, meanwhile, industry expansion nationwide is forcing players like PLDT and Bayan (formerly Bayantel) to invest further in network resources.

PLDT is allotting P25 billion in capital expenditure this year for improving network capacity to several countries such as Australia, which is being eyed as a potential market for Philippine call center operators.

“For us, it’s about how do we bring world-class systems and capacity to relevant countries like Australia,” said Nerissa Ramos, first vice president and head of PLDT’s corporate business group, at a recent industry conference.

Bayan, meanwhile, is forced to keep up by improving its service levels in areas where there was previously low demand.

“For us, this means bandwidth take-up in the provinces,” said Joevel Rivera, Bayan vice president for product development and management. “We suddenly had requirements for high-bandwidth leased circuits, when there was no demand for this before from our end.”