In this era of short attention spans and paltry English prose, there's money to be had in writing long stories. Right?
The intuitive answer is "Wrong." Pinoys need all the help they can get just pronouncing English correctly, let alone writing it.
The counter-intuitive answer is "Right." Pinoys (or the 20% that bother to read English) will read long prose. The trick is finding ways to get their eyes to start moving from left to right.
The answer, however, is "Right-est" when it comes to writing for business. Business, after all, is the Largest User of English in this country. Think call centers and you'll get the point.
But if business can talk the talk (in English with an American twang), can it write right in English? Especially when faced with ad agencies that claim the best ads are those that don't need any words at all--and who with fanatical zeal strive to create the Perfect Mute Ad.
What might be true of English in advertising certainly won't be true of English in other external business communication tools. What I call "informationals" (special reports, newsletters, print media supplements and non-advertising media suited to inform in more detail) demand "long writing".
Informationals thrive on long writing because it's got to explain more, especially if a product or service is rooted in a science such as computers and communications.
Truth is, you can't escape long writing in business-to-consumer (B2C) communications. It's as endemic as the User's Manual.
Just because it's lengthy doesn't mean long writing has to be turgid. Not at all. The art lies in making information delightful to read.
I "long write" for companies and business organizations and constantly re-discover the fundamentals of good business writing apply to writing informationals.
First, you've got to have something to say, i.e. information. You've also got to do a lot of research. That means mining the Internet--the long writer's best friend--to uncover data relevant to your theme.
Then come the interviews with experts. I believe it's this aspect that's often missing in many informationals.
Anyone that's read a country or industry report by a bank or multinational lending agency such as the World Bank will be hard pressed to find experts being quoted.
It's probably this reliance on in-house experts (and a corresponding reluctance to cite individual experts, especially outside experts) that give business writing its bland reputation.
This seeming reluctance to interview is also apparent in writing B2C informationals. The art of interviewing is a painfully earned skill, as journalists will affirm, and I suppose it's too much to expect these same skills from your average in-house writer.
But then, you can't interview the competition. They'd call that espionage.
The end point of information harvesting is the writing. An "outsourced" or freelance writer with experience in journalism or advocacy will fall back on the five "Ws" when composing his piece.
In contrast, an in-house company writer will tend towards "invisibility." That is, he won't rock the boat by writing in a way that's markedly different from past reports. His bosses might notice the change and not all will be happy with it.
I've found that writing informationals occupies ground between these opposite poles. The middle ground involves starting with a bang (a tasteful yet catchy lead) and using the writer's art to sow words, phrases and insights that make the informational an entertaining and very informative read.
It's not easy and this suggestion won't work in many cases (because it's against conventional wisdom), but it's far better than deciphering a User's Manual or wincing through two pages of fluff extolling a product to high heavens.
Delightfully written informationals will make anyone's eyes begin moving left to right because it does two things at once: inform in abundance and entertain in style.
Informationals do this and business might just find it profitable to use informationals more often. "In-Writers" (informationals writers) might profit, too.
My website at www.geocities.com/peftok/informationals.html explains informationals more.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Choose your poison
Taking a bus at EDSA (E. de los Santos Avenue) is always a case of choosing your poison.
EDSA air is a lingering brew of poisonous exhaust emissions containing carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, lead and particulate matter from thousands of diesel, gasoline and two-stroke motorcycle engines. There's also the infernal dust that never seems to dissipate.
Taking an open-air EDSA bus guarantees you'll inhale toxic fumes by the lungful. And the longer you stay on the bus, the more death-dealing particulates you absorb.
The Department of Health says motor vehicles account for 80% of the country's total pollution. Of the estimated 4,000 Filipinos who die each year because of air pollution, most can probably be linked to EDSA pollution.
One Filipino doctor, speaking about his air pollution patients, believes it takes just 15 minutes for a person to exhibit symptoms of pollution poisoning (breathing difficulty, headaches, nausea).
And that pollution, being oil, clings to your skin. Wiping your face with a handkerchief, or cleaning your nostrils, will show you how black and disgusting EDSA's deadly air is.
