New U.S. Bill to Limit Overseas Call Center Outsourcing

United States Congress Building

United States Congressman Tim Bishop (D) of New York recently introduced a bipartisan legislation to bar corporations that send U.S. call center jobs overseas from receiving federal grants and loans. The “U.S. Call Center and Consumer Protection Act” (H.R. 3596) also requires overseas call center employees to disclose their location to US consumers and gives customers the right to be transferred to a US-based call center upon request. The bill also has the full support of the 700,000-member Communications Workers of America (CWA).

Congressman Bishop also sponsored the “Stop Outsourcing and Create American Jobs Act of 2010” (H.R. 5622), which would have required federal agencies to request information about a corporation’s outsourcing practices when it applies for government contracts and allows preference for companies that have not outsourced jobs in the last year. However, this bill never made it out of the congressional committee. Rep. Jerry McNerney, sponsor of H.R. 5622, reintroduced the same bill this year as the “Stop Outsourcing and Create American Jobs Act of 2011” (H.R. 3338) which amends the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide for the identification of corporate tax haven countries and increased penalties for tax evasion practices in haven countries that ship United States jobs overseas, and for other purposes.

According to CWA, total call center employment in the United States has dropped from 5.2 million in 2006 to 4.7 million in 2010, a loss of approximately 500,000 jobs lost in four years. Companies have also taken millions in incentives from local taxpayers to open call centers in the U.S., only to off-shore their operations a short time later and leave local communities devastated and still paying the bill.

The Philippines has the largest number of call centers in the world, with about 400,000 workers compared to India’s approximately 350,000 workers, based on recent media reports. The call center outsourcing industry in the Philippines is projected to jump 25 percent a year during the next five years according to a story in The New York Times.

The new legislation of Rep. Bishop would require the U.S. Department of Labor to track firms that move call center jobs overseas; the firms would then be ineligible for any direct or indirect federal loans or loan guarantees for five years. It is also designed to limit the threat of consumer fraud and identity theft at foreign call centers.

Sources: Rep. Tim Bishop Site | TMCNet.com

Photo by dok1969 at Flickr.com

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Sun Life to Expand Philippine BPO Operations

Sun Life's Philippine head office in Makati City

Global insurance provider Sun Life plans to expand its business process outsourcing (BPO) operations and possibly set up a new customer service center in the Philippines. It already has 200 seats in the country handling the information technology requirements of the firm’s operations in the United States and Canada.

Sun Life Financial is the first and longest-standing life insurance company in the Philippines, delivering a range of products, investment performance and strong asset management practices. Headquartered in Makati City, Metro Manila, it has 32 branches, 35 sales offices and 5 financial stores throughout the Philippines, with over 500 employees and 3,200 Sun Life advisers.

In 2011, it acquired a 49% interest in Grepalife Financial, Inc., to form a joint venture company, Sun Life Grepa Financial, Inc. In addition to its current agency distribution network, Sun Life Grepa Financial, Inc. will have an exclusive bancassurance relationship with the Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC), allowing it to provide insurance products to the bank’s customers nationwide.

Sources: Sun Life | Fifth Quadrant

Photo from Sun Life.com

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Overseas Filipinos Come Home for BPO Jobs

Worldlink88 small business call center

The Philippines’ customer service outsourcing boom is slowing the exodus of workers heading overseas by providing well-paid jobs for graduates at home.

The outsourcing workforce in the country grew about 10% this year to 600,000, and is expected to expand to 900,000 employees by 2016, according to the Business Processing Association of the Philippines or BPAP. While most jobs are in the contact center industry, the industry is also increasingly attracting work for higher-paying skills such as data warehousing, accounting and medical transcription, as well as creative work ranging from webpage design to animation and video games.

Source: Fifth Quadrant/Call Centres.net

Photo by rpekson2 at Flickr.com

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Netsuite to Invest More in Philippines

Netsuite office in the U.S.

Netsuite Inc. plans to infuse substantial investments to expand its Philippine operations, in a bid to become the largest software company in the country next year. The firm also intends to grow their workforce from 500 to 700 at the Makati City office, its largest location outside the United States.

Netsuite opened its office in the country in 2007. Philippine operations include software architecture and integration, finance and back office support, professional services and client management and technical support. The company also designed an educational program meant to bring cloud-based business management solutions to university classrooms worldwide.

