THE Philippines is fast on the way to being the center of the global business process outsourcing industry, with Philippine operations of international BPO giants expected to drive the production of more than 500,000 new jobs between 2013 and 2016.

Accenture Inc., Convergys Philippines Services Corp. and TeleTech Customer Care Management Philippines Inc. have emerged as the country’s largest BPO entities by gross revenues and full-time staff.

With over 25,000 employees in 13 locations in the Philippines, Accenture reported P22.256 billion in revenues in 2011, up 27.7 percent from 2010.

Convergys and TeleTech posted P14.40 billion (up 21 percent) and P11.250 billion (up 19.5 percent) in revenues, respectively. Convergys has some 30,000 personnel in 19 sites all over the Philippines, while TeleTech has a staff of about 20,000 in 14 facilities.

“Of our more than 800 BPO players, we see the heavyweights hiring most aggressively over the next three years,” said Rep. Roman Romulo of Pasig City, House deputy Majority leader a key industry backer.

He added that “Their economies of scale will enable them to quickly draw in more business that will necessitate the recruitment of thousands of additional staff. The larger BPO firms have cost advantages. Owing to their size, they can easily offer both existing and new clients all kinds of back office and business support services at highly competitive prices.”

Based on their 2011 revenues, released for the first time, the other leading BPO firms, to include the in-house back offices of global corporations, are: JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A.-Philippine Global Service Center (P9.888 billion); Stream International Global Services Philippines Inc. (P6.803 billion); Sitel Philippines Corp. (P6.501 billion); Telephilippines Inc. (P5.598 billion); Sutherland Global Services Philippines Inc. (P6.438 billion); Deutsche Knowledge Services Pte. Ltd. (P6.419 billion); Sykes Asia Inc. (P5.790 billion); Aegis PeopleSupport Inc. (P5.442 billion); Telus International Philippines Inc. (P5.431 billion); and IBM Daksh Business Process Services Philippines Inc. (P5.122 billion).

Also included in the list of leading BPO firms are: HSBC Electronic Data Processing Philippines Inc. (P4.805 billion); IBM Business Services Inc. (P4.481 billion); Shell Shared Services Asia B.V. (P4.235 billion); Sykes Marketing Services Inc. (P3.170 billion); SPi CRM Inc. (P2.953 billion); APAC Customer Services Inc. (P2.912 billion); RMH Teleservices Asia Pacific Inc. (P2.836 billion); IBM Solutions Delivery Inc. (P2.553 billion); 24/7 Customer Philippines Inc. (P2.497 billion); Genpact Services LLC (P2.415 billion); ePLDT Inc. (P2.373 billion); Transcom Worldwide Philippines Inc. (P2.354 billion); StarTek International Ltd. (P2.323 billion); Hinduja Global Solutions Ltd. (P2.225 billion); Thomson Reuters Corp. Pte. Ltd. (P2.203 billion); SPi Technologies Inc. (P2.165 billion); Lexmark Research and Development Corp. (P2.005 billion); Chartis Technology and Operations Management Corp. Philippines (P1.702 billion); Alorica Pacific Rim Inc. (P1.473 billion); kgb Philippines Inc. (P1.366 billion); Manulife Data Services Inc. (P1.350 billion); and Dell International Services Philippines Inc. (P1.335 billion).

These 35 firms alone raked in an aggregate of P168 billion in revenues in 2011.

Romulo is author of the new Data Privacy Act, which is anticipated to help entice global corporations to either establish new in-house back offices in Manila, or transfer their non-core, business support activities to independent BPO firms operating here.

All entities, including BPO firms, will be mandated by this law to protect the confidentiality of personal information collected from clients and stored in information technology (IT) systems, in compliance with rigorous international privacy standards.

The Philippines’ highly labor-intensive, BPO and IT-enabled services industry includes contact center services; back offices; medical, legal and other data transcription; animation; software development; engineering design; and digital content.

By 2016 the Business Processing Association of the Philippines projects the industry to yield up to $27 billion in annual revenues and directly employ some 1.3 million Filipinos.

The forecast implies the creation of up to 536,000 new jobs and the doubling of annual revenues over the next three years.

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