One hour in an open-air bus, therefore, is practically a death sentence. Holding a handkerchief to your nose won't save you from the permeating pollution. Not even a 3M dust mask will.
You'll probably need a portable oxygen tank with a full-face mask for real protection.
I salute all those MMDA (Metro Manila Development Authority) traffic enforcers who spend hours at EDSA pollution hot spots such as Cubao disciplining bus drivers. Those heroic enforcers do their thankless jobs without any form of effective protection against toxic exhaust emissions.
Most wrap handkerchiefs over their noses while some use those colorful but useless motorcycle dust masks in a vain effort to repel toxic pollutants. These brave men are slowly dying while doing their duty.
EDSA's notoriously toxic air will remain poisonous so long as the "geniuses" in government believe sporadic--and next to useless--anti-smoke belching drives are the solution to Metro Manila's worsening vehicle pollution problem. And whatever happened to the much hyped Smoke-Free EDSA campaign of 2003?
"Air conditioned" buses aren't much safer. A lot smell terrible. Some might even be poisonous.
The stink inside some of these buses is so nauseating it's choking. The putrid odor from fungus and bacteria in the aircon system combined with the stench from dirty seats, filthy floors, rotting garbage, spit and vomit create a disgusting, musty stench that has forced me to abandon buses shortly after I boarded.
Sometimes, the aircon is turned on so high you can see the chlorofluorocarbon coolant (mainly freon) spew out of the vents. The coolant smells "toxic" and probably is toxic in badly maintained aircon systems.
Many aircon buses at EDSA are second hand vehicles imported from South Korea and Japan. After a time, some of these jalopies get so beat up you wonder why they're still on the road.
Aircon bus owners often grouse about the unfair competition from the MRT (Metro Rail Transit) and its fast, air-conditioned trains. Why don't these people turn their buses into clean, comfortable air-conditioned havens to draw more riders away from the MRT?
I'd ride a sanitary aircon bus with clean, breathable air. I'm sure a lot of short distance riders will, too.
Right now, however, it's "Lose-Lose" for us commuters when it comes to EDSA buses.
It's criminal to have commuters suffer the agony of plying EDSA aboard open-air buses that ram carcinogenic pollution down their throats, or in "aircon" buses that trigger allergies, asthma attacks, vertigo and vomiting.
Choose your poison and pray. I do, most everyday.
EDSA air is a lingering brew of poisonous exhaust emissions containing carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, lead and particulate matter from thousands of diesel, gasoline and two-stroke motorcycle engines. There's also the infernal dust that never seems to dissipate.
Taking an open-air EDSA bus guarantees you'll inhale toxic fumes by the lungful. And the longer you stay on the bus, the more death-dealing particulates you absorb.
The Department of Health says motor vehicles account for 80% of the country's total pollution. Of the estimated 4,000 Filipinos who die each year because of air pollution, most can probably be linked to EDSA pollution.
One Filipino doctor, speaking about his air pollution patients, believes it takes just 15 minutes for a person to exhibit symptoms of pollution poisoning (breathing difficulty, headaches, nausea).
And that pollution, being oil, clings to your skin. Wiping your face with a handkerchief, or cleaning your nostrils, will show you how black and disgusting EDSA's deadly air is.
One hour in an open-air bus, therefore, is practically a death sentence. Holding a handkerchief to your nose won't save you from the permeating pollution. Not even a 3M dust mask will.
You'll probably need a portable oxygen tank with a full-face mask for real protection.
I salute all those MMDA (Metro Manila Development Authority) traffic enforcers who spend hours at EDSA pollution hot spots such as Cubao disciplining bus drivers. Those heroic enforcers do their thankless jobs without any form of effective protection against toxic exhaust emissions.
Most wrap handkerchiefs over their noses while some use those colorful but useless motorcycle dust masks in a vain effort to repel toxic pollutants. These brave men are slowly dying while doing their duty.
EDSA's notoriously toxic air will remain poisonous so long as the "geniuses" in government believe sporadic--and next to useless--anti-smoke belching drives are the solution to Metro Manila's worsening vehicle pollution problem. And whatever happened to the much hyped Smoke-Free EDSA campaign of 2003?