NetSuite Inc. is the leading vendor of cloud-based Software-as-a-Service integrated business management software for mid-market enterprises and divisions of large companies, with over 10,000 organizations and a $225 billion market cap. NetSuite’s cloud business management system including ERP/accounting, order management/inventory, CRM, professional services automation (PSA), and Ecommerce. NetSuite was originally named NetLedger by its founders, Larry Ellison and one of his early employees, Evan Goldberg.

Sources: Positive News Media | Wikipedia

Photo from Glassdoor.com

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Aegis People Support Building a 14-Storey in Cebu

Full rendering of the building by Arch. E.F. Garcia

Indian outsourcing company Aegis Limited has made a major commitment to its Philippine operations by building a 14-storey tower in Asiatown Information Technology (IT) Park in Brgy, Lahug in Cebu City. Filipino-owned Aegis People Support Realty Corp. is spending P700 million to develop the building.

The 3,000-seat building was designed to maximize energy efficiency, using sustainable materials sourced from local suppliers. Aegis is aiming to have the tower’s Phase One become the first gold-level purpose-built BPO building in the Philippines certified under the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED).

Sources: Call Centres | Skyscrapercity Forum

Photo by diehardbisdak at Skyscrapercity Forum

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Occupy Wall Street May Limit Outsourcing

Mock Wall Street Journal paper during the protest | http://occupywallst.org/

Occupy Wall Street’s clamor for more and better jobs will cause many U.S. companies to limit their use of foreign resources, according to the CEO of HCL Technologies. “The current anti-Wall Street protest is a frustration emerging out of joblessness and pent-up demand for more work. Tomorrow, no company will do business with you if you are not in the business of job creation.”

In light of the OWS protests and a national unemployment rate above 9%, U.S. companies will increasingly require their IT suppliers to employ workers on U.S. shores, in the same way that some manufacturers stipulate that their component suppliers meet standards for humane working conditions or the use of green technologies and business practices. To get ahead of the curve, Nayar said HCL will shift more work to the United States, where most of its customers are anyway. He said about 8,000 of the company’s 83,000 employees are now in the United States, and that number will grow. In September, HCL announced the opening of a development center in Redmond, Wash., where it plans to hire about 400 workers over the next two years. HCL’s Collaborative Engineering Hub will provide development services for Microsoft.

Read more at InformationWeek

Photo by marcelotroi at Flickr.com

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TESDA Budget for BPO Training Boosted to 3.76B Pesos

Call center agent in the Philippines

A 1.1 billion Peso “stimulus package” was given to the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) on top of the 2.68 billion Peso budget allocated for next year. This announcement was made by Philippine President Benigno Aquino III as part of his plan to grow the BPO, tourism, agribusiness, construction and semi-conductor industries in the country.

500 million Pesos will be used to train scholars and trainers for the BPO industry where a target of 70,000 trainees is expected with 70 percent being employed, above the TESDA target of 60.8 percent employment from its trainees. 600 million Pesos will be used in other industries such as tourism, agribusiness, construction and semi-conductor. At least 100,000 trainees are targeted annually to generate 8.5 million skilled workers by 2016.

Source: Inquirer.net

Photo by mysteryshoppingdubai at Flickr.com

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Ayala Corporation BPO Company LiveIt to Expand Into Healthcare

Fred Ayala of LiveIt at the Asia CEO Forum

LiveIt, Ayala Corporation’s holding company for its investments in the BPO sector, is looking to expand into the healthcare customer service segment. LiveIt Investments CEO Alfredo Ayala told reporters on Tuesday that the company was always looking for new opportunities to expand its business. “We’re still looking at other acquisitions. We already have voice, advertising and graphics, and legal management. We’re also looking at healthcare because that’s a big BPO area. We have a lot of nurses here, so that’s a great opportunity,” he said on the sidelines of the International Outsourcing Summit. Fred Ayala is also the Chairman of BPA/P (Business Process Association of the Philippines).

The Healthcare Information Management Outsourcing Assocation of the Philippines reports 14,000 jobs in the industry, as of the end of 2010, including medical transcriptionists and contact center agents. Total revenues for this segment of outsourced industry reached $94 million.

Ayala Corporation’s BPO investments include Stream, a BPO company with 30,000 employees worldwide as a result of its merger with eTelecare in 2009, knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) company Integreon, graphics and design outsourcer Afinity Express, and outsourced human resource solutions company HRMall.

Source: CallCentres.net | Inquirer.net | Asia CEO Forum

Photo from asia-ceo.org

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