From the observation and study of Frost & Sullivan in its Contact Center Outsourcing Trends in the Asia Pacific Market, 2015–2019, the outsourcing industry will feel the result of the economic crisis in the next two years. With this reason, outsourcers must have plans of business strategies to maintain their business growth in times of global economic predicament.
The estimated proceeds of The Asia Pacific contact center in 2008 was US$13.7 Billion. Most of the profits came from the markets of India, Philippines, Malaysia and China, which contributes more than 54% of the total market revenues. Based from a report of Frost & Sullivan, although outsourcers in countries like Philippines, Malaysia and China have achieved momentous grip for offshoring, the multi-lingual/multi-dialect workforce they have employed lack the highly technical agents and supervisors. The business has been mislaid to well-known countries like Australia and India, for having their superior technical skillset. Over the years American Corporations consistently preferred the Philippines in establishing BPO industry.
Factors that contribute to this are the high volume of agents that speak Americanized English and Spanish but in fact, that most outsourcers based in the country originated from the US, says CallCriteria.com. In the short term, the relationship with the United States will harm the enlargement in the Filipino market. Nevertheless, a reliable and well-established spot like the Philippines and India will attract the offshoring business to these locations that represent less risk to enterprises when compared to Indonesia or Vietnam, the newer emerging markets.
Frost & Sullivan said that among the growth markets, India has the better bearing in moving up the progression. Most Indian outsourcers have developed a strategy to shift their focus in offering more data services to foreign clientele. Rather compete, various Indian and Philippine outsourcing communities work together to provide an entire solution to foreign clientele. The arrangement is like this, the Philippine outsourcer will be responsible for the voice services. On the contrary, the Indian counterpart will oversee data services. Larger outsourcers like Teletech, Sitel, Convergys, and IBM Daksh have successfully separated the different services consequently. Over the past few years, with the aid of the respective call center associations, the local players in both countries have been working together to put up a partnership in order to have a capital on the increasing demand of BPO for a rationalized solution.
In spite of economic turndown, there will be a few short term growth chances for outsourcers in the Asia Pacific. Based on the company report, since clients will be ready to cut costs, existing contracts are unlikely to be in risk. Outsourcers must try to research existing accounts and control current relationships to take advantage of the contract value. To boom continuously in complicated times, outsourcers must soar the process value chain and increase their offerings to take in expert knowledge processes like patent and copyright-related services and business intelligence and analytics.
To expand, outsourcers must look for domestic markets. Outsourcers, it will be given a high degree of investment in contact center technology and infrastructure, can potentially look at introducing hosted contact center services to focus with their active customers who have internal contact centers as well as the small and medium domestic business market opportunity, especially in India, Australia, and the Philippines. For the meantime, the reorganization and rationalization of the financial organization globally will reflect the outsourcing business as an enterprise that will move to merge with multi-provider and multi-sourced companies, the rule that is prevailing. The recent merging of an Indian based Aegis BPO with the Filipino outsourcer PeopleSupport was the first transaction in a series of mergers in the APAC region.
