IOS on YouTube

Select videos of presentations at IOS 2011 are being uploaded to the IOSPhilippines channel on YouTube. The first presentation available is Mynd Consulting founder Myrna Padilla’s moving talk October 12. You can view her presentation here. The video of President Benigno S. Aquino’s keynote address will be available shortly.

That video also includes the presidential welcome remarks delivered by BPAP chairman Fred Ayala, and the Summit overview by BPAP senior executive director Gigi Virata.

Plenary session videos will only be available to delegates provided log-in credentials to the IOS download section of the website, where presentations and videos are being organized by session. If you attended IOS as a delegate, speaker, panelist, or sponsor representative you will be provide log-in credentials by email. If you have questions, please contact Summit director Rona Castillo at rccastillo@teamasia.com.

Watch President Aquino’s keynote address on YouTube

President Aquino’s keynote address is now available on YouTube. Watch it here.

Speech of President Aquino at the International Outsourcing Summit

Read the speech of President Benigno S. Aquino, III at the International Outsourcing Summit October 12 here.

Remarks by BPAP chairman Fred Ayala welcoming President Benigno S. Aquino III

His Excellency, President Benigno S. Aquino; Secretary of Trade & Industry Gregory L. Domingo, Secretary of Science & Technology Mario Montejo; Director-General of the Technical Education & Skills Development Authority (TESDA) Joel Villanueva; Congressman Sigfrido Tinga:

On behalf of the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP) and its partners associations, the Animation Council of the Philippines, the Game Developers Association of the Philippines, the Healthcare Information Management Outsourcing Association of the Philippines, and the Philippine Software Industry Association as well as the Contact Center Association of the Philippines and the National ICT Confederation of the Philippines, please allow me to warmly welcome you to the 3rd International Outsourcing Summit (IOS).

This BPAP-hosted summit has evolved into a truly global event, and this year we have attracted a record 400+ speakers and delegates from 17 countries and five continents. We are very please that we can share with our colleagues from abroad, the very constructive dialogue that we have been having with the Aquino administration about the future of the IT-BPO industry in the Philippines.

The Opportunity for the Philippines is to be #1 in the world, employing 4.5 million Filipinos, including those hired directly and indirectly by the industry

The good news is that the Filipino knowledge worker is already internationally recognized as world class, and we are now universally recognized as #1 in the world in voice services. Our big opportunity is to leverage this success and become the #1 destination for IT-BPO in general, especially in important segments of non-voice services such as finance, accounting, legal, health care, creative, engineering, and targeted IT areas.

We have already made huge strides in diversifying in non-voice IT-BPO services, and as a result many in this room are hiring growing numbers of accountants, lawyers, doctors, nurses, programmers, game developers, architects, and engineers to perform increasingly complex work.

The tremendous global demand for high quality Filipino talent could increase industry generated jobs from 1.8 million in 2010 to 4.5 million in 2016; of those, 30% are direct jobs in the industry, and 70% are indirect. We have assumed that each direct job in the industry generates 2.5 indirect jobs such as construction and restaurant workers and jeepney drivers, whereas other countries assume a ratio of 3:1 or greater.

One of the best things about our industry is that the growth in generates is very inclusive and alleviates poverty nationwide. We look for talent everywhere, and employees range from high school to nursing to IT graduates, from Laoag to Davao, from socioeconomic class B to D, and include returning overseas workers.

And very importantly, our industry is proving to be a powerful antidote to one of the biggest challenges our society faces, namely emigration and the hollowing out of millions of Filipino families. I wish all of you could have heard our keynote speaker at lunchtime, Myrna Padilla, who spoke eloquently about her journey from daughter of an impoverished fisherman to an overseas domestic helper in Hong Kong. She lived apart from her children for 20 years.

During that time, she learned how to use computers from her employer’s eight-year-old son, and eventually realized that technology provided the means to work abroad, from home. She returned home to Davao to start her own IT outsourcing company that today serves clients in the US and Europe and creates jobs in her home town.