"Air conditioned" buses aren't much safer. A lot smell terrible. Some might even be poisonous.
The stink inside some of these buses is so nauseating it's choking. The putrid odor from fungus and bacteria in the aircon system combined with the stench from dirty seats, filthy floors, rotting garbage, spit and vomit create a disgusting, musty stench that has forced me to abandon buses shortly after I boarded.
Sometimes, the aircon is turned on so high you can see the chlorofluorocarbon coolant (mainly freon) spew out of the vents. The coolant smells "toxic" and probably is toxic in badly maintained aircon systems.
Many aircon buses at EDSA are second hand vehicles imported from South Korea and Japan. After a time, some of these jalopies get so beat up you wonder why they're still on the road.
Aircon bus owners often grouse about the unfair competition from the MRT (Metro Rail Transit) and its fast, air-conditioned trains. Why don't these people turn their buses into clean, comfortable air-conditioned havens to draw more riders away from the MRT?
I'd ride a sanitary aircon bus with clean, breathable air. I'm sure a lot of short distance riders will, too.
Right now, however, it's "Lose-Lose" for us commuters when it comes to EDSA buses.
It's criminal to have commuters suffer the agony of plying EDSA aboard open-air buses that ram carcinogenic pollution down their throats, or in "aircon" buses that trigger allergies, asthma attacks, vertigo and vomiting.
Choose your poison and pray. I do, most everyday.
Asia's space powers intensify their battle for the ultimate high ground of space
China’s destruction of one of its derelict satellites using a direct ascent, kinetic kill missile in January 2007—for which it has offered no satisfactory explanation—has goaded Asia’s non-communist military powers into accelerating their military satellite programs in self defense.
In October 2007, India and South Korea said they were putting more muscle into their awakening military satellite programs with heavy infrastructure investments, and new doctrines that consider the eventuality of warfighting in space.
Japan has not announced a similar acceleration of its intelligence gathering satellite program. Its successful orbiting of four satellites to spy on North Korea, however, illustrates the importance it places on satellite derived imagery as guarantors of its national security.
The satellites spying on North Korea and its nuclear facilities constitute Japan’s single largest defense hardware expenditure in decades, and are among the most expensive military satellites built by any nation.
The year 2007 has turned into a watershed for Asia’s military space powers. The year 2008 promises to see military Asia push their satellite spy programs further ahead, confirming the hallowed military maxim—especially appreciated in India—that the second highest ground is no good.
And what high ground can trump space? The value of space as a strategic advantage has too often been driven home at India’s expense: first during the Kargil War in 1999, and lately by China’s space surprise in January 2007.
India: exploiting the high ground
Indian military analysts believe dedicated milsats (which India did not have in 1999 and which it still does not have today) would have avoided many of the intelligence failures that led to the war’s casualty bill.
India relied on dual use satellites operated by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) for battlefield photoreconnaissance. The poor clarity of the photos provided by these satellites’ low resolution cameras left much to be desired.
The 50-day Kargil War, apart from leading to higher Indian defense budgets, also had the welcome effect of convincing India’s politicians that military satellites are assets worth their weight in soldiers’ lives.
India’s first military satellite—Cartosat-2A—is finally scheduled for launch in March 2008, eight years after the Kargil War.
Cartosat-2A carries panchromatic cameras that provide advanced imagery. It will fulfill a long-standing demand from the armed forces for a dedicated reconnaissance spacecraft.
Cartosat-2A will be followed by the launch of two more advanced imaging satellites, perhaps in 2008, that will give India the capability of keeping a round-the-clock eye on China and Pakistan.
The first of these new milsats will carry an Israeli SAR (synthetic aperture radar) that can image surface objects through cloud and rain.
More important than this important piece of spaceware, however, is that the Indian army, air force and navy are developing a doctrine or philosophy for utilizing space at tactical, operational and strategic levels.
That doctrine is embodied in India’s “Defense Space Vision 2020.” The first phase of this ambitious space program gives priority to developing space-based intelligence, reconnaissance, surveillance, communication and navigation capabilities until 2012.
