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…
From everything I have head, the conference was a resounding success! I can’t wait to learn more about the strategies and solutions that will come out of this. We know the challenges ahead, we have a Roadmap to success, now its all just a matter of putting it into practice!