She reminded us that PowerPoint presentations and huge macro numbers mean nothing to the masa, but that the opportunity to break the cycle of poverty by using one’s God-given talent without leaving home and family, because of the miracle of the Internet and super cheap telecom services, is a major contribution to the country and its people.

The Bad News is that We Face Several Major Obstacles to these Opportunities

First and foremost, our supply of talent is a huge constraint, in both quantity and quality. Demand is growing at over 20% annually but our supply of graduates is only growing at 30%. And only 5%-8% are hire-able. There are also huge pockets of untapped demand in the UK, Australia, and Europe in both non-voice and IT. In short, a tremendous amount of demand is being wasted.

We could be growing much faster, and we could be employing many more Filipinos.

What is at Stake if we can Overcome these Hurdles?

If we can address these critical supply and demand issues, we can accelerate from the Base Case to the Accelerated Case of the industry’s Road Map 2016, with major and rapid impact. Instead of achieving $20 billion in exports and 3.2 million total employed in 2016 in the Base Case, we could achieve $25 billion of exports and 4.5 million total employed in the Accelerated Case.

The cumulative impact of the Accelerated Case over five years is huge. What is at stake is an incremental $14 billion in export revenues, and an incremental P295 billion in payroll taxes over the period 2012-2016.

We Believe that the Solution is to Transform our Public-Private Partnership

The Philippine government has been an active supporter of our industry from its inception. For example, as Secretary Domingo and I were both reminiscing yesterday, he has been a tireless champion for us since the very earliest days of the industry in the early 2000s during his first stint in the Department of Trade & Industry, as has Department of Transportation & Communication secretary Manuel A. Roxas, II. Secretary Roxas headed DTI in those early days.

Now, we have a historic opportunity to take our partnership with your government to a much, much higher level.

Based on our very active dialogue over the past year with the government leaders present here today, as well as many others in your cabinet and in congress, we are optimistic that we can create a much more powerful partnership which we would like to call “IPPP,” or an Industry Public-Private Partnership, which is different from infrastructure projects and instead focuses on maximizing the potential of an entire industry.

The starting point and first key is the comprehensive Road Map 2016 our industry’s stakeholders have drawn up in consultation with key government departments, with a laser-like focus on two key areas. First, talent development and secondly, generating demand in non-traditional geographies such as the UK and Australia in non-voice and IT services.

The second key is cohesive teamwork; i.e., we are seeing a united industry working very closely with a well-coordinated executive branch of government and other key players such as Congress and the academe, to develop detailed action programs. The third key is to significantly increase investment by both public and private sectors: the private sector today already spends approximately P680 annually for remedial training. Industry is prepared to invest even more, especially if government can augment this with matching funding.

To be specific, we have been working closely with Commission on Higher Education secretary Patricia Licuanan, Education secretary Armin Luistro, and DG Villanueva in the education cluster; and Secretary Montejo on key programs such as:

1. Our Near Hire Training Program,
2. The Global Competitiveness Assessment Test,
3. An application that Secretary Montejo’s team is working on that will enable, students to teach themselves English more effectively,
4. More impactful marketing of our industry to students and their parents,
5. A curriculum for a Service Management minor designed by industry; and of course,
6. The K-12 program (An initiative that will expand basic and secondary education to 12 years, from 10.)

We believe that some of these programs will have a very high return on investment with a quick payback in jobs generation. For example, the Near Hire Training Programs for the voice segment that we have successfully implemented with TESDA in the past, can train the top quartile of those who nearly got a job, in just 100 hours and for just P5,000. Over 70% of all those trained got a job in just two to three months. This kind of intervention can generate tens of thousands of jobs very quickly and we are working closely with DG Villanueva and his team on this.

We also of course continue to work closely with Secretary Domingo to promote the Philippines abroad especially in newer geographies such as the UK, Europe, and Australia, and our less well-known areas of strength such as non-voice and IT services; and, with Budget secretary Florencio Labor secretary Rosalinda Baldoz for support in the budget and labor areas.

