The International Outsourcing Summit

Do You know what the International Outsourcing Summit is? Learn about what your companies' top brass will be talking about.

As I was driving my 2 year old son home after his regular doctor's appointment today, I had the radio on and heard an ad. I couldn't comprehend half of what the lady was talking about but at the end of it, the only thing that stuck on my head was the website the asked listeners to visit internationaloutsourcingsummit.com.

At "face value", the objective of this conference by Philippine-based and international BPO executives seems all too noble. Similar to the annual CCAP Expo, several BPO heads gather, discuss issues facing the industry and debate on how to best counter threats that are or may soon be affecting the industry's continued growth not only in the Philippines but also in other parts of the world where business process outsourcing has been regarded as a vital economic pillar.

2 very good talking points in this conference are the threats of the global financial crisis which I have tackled in a previous post and the populist political rhetoric I have previously written here. These posts were written last year. Leaders in this country's BPO industry have contrasting opinions on the effects of the crisis. GMAnews.tv reports many BPO's continue to be upbeat despite the developments. However, an increasing amount of them have expressed mixed expectations about their future as covered by this report. The populist political rhetoric part of this discussion, however, I felt is one thing nobody in their ranks have control over. Some sectors of the U.S. political arena have been pushing to "repatriate" U.S. jobs lost since many of their companies having outsourced them elsewhere around the world. Unless the members of this conference will be talking about hiring a lobbyist to push their agenda in American politics, they will have no say in the outcome of whatever will transpire in American economic policies.

The best talking point of this conference should be their discussion on best to address the demand of "knowledge workers" and how the educational infrastructre of the Philippines may or may not be able to support such demands in the future. Alarming reports of recent show the Philippine educational system not being able to produce adequate graduates that are ready for the demands of professional work intellectually, emotionally and in terms of confidence. There is a big gap between the BPO's demand for workforce versus the number of qualified individuals. For years, the successful hiring rate of call centers for example has been 2 out of 100. These days, we may have seen an increase of this percentage all because companies have lowered their requirements. BPO's, however, have shouldered increased costs to train new hires because of this scenario.Still, many argue that more complex lines of businesses have not been fully tapped because of deficit. Knowledge Process Outsourcing, for example, is big BPO business which the Philippines hasn't come around to fully take advantage of.

Hope everything goes well with this conference and more importantly something tangible comes out of it.

Posted in: Current Events