The Philippines’ information technology and business process management (IT-BPM) industry is crafting a 6-year plan that will enable the industry to maintain growth momentum and create four to five million new jobs amid disruptions caused by new market and technology trends.
As a preferred destination for IT-BPM work, the Philippines has been growing at more than twice the global market growth rate over the last 5 years, according to Frost & Sullivan. With a 6% CAGR, total global opportunity for outsourced IT-BPM is expected to grow from $166B to $250B by 2022.
Benedict Hernandez, Chairman of the IT & Business Process Association Philippines’ Executive Committee. PHOTO: MELBA BERNAD
“We need to unveil a new industry game plan that will enable our country’s IT-BPM sector to achieve continued remarkable growth and contributions to the economy,” said Benedict Hernandez, Chairman of the IT & Business Process Association Philippines’ Executive Committee.
“The global market and technology trends we are seeing present significant opportunities for the Philippines. Our ambition is to create another one million higher value direct jobs in IT- BPM over the next six years. There’s also an additional three to four indirect jobs created per direct job in our industry, according to research. So in total, we are looking at four to five million new jobs in the country.”
Hernandez says the new Roadmap 2022 envisions stronger, deeper and more collaborative partnerships among industry, academe and government to create an ecosystem that will foster a sustained and more inclusive growth for the IT-BPM sector.
Lito T. Tayag, Vice Chairman, ITBPAP, and Chairman of the Roadmap 2022 Committee. PHOTO: MELBA BERNAD
“Our hope with this roadmap is to ensure that the opportunities are going to be much more than the threats and risk that we face in this very changing industry,” said Lito T. Tayag, Vice Chairman, ITBPAP, and Chairman of the Roadmap 2022 Committee.
In conjunction with the creation of the Roadmap 2022, lBPAP will establish a Program Management Office that will monitor the achievements of the different sectors of the industry. The group has also partnered with Frost & Sullivan to help assess the global opportunities as well as the current state of the industry today.
The IT-BPM industry in general is made up of five sectors, namely: contact center, healthcare management, IT, animation and game development and global in-house centers.
These sectors are represented by their respective associations under the IBPAP, namely the Animation Council of the Philippines, Inc. (ACPI); Call Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP); Game Developers Association of the Philippines (GDAP); Healthcare Information Management Outsourcing Association of the Philippines (HIMOAP); Global In-house Center Council of the Philippines (GICC) and the Philippine Software Industry Association (PSIA).
Tayag notes that each of the five sectors will have a roadmap which will be consolidated to create Roadmap 2022. The consolidated roadmap will identify the actions needed for the following focus areas across all sectors: infrastructure; talent development; legislative, regulatory and compliance requirements; identification of next wave locations; and the impact of emerging technologies.
“For example, in the area of talent development, how do we retool those that are threatened by automation for the new areas that are actually the sources of growth?” explained Tayag.
“The impact of emerging technologies is important as well. We have heard so much about social, mobility, analytics, and other technologies that are disrupting all industries. We want to be able to identify the impact of those technologies and hopefully translate them into what it means in terms of threat and bigger opportunities for our industry. The impact of technology to the call center might be very different from the impact of technology for the animation industry.”
Tayag says that in creating Roadmap 2022, a highly inclusive approach has been adopted capturing inputs from a diverse set of industry influencers from the government, service providers, domestic clients, overseas clients, industry experts, local councils, and next wave cities.
The IBPAP is hoping that the newly-created Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) with Secretary Rudy Salalima at the helm will help the industry achieve the new milestones as recommended in Roadmap 2022.
Moving up the value chain
Meanwhile, with the advent of digital, IT-BPM is creating more opportunities in the areas of mid to high complex work, analytics, intelligent automation, and new models of service delivery.
Nitin Bhat, Senior Partner at Frost & Sullivan PHOTO: MELBA BERNAD
“Disruptions in technology can be considered a threat or be embraced to take advantage of its opportunities,” according to Nitin Bhat, Senior Partner at Frost & Sullivan. “Embracing digital trends presents a path for the Philippines to accelerate moving up the value chain.”
Frost & Sullivan sees technology developments converging to form the following three major trends that will have an impact on the IT-BPM sector: digital transformation; automation and artificial intelligence; and new delivery models, such as cloud computing.
Bhat said that with the local IT-BPM’s experience, domain expertise, deep pool of highly educated, adaptive, young workforce, the industry has the opportunity to continue to gain market share and move up the value chain as IT-BPM services further evolve with disruptive technology.
“The job mix has changed due to automation, thus it is important that the industry focuses on up-skilling and re-skilling talent,” added Bhat.
