Industry experts from the business process outsourcing (BPO) believe that Barack Obama’s victory in the US presidential election will have no major direct impact in the growth of the industry in the Philippines.

Oscar Sañez, chief executive officer of the Business Process Association of the Philippines (BPAP), said that victory of Obama will have only little effect on the BPO industry in the country.

Obama has expressed during the campaign that he is not in favor of outsourcing jobs to other countries. His campaign website (www.barackobama.com) said that Obama and his vice-president-elect Joe Biden would end tax breaks for companies that send job overseas.

“Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that companies should not get billions of dollars in tax deductions for moving their operations overseas. Obama and Biden will also fight to ensure that public contracts are awarded to companies that are committed to American workers,” the website reads.

Obama was also among those who introduced the Patriot Employer Act of 2007, which seek to reward companies that create good jobs for American workers by providing tax credits to firms that maintain their corporate headquarters in the United States and maintain or increase their full-time workers in America relative to those outside US.

The business process outsourcing unit of Infosys Technologies, today said it has been conferred the “Best Achievement of Organisational Business Improvement in Transactional Services award” at the third Annual Global Lean, Six Sigma and Business Improvement Summit held at Orlando, USA.

“The Global Six Sigma and Business Improvement Awards are recognitions of the most outstanding organisational achievements through business improvement programs”, Infosys BPO said in a statement.

“The awards demonstrate the real results and excellence which organisations have achieved through the successful deploymentof Six Sigma and other business excellence programmes”.

Infosys BPO was recognised for its commitment to the deployment of business improvement excellence and customer centric transformation displayed by its senior leaders, it said. Source

Aegis BPO, a BPO services provider and part of Indian business conglomerate Essar Group, is planning to expand Indian operations by recruiting about 1,000 professionals on a monthly basis till March 2009.

The decision is in line with the company’s plan of increasing headcount to 35,000 by end FY 2008–09. Currently, Aegis employs 30,000 professionals, following the acquisition of PeopleSupport (the Philippines-based offshore BPO services provider). Amid the global financial crisis, the company is continuing to recruit as it forecasts its organic growth rate to be about 35 percent in the near future.

Headquartered in Texas, Aegis BPO offers outsourcing services in the retail, energy, education, telecom, and financial services domains. With its clients including Fortune 500 clients, the company has delivery centers across India and the US.  Source

BPO refers to the type of outsourcing when companies contract part of their business functions to a third-party service provider. The idea is to save costs and increase the company’s organizational flexibility, allowing it to focus on its core operation. BPO can range from clerical work such as image processing and data input to more sophisticated functions including customer services, accounting and finance. BPO services were first seen here in 2005 when multinationals outsourced simple work to Vietnamese firms and did more complex work for others.

Tran Manh Huy, director of FPT-IS’ BPO Service Center, said the basic function of BPO is connecting high technology with low-level labor to perform what can be considered the companies’ administrative burden. Since Vietnam possesses an abundance of young, low-level workers, the BPO market remains wide open to Vietnamese businesses, even at the global level, he said. Nguyen The Trung, head of the DTT Technology Group, said developing BPO means fostering the country’s IT sector.

Though several Vietnamese companies began offering BPO services before it, FPT-IS’ BPO Service Center, established last July, is one of the few service providers operating on a large scale. (more…)