At a Combined Commanders' Conference held this October, the Indian Army confirmed the importance of space as a vital arena for future exploitation. It said it had set up a "Space Cell" at its headquarters to coordinate space-based applications in a joint services operational environment.
India is also considering organizing a tri-service aerospace command, first for defensive missions, but which would take on an offensive complexion if Indian satellites are threatened. This Indian aerospace command should become operational in six to seven years, said some military sources.
The immediate perceived threat comes from China. India believes the Chinese have a space system in place consisting of very small maneuvering satellites loaded with explosives that will ram bigger satellites in suicide missions.
The Indian military is apprehensive its remote sensing satellites are vulnerable to these Chinese kamikaze attacks. The loss of its dual use Insat satellites will rob India of its military communication capability.
India is developing laser and directed-energy weapons to counter this perceived Chinese threat.
The organization of an Indian aerospace command has the support of India’s parliament. In 2004, the committee in charge of this project asked the government to set up the command to exploit the potential of space technology in a future war.
The successful launch and orbiting of Cartosat-2A will signal the official birth of India’s military satellite capability.
Described as a satellite based surveillance system, Cartosat-2A will give Indian Army commanders the ability to closely monitor troop movements and military installations in China.
The brains of this milsat surveillance system will consist of a defense imagery processing and analysis centre in New Delhi and a satellite control facility in Bhopal.
Military analysts say India is eager to make use of the tactical, operational and strategic advantages of space since they feel future wars cannot be fought without the effective exploitation space. The Indian armed forces also believe network-centric warfare hinges on the continued operation of military and dual use satellites.
The realization that it needs military satellites has been on the front burner of India’s armed forces. In 2005, India said its military space-based reconnaissance system was in an advanced stage of development and was expected to be operational by 2008 with the launch of Cartosat-2A.
India’s fleet of dual use, photo imagery satellites include Resourcesat-1 launched in October 2003 and considered India's most sophisticated remote sensing satellite to date. There’s the 2.5 meter, high-resolution Cartosat-1 satellite equipped with two cameras able to point at an object from two different angles. Another mapping satellite, Cartosat-2, provides one-meter resolution and was launched in January 2007.
South Korea
South Korea launched KoreaSat-5, its first milsat, only in August 2006. This dual use satellite gives South Korea a system that offers secure military communications. South Korea has eight other civilian and dual use satellites in orbit.
Over a year later and South Korea is now talking about building its space war capabilities by deploying warfare-ready laser weapons and establishing a space operations command by 2025. All this also because of China’s successful ASAT test last January.
The South Korean air force recently released a “Star Wars” report that reveals South Korea’s plans for exploiting and fighting in space.
The report says that by 2015, the air force plans to have built the infrastructure for its space operations. During this stage, the air force will set up a joint military-private sector satellite project and install a ballistic missile early warning radar system by 2012.
In the second stage from 2016-2025, the air force will build an optical and laser-based space surveillance system. It will also deploy warfare-ready laser weapons.
The third stage (post 2025) will see the organization of an air force space command, including the deployment of airborne and space-based laser weapons.
Today, however, South Korea has two dual use satellites in orbit and is to deploy its first SAR satellite in 2010. The in-orbit Arirang-1 and Arirang-2 keep watch over North Korea. Launched in 2006, Arirang-2 is a modern photoreconnaissance satellite with a 1 meter resolution digital camera.
The $268 million SAR satellite, Arirang-5, is to begin operations in 2010. The satellite’s SAR can also image underground or undersea features for mineral exploration and other purposes, which is the civilian aspect of its dual use nature.
The U.S. view
In August 2007, Lieutenant General Kevin Campbell, head of the U.S. Army's Space and Missile Defense Command, warned that China might be three years from being able to disrupt U.S. military satellites in a regional conflict.
Other U.S. commanders are concerned that China's anti-satellite weapons could interfere with military communications with South Korea and Japan. In response, the U.S. intends to develop more powerful and flexible forces in the Pacific to reduce miscalculations by Beijing.
The U.S. also intends to ensure the robust protection of its satellites from future Chinese “surprises”.