Conclusion

In conclusion, if we continue our current approach, which is largely private-sector led, then the IT-BPO industry will continue to grow, but the Base Case will likely be the best we can do. However, if we transform our partnership into a much stronger IPPP by working much more closely together, we believe that our industry and your administration have a good chance of achieving the Accelerated Case by 2016, which would result in:

• Becoming the world’s #1 destination not just for Call Centers, but for IT-BPO in general
• Increasing total industry-generated jobs across the nation from 3.1 million to 4.5 million
• Increasing cumulative 2012-2016 exports from $78 billion to $92 billion
• Increasing cumulative 2012-1016 payroll taxes from P995 billion to P1.3 trillion
• And most importantly, training hundreds of thousands of young Filipinos to learn world-class skills and transform their lives without leaving the country

We see your presence here today as a clear signal to the world that we are ready to face the future together in a strong, strategic partnership. Thank you and your cabinet officials for joining us today.

Gigi Virata: Summary of Day 1 and a glimpse of the future

Sec. Greg Domingo’s Keynote: He said he had a hard time organizing his keynote address because there were so many things he wanted to say. The one thing, though, he said he hasn’t heard mentioned in IT-BPO summits: that the industry has developed a cadre of empowered, young people who will lead industries and businesses in the future. He called them ‘sophisticated’ and ‘confident.’

Emerging Markets: What’s in store for these IT-BPO centers? Why compete if the pie is so big?

The message: A glimpse of the future matching game. The panelists represented Australia, China, Columbia, India, Jordan, Philippines, Russia (Roger Strukhoff tweeted: IOS is in rarified air. Like London. Truly global.).

Which panelist called the Philippines a Rock of IT-BPO?

Which panelist was from a former British Colony whose IT-BPO employees have recently learned to read and write in English and who now export services to Korea and Japan?

Which panelist saw future partnerships between countries as a way to serve the large Spanish-language market?

Which panelist offered access to the important, resource-rich region of the Middle East and North Africa?

Which panelist admitted he had never heard of ‘business processing as a service’ before yesterday and concluded that the world was only at the edge of what was possible? He declared: “We ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

Which panelist was from a former British Colony, had a British accent, and whose business was to find opportunity in growth and believed that growth was our path to the future?

Which panelist comes from a country that 20 years ago discovered that it did not know how to sell and, no longer seen as an ‘enemy,’ has transformed its large pool of engineers from a military machine to a revenue-generating outsourcing pool of software developers and entrepreneurs?

PLDT’s Mitch Locsin, former BPAP Alpha Dog, talked about a future of loops within loops, bandwidth doubling annually, home office solutions, and something called the Cloud.

Everest’s Gaurav Gupta also talked about this ubiquitous cloud and things like BPaaS, SaaS, IaaS; sustainable demand; and the emergence of micro markets, what we used to call niche markets.

Aegis’s Aparup Sengupta saw the next 100 years as The Century of Experience, where experience is a ratio of engagement over expectation: the higher the engagement of a person, the better the experience (the happier the person). It reminded me of Samuelson’s happiness function in which happiness or satisfaction was expressed as a function of consumption over desire: you could be happier if you increased consumption or decreased desire.

My friend Joana Sales, who helped me with this part of the summary, understood this to mean that he suggests that we look at customer experience as developing touch points in a holistic way, and not as compartmentalized buckets of services.

Aparup also talked about “service as a living expression of brand.” Food for thought.

Shell’s Paul Robinson talked about viewing their internal customers as business partners rather than customers, how technology such as video conferencing was creating seamless connectivity with these business partners, and how a challenge for management was to understand better how Gen Y used technology and how to capture their hearts.

In the panel discussion on what customers want, social media was cited as a way to understanding this. The dilemma though was that if industry leaders did not understand these new venues for social interaction, how could they lead?

Throughout the day, Joana and I noted that there were statements describing a blurring of lines: between customer and provider; between the academe, industry, and government, and between cultures. While cultural differences were a real issue, there could be ways to blur these lines, ways that involved investment in travel and entertainment for young managers, for example. Concerns over costs in these cases, it was suggested, should be subsumed by high returns and value.

