India, Philippines to get larger share of outsourcing pie

IANS Mumbai March 16: India and the Philippines are set to corner a larger share of the global offshoring business with 127,000 new call centre jobs likely to be added in the two countries over the next five years, says a study.
Whilst India continues to dominate the global call centre outsourcing landscape, the Philippines threatens to poach some activity as its own market grows in strength, said the survey conducted by London-based research firm Datamonitor.
“Several outsource providers are seeing their order books filling up once again with offshore projects destined for India and the Philippines,” said the report made available to IANS.
According to the report entitled, ‘The future of contact centre outsourcing in India and the Philippines’, the United States continues to represent the vast majority of overseas demand followed by Britain.
“Both India and the Philippines will see substantial growth in call centres now that US presidential elections are out of the way allowing US and Britain businesses to ramp up their offshore operations,” it said.
“Besides the attractions that India and the Philippines offer western firms in terms of low cost access to highly skilled staff, the two markets will also demonstrate substantial growth in their domestic call centre markets.”
By 2009, close to 100,000 agent positions — seats from which call centre agents make and receive telephone calls to internal or external customers — will be serving the Indian domestic market, while the Philippines will have 21,600.
Datamonitor predicts that more firms are set to follow the likes of British Airways, Citibank, General Electric and HSBC, all firms that have spun off a part or all of their captive operations in India.
“Outsource providers are competing to run entire customer processes for their clients, rather than merely the voice-based call centre part,” said Mr Ryan Powell, call centre analyst with Datamonitor and author of the study.
“The fact that they are able to win this kind of work is testament to the efforts that have been placed on assuring quality control and improving call resolution rates in order to improve customer satisfaction.”
According to Datamonitor, outsource providers are looking to increase their operational footprints around the globe while seeking to provide customers with a broader range of end-to-end solutions.
The MphasiS BFL Group, one of India’s leading mid-size IT services firms, said on Monday it had acquired a US-based business process outsourcing company for $ 16.5 million to expand presence overseas.
The study, however, warned that the Philippines might emerge as a competitor to India in the offshoring business with the former unveiling new initiatives to boost its presence in the global market.
India’s educational system and training programmes have helped transform the country into a global outsourcing superpower.
The nearly $ 3 billion business process outsourcing industry in Asia’s fourth largest economy has now become one of the top money-spinning ventures for the country and is set to grow at a dazzling clip in the years ahead.