The U.S. operates some 110 military satellites, almost thrice the number (40) operated by Russia. There are also some 500 active civilian and dual use satellites hovering above the planet.
The U.S.’ immediate military response to the Chinese ASAT test was to order the U.S. Air Force to conduct a wide-ranging review of the vulnerabilities of U.S. military satellites.
The U.S. believes China is attempting to perfect a wide range of ASAT weapons, including jammers for navigation and communications satellites, and the deployment of space mines that could disable U.S. milsats.
As part of the review, the USAF is to recommend whether new arms programs (or “offensive counter-space” systems) to disable enemy space systems are needed.
Despite the chill in its relations with the U.S., China said it remained open to cooperating on space development with the U.S. China also said it remains keen on taking part in the International Space Station (ISS) project.
The Pentagon, however, opposes China's involvement in the ISS and other space cooperation with Beijing, and sees China's space program as a looming threat to U.S. satellite systems.
In October 2007, India and South Korea said they were putting more muscle into their awakening military satellite programs with heavy infrastructure investments, and new doctrines that consider the eventuality of warfighting in space.
Japan has not announced a similar acceleration of its intelligence gathering satellite program. Its successful orbiting of four satellites to spy on North Korea, however, illustrates the importance it places on satellite derived imagery as guarantors of its national security.
The satellites spying on North Korea and its nuclear facilities constitute Japan’s single largest defense hardware expenditure in decades, and are among the most expensive military satellites built by any nation.
The year 2007 has turned into a watershed for Asia’s military space powers. The year 2008 promises to see military Asia push their satellite spy programs further ahead, confirming the hallowed military maxim—especially appreciated in India—that the second highest ground is no good.
And what high ground can trump space? The value of space as a strategic advantage has too often been driven home at India’s expense: first during the Kargil War in 1999, and lately by China’s space surprise in January 2007.
India: exploiting the high ground
Indian military analysts believe dedicated milsats (which India did not have in 1999 and which it still does not have today) would have avoided many of the intelligence failures that led to the war’s casualty bill.
India relied on dual use satellites operated by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) for battlefield photoreconnaissance. The poor clarity of the photos provided by these satellites’ low resolution cameras left much to be desired.
The 50-day Kargil War, apart from leading to higher Indian defense budgets, also had the welcome effect of convincing India’s politicians that military satellites are assets worth their weight in soldiers’ lives.
India’s first military satellite—Cartosat-2A—is finally scheduled for launch in March 2008, eight years after the Kargil War.
Cartosat-2A carries panchromatic cameras that provide advanced imagery. It will fulfill a long-standing demand from the armed forces for a dedicated reconnaissance spacecraft.
Cartosat-2A will be followed by the launch of two more advanced imaging satellites, perhaps in 2008, that will give India the capability of keeping a round-the-clock eye on China and Pakistan.
The first of these new milsats will carry an Israeli SAR (synthetic aperture radar) that can image surface objects through cloud and rain.
More important than this important piece of spaceware, however, is that the Indian army, air force and navy are developing a doctrine or philosophy for utilizing space at tactical, operational and strategic levels.
That doctrine is embodied in India’s “Defense Space Vision 2020.” The first phase of this ambitious space program gives priority to developing space-based intelligence, reconnaissance, surveillance, communication and navigation capabilities until 2012.
At a Combined Commanders' Conference held this October, the Indian Army confirmed the importance of space as a vital arena for future exploitation. It said it had set up a "Space Cell" at its headquarters to coordinate space-based applications in a joint services operational environment.
India is also considering organizing a tri-service aerospace command, first for defensive missions, but which would take on an offensive complexion if Indian satellites are threatened. This Indian aerospace command should become operational in six to seven years, said some military sources.
The immediate perceived threat comes from China. India believes the Chinese have a space system in place consisting of very small maneuvering satellites loaded with explosives that will ram bigger satellites in suicide missions.
The Indian military is apprehensive its remote sensing satellites are vulnerable to these Chinese kamikaze attacks. The loss of its dual use Insat satellites will rob India of its military communication capability.
India is developing laser and directed-energy weapons to counter this perceived Chinese threat.