There were also interesting discussions in the HR panel around developing employees as the frontline of a company’s or an industry’s brand. If they are engaged, happy, they would speak well of their company or of the industry as a whole; and in turn this would attract more good applicants to the industry.

Joana picked up on the recommendation that branding the industry should start at home; and that there should be a deliberate effort to develop branding ambassadors from within. Continuing the dialogue on the many success stories, to keep telling the stories of engaged and happy employees—told by employees themselves—would build a genuine industry brand.

“The more you talk about it, if you truly believe it, the more real it becomes.”

Maybe this is something we could also say about the future of this industry and the role of the IOS and the many, many conferences taking place around the world on all facets of IT-BPO. “The more you talk about it, if you really believe it, the more real it becomes.” I think that’s why we keep talking about it.

And so on with the conversation…

IOS begins now; Welcome remarks by BPAP chairman Fred Ayala

IOS 2011 begins in just minutes by welcome remarks by Fred Ayala. In Fred’s words:

It is a distinct honor to welcome you to the Third Annual International Outsourcing Summit, a landmark event for the IT-BPO and global shared services industry.

In recent years, emerging global services centers in Asia, Africa, Central and South America, and Eastern Europe have raced to leverage demands for specialization to dominate or influence best practice in specific knowledge domains. During this time in the Philippines, we’ve emerged as a leader in voice services–although we have also made early investments in non-voice, back-office administrative services. And today we are rapidly gaining momentum in non-voice, complex services.

We want to sustain that trend. All of you have similar ambitions.

Our industry today is characterized by high growth and intense competition. The Everest Group reports that Asia accounted for 21 of the 38 new delivery centers established in the second quarter of 2011; Brazil is now among the “mature” locations for IT services; delivery centers have also sprung up in emerging destinations such as Nicaragua and Kenya. The expansion of the global IT-BPO industry underscores the wealth of possibilities in our future.

Are we ready?

You–executive delegates representing the global industry–are here to answer that question. You represent more than 140 organizations from Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, China, Colombia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia, Mauritius, Nigeria, Norway, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, the UK, and the US. Together we will examine business innovation and shifting client demands; strategic HR and career opportunities for knowledge workers; emerging value-driven markets and news sources of revenue, among other issues, in a series of high-level, compelling, and relevant discussions.

But ultimately this gather is about strengthening industry capabilities and collaboration to ensure that we can continue to provide the quality of services and value the world has come to expect of us.

I am extremely pleased that you are here to contribute to this discussion in a meaningful way. Welcome to the Philippines!

Fred Ayala
Chairman, BPAP
President & CEO, LiveIt Investments

IOS 2011 venue update

Sofitel Philippine Plaza, the venue for the International Outsourcing Summit (IOS), announced yesterday that it will resume operations Monday, October 10. An IOS welcome reception for international delegates will take place that evening. The summit proper begins with registration at 7:30 am the following morning, October 11. The lower level of the hotel was damaged two weeks ago when a two-decade old seawall gave way during typhoon Pedring (international call sign Nesat).

“This opening date was determined based on the pre-condition that Sofitel’s standards of quality, safety, and security will be 100 percent achieved,” Sofitel Philippine Plaza general manager Goran Aleks said in a statement. IOS 2011 organizers visited the hotel yesterday, Monday October 3, to observe the condition of the hotel and to receive a briefing on preparations for the resumption of operations.

The ballroom and function rooms located on the second level where IOS 2011 will take place were not affected by the flooding, according to Raymond Lacdao, who is executive director for industry affairs for the Business Processing Association of the Philippines. Mr. Lacdao is overseeing IOS 2011. He was accompanied by executives of TeamAsia, the agency engaged to manage and execute the conference.

The tents located outside the hotel on the hotel’s sprawling grounds were affected by the flooding, but are expected to be ready to host the gala dinners that take will place each night of IOS 2011. There remains some possibility that the galas will be moved next door to the Philippine International Convention Center; however, hotel executives believe that is unlikely at this point.

Delegates will receive further updates on the first day of the conference. For questions about the conference, please contact Rona Castillo at rccastillo@teamasia.com or +63 2 757 3500 Ext 311.

Dr. James Cross to offer assessment of the IT-BPO industry

Dr. James Cross, head of Aetna’s National Medical Policy and Operations, will provide insight into the present state and the future of the IT-BPO industry from a client-side perspective.

For Dr. Cross, the bottom line is people. A pool of motivated knowledge workers who care about the clients and the clients’ customers they serve is crucial to sustaining industry growth. To achieve a stable talent pool of bright and motivated knowledge workers, Dr. Cross suggests the usual: providing excellent work conditions, including competitive wages, a professional career path, and personal and professional development opportunities.

But he adds another dimension to the motivated workers’ ecosystem: support of the family. That means both prestige and healthy bank accounts. Dr. Cross believes IT-BPO services providers should make industry careers so attractive that workers–some companies call them talents–won’t consider immigrating for higher wages.

Although he acknowledges that higher salaries have an impact on the attractiveness of the services IT-BPO firms and shared services facilities provide, Dr. Cross believes strategically lower cost is not at the core of the IT-BPO value proposition. This is especially true for countries like the Philippines, where growth in non-voice, complex services is outpacing growth of voice services. He cites the example of the medical industry. Because the Philippines has a large supply of medical professionals, it’s offering services unheard just a few years ago.

Dr. Cross will speak in the “President’s Panel I: Business Innovation: What Do Customers Want?” panel on October 11. He will be joined by John Wheeler, VP for Strategy and Emergent Technologies of SPi Global; Kush Kamra, VP for Global Service Delivery of MetLife; and Parta Mishra, Managing Director of UnitedHealth Group Information Services.

Nine days to IOS 2011

With just nine days to go to IOS 2011, organizers are set to welcome a record number of speakers, panelists, and delegates to Manila October 10-12. A welcome reception for international speakers, panelists, and delegates takes place the evening of the 10th.

Two days of plenary and breakout sessions, networking opportunities, and gala celebrations will follow.

With preparations for the summit in high gear, earlier this week Typhoon Nesat blew through northern Luzon, the Philippines’ main island. Although the eye of the storm was several hundred kilometers north of Manila, the metropolitan area did experience a storm surge, which caused a seawall near the IOS venue hotel, Sofitel, to give way. As a result, the lower floor of the hotel was flooded, and there have been some inquiries as to whether the summit will be shifted to another area hotel or convention facility.

The organizers talked with Sofitel representatives several times last week. They assure us that the conference rooms (ballroom, function rooms, tents) were not affected, and that there should be no impact on the IOS. As a precaution organizers will do an ocular inspection of the venue early next week and have made contingency arrangements. But at this time we expect to conduct the summit at Sofitel as planned.

If that changes, TeamAsia–which is organizing the summit on behalf of the Business Processing Association of the Philippines–will notify speakers and panelists, delegates, and sponsors via email, the summit website, and this blog. In the meantime, if you have questions about the summit or logistics to support it, please email Rona Castillo at rccastillo@teamasia.com or call her at +63 2 757 3500.

See you at the summit in nine days!

IOS Update: 400 participants, thought leaders from 17 countries

With just 20 days remaining before the International Outsourcing Summit, approximately 400 speakers, panelists, and delegates are expect to attend this highly anticipated, two-day annual meeting. C-level executives from 17 confirmed countries will meet in Manila to discuss the future of IT-BPO and industry trends and developments that are creating new opportunities and sources of revenue, but also new challenges.

Seventy-three speakers and panelists will lead the discussions that will encompass shifting client needs and requirements, strategic labor supply challenges, emerging niche centers of excellence, increasing demands for value-added innovation, and the impact of social media and new technologies on the way the industry delivers services to its clients and their customers.

If you haven’t already registered, do so now to join the global IT-BPO industry’s most prominent thought leaders in two days of intense, timely discussions that are likely to impact your own strategic planning in profound and profitable ways.