The organization of an Indian aerospace command has the support of India’s parliament. In 2004, the committee in charge of this project asked the government to set up the command to exploit the potential of space technology in a future war.
The successful launch and orbiting of Cartosat-2A will signal the official birth of India’s military satellite capability.
Described as a satellite based surveillance system, Cartosat-2A will give Indian Army commanders the ability to closely monitor troop movements and military installations in China.
The brains of this milsat surveillance system will consist of a defense imagery processing and analysis centre in New Delhi and a satellite control facility in Bhopal.
Military analysts say India is eager to make use of the tactical, operational and strategic advantages of space since they feel future wars cannot be fought without the effective exploitation space. The Indian armed forces also believe network-centric warfare hinges on the continued operation of military and dual use satellites.
The realization that it needs military satellites has been on the front burner of India’s armed forces. In 2005, India said its military space-based reconnaissance system was in an advanced stage of development and was expected to be operational by 2008 with the launch of Cartosat-2A.
India’s fleet of dual use, photo imagery satellites include Resourcesat-1 launched in October 2003 and considered India's most sophisticated remote sensing satellite to date. There’s the 2.5 meter, high-resolution Cartosat-1 satellite equipped with two cameras able to point at an object from two different angles. Another mapping satellite, Cartosat-2, provides one-meter resolution and was launched in January 2007.
South Korea
South Korea launched KoreaSat-5, its first milsat, only in August 2006. This dual use satellite gives South Korea a system that offers secure military communications. South Korea has eight other civilian and dual use satellites in orbit.
Over a year later and South Korea is now talking about building its space war capabilities by deploying warfare-ready laser weapons and establishing a space operations command by 2025. All this also because of China’s successful ASAT test last January.
The South Korean air force recently released a “Star Wars” report that reveals South Korea’s plans for exploiting and fighting in space.
The report says that by 2015, the air force plans to have built the infrastructure for its space operations. During this stage, the air force will set up a joint military-private sector satellite project and install a ballistic missile early warning radar system by 2012.
In the second stage from 2016-2025, the air force will build an optical and laser-based space surveillance system. It will also deploy warfare-ready laser weapons.
The third stage (post 2025) will see the organization of an air force space command, including the deployment of airborne and space-based laser weapons.
Today, however, South Korea has two dual use satellites in orbit and is to deploy its first SAR satellite in 2010. The in-orbit Arirang-1 and Arirang-2 keep watch over North Korea. Launched in 2006, Arirang-2 is a modern photoreconnaissance satellite with a 1 meter resolution digital camera.
The $268 million SAR satellite, Arirang-5, is to begin operations in 2010. The satellite’s SAR can also image underground or undersea features for mineral exploration and other purposes, which is the civilian aspect of its dual use nature.
The U.S. view
In August 2007, Lieutenant General Kevin Campbell, head of the U.S. Army's Space and Missile Defense Command, warned that China might be three years from being able to disrupt U.S. military satellites in a regional conflict.
Other U.S. commanders are concerned that China's anti-satellite weapons could interfere with military communications with South Korea and Japan. In response, the U.S. intends to develop more powerful and flexible forces in the Pacific to reduce miscalculations by Beijing.
The U.S. also intends to ensure the robust protection of its satellites from future Chinese “surprises”.
The U.S. operates some 110 military satellites, almost thrice the number (40) operated by Russia. There are also some 500 active civilian and dual use satellites hovering above the planet.
The U.S.’ immediate military response to the Chinese ASAT test was to order the U.S. Air Force to conduct a wide-ranging review of the vulnerabilities of U.S. military satellites.
The U.S. believes China is attempting to perfect a wide range of ASAT weapons, including jammers for navigation and communications satellites, and the deployment of space mines that could disable U.S. milsats.
As part of the review, the USAF is to recommend whether new arms programs (or “offensive counter-space” systems) to disable enemy space systems are needed.
Despite the chill in its relations with the U.S., China said it remained open to cooperating on space development with the U.S. China also said it remains keen on taking part in the International Space Station (ISS) project.
The Pentagon, however, opposes China's involvement in the ISS and other space cooperation with Beijing, and sees China's space program as a looming threat to U.S. satellite systems.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
The Other Side of Midnight
With contact centers leading the way, the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry continues to fulfill its potential as one of this country’s major growth and employment engines in the globalized marketplace.
Complementing contact centers are lesser known but potentially powerful BPO engines that are creating employment, and are driving investments, growth and career building. These engines are taking Starship Philippines on a new course to “The Other Side of Midnight” where revenues are made by the light of day.
The Business Process Association of the Philippines (BPA/P), the industry’s major association, expects BPO industry revenues to almost triple to $12.1 billion by 2010 from the 2006 level of $3.45 billion. In 2006, call centers continued to contribute most of BPO revenues from foreign clients, some 77%.
BPA/P estimates call center revenues at $5.29 billion in 2010, up a huge 97% over three years, but, more significantly, less than 45% of total BPO industry revenues.
The other 55% will be contributed by the other sectors or engines of BPO: Business Processing (Back Office Operations); Medical & Legal Transcription; Software Development and Maintenance; Animation Industry and Engineering Design
Best of all for job seekers is that these sectors—also collectively called “non-voice”—offer wider employment for Filipinos (including middle aged professionals) and that the working hours take place in daylight. For BPO firms, many of which operate contact centers, the rise of daytime BPO maximizes their investments in IT and physical infrastructure.
“The Other Side of Midnight” is on the rise.
BPA/P estimates the industry should grow by some 48% in 2007 to reach revenues of $4.9 billion. By 2010, BPA/P believes outsourcing could be a $12 billion industry employing 900,000 persons.
Consulting firm A.T. Kearney, in a recent ranking of the most desirable global services locations that are competitive for BPO, rated the Philippines fourth in the world behind India, China and Malaysia. The Philippines was outside the top 10 three years ago.
The Philippines generated offshore service revenues of $2.1 billion in 2005, placing third behind India and China and slightly ahead of Malaysia. That's up 62% over the $1.3 billion it gained in 2004, and a huge increase from the start of the decade when BPO employed just 2,400 people and the industry had revenues of merely $24 million.
A.T. Kearney said the Philippines gets high marks for its large, educated talent pool and English language skills, but falls behind some of the other locations in infrastructure.
A natural offshoot of this rapid BPO growth is the increase in the number of jobs on offer to Filipinos. The industry employs 250,000 persons (including call center agents) today. BPA/P's goal is to produce one million jobs in the BPO industry.
BPO rising
The ascendancy of BPO confirms the shift in employment and investments from the cost-effectiveness of call centers to the skills quality and competence of non-voice BPO. This development strengthens the Philippines' position as an emerging global leader in the burgeoning BPO industry.
BPO firms employ people from a wider variety of professions than do contact centers, which need to focus their talent search on Filipinos who, also, can speak with an “English neutral accent.” Non-voice BPO opens its doors to engineers, architects, designers, medical professionals, medical researchers, human resources professionals, lawyers, accountants and animators.
These professionals work in virtual teams to service client needs. And the language they use is, of course, English, the language of world business. In other words, English proficiency is required on the other side of midnight, too.
It is a reality confirmed by BPA/P, which points out that English proficiency is the key to success, as it is required by all six sectors of the industry.
BPO’s growth surge is being fueled not by low-value-added call centers but by higher-end outsourcing such as back office work, medical transcription, legal services, animation, Web design, software development and shared services.
The number of people employed in back office work is expected to jump to 299,000 by 2010 from the present 36,000, a growth rate of 730 percent. BPA/P says Business Processing or Back Office Operations and Medical Transcription are the leading areas of opportunity for employing large numbers of Filipinos.
Medical transcription is experiencing a growth rate expected to top 1,600 % from 2006 until 2010, with employment surging from 7,000 to 122,000. Employment in software development is projected to jump from 16,000 in 2006 to 75,000 in 2010.
BPA/P believes back office services, medical transcription and software development will replace call centers as the high growth BPO sectors. All these sectors will experience faster revenue and employment growth than call centers.
“More companies are coming in from India and the U.S.,” said BPAP Executive Director Mitch Locsin. “Many of these companies will start with voice and move up the value chain.”
He noted that revenues from non-voice BPO services will surpass contact center or voice revenues by 2010.
“Back office services are the next big thing in BPO,” he said. “Our job now is to get Filipino accountants, bookkeepers and engineers to focus on their studies to prepare for the future.”
He said one of Philippine BPO’s biggest challenges is beef up its manpower resources, quality certification and security compliance. Locsin revealed that all these issues are being addressed by BPAP and are in the final stages of implementation.
As for the hot jobs in BPO, Locsin said opportunities abound in Finance & Accounting (F&A) since 28% of Philippine graduates come from Business Administration and related courses.
Opportunities exist in moving up the value chain and doing more high value added services such as Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO).
Locsin said BPAP is convinced that English proficiency is the key to success in BPO, as it is required by all sectors of the industry.
“The Philippines can excel in all of the e-Services sectors because of its quality of service that we provide,” he said.
Coming to the Philippines
A few years ago, the Royal Dutch Shell Group determined the creation of a network of Shell shared services centers (SSSCs) in strategic locations across the globe would be key in its efforts to deliver services at competitive costs and standards.
SSSC Manila, a wholly owned subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell plc, was established in July 2004. It was the fourth SSSC to be established and has over 1,100 employees, the largest in terms of manpower compared to other SSSCs in Glasgow, Guatemala, Kuala Lumpur and Krakow.
SSSC Manila mainly performs back office accounting and finance work exclusively for Shell clients abroad. These clients include Shell companies in the US, Europe (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Poland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands) and Asia (Malaysia, Thailand, Australia and the Philippines).
The bulk of finance work provided by SSSC Manila includes hydrocarbon accounting (reconciling fuel movements); accounts payable (or processing of vendor payments); accounts receivables (collections of receivables from both internal and external customers) and general accounting (financial reporting, fixed asset inventory, payroll accounting). Other activities being serviced include master reference data maintenance; contracting and procurement (buying activity). human resources service desk and customer services.
SSSC Manila general manager Noel Paraso said the center proves Filipinos can perform according to the same high standards expected from foreign employees. Paraso noted the continued interest in transferring more work to SSSSC Manila because trust has already been established.
“We make sure the standard of services do not suffer here,” Paraso said. “We ensure successful migration of these processes by putting in place a stringent migration methodology and hiring people with meaningful skills, background and experience; people who are accounting, business, economics, and engineering majors. We also give them very thorough, very focused training”.
OfficeTiger, a U.S. owned printing services firm working out of India, chose the Philippines to provide its legal services outsourcing. It expects to make the Philippines the main center for "pre-media" outsourcing work, including desktop publishing, composition, typesetting and graphic design.
A ranking OfficeTiger manager said design work is an area where Filipinos have and edge. The company has found an incredible depth of design talent in the Philippines, the kind of talent that is hard to come by in Bangalore, Hyderabad or Chennai.
OfficeTiger is looking at its Philippine operations to provide 40% to 50% of its total annual revenue growth over the next three to five years. Its clients include large insurance companies, retailers and publishers of books and directories.
The country’s dominant telecom firm, Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT), took a significant slice of the BPO industry in 2006 by acquiring SPI Technologies, Inc., the second largest dedicated BPO company in the Philippines and the ninth largest independent BPO service provider worldwide, through subsidiary ePLDT, Inc.
SPI operates in 23 locations in North America, Europe and Asia, servicing over 150 customers including Fortune 500 companies. With 6,500 employees worldwide, SPI services these customers onsite, and from facilities in the Philippines, India, US, China and Vietnam.
SPI’s core capabilities include content editorial and production, litigation support coding and electronic data discovery, medical transcription, database structuring and management and transaction processing.
PLDT president Napoleon Nazareno said the addition of SPI into ePLDT will broaden the group’s participation in BPO, which analysts forecast to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 9.2 % until 2010.
PLDT said SPI will give it excellent opportunities to enhance its North American customer base, broaden its revenue streams, as well as derive potential cost synergies in the marketing and selling of voice-based services in the countries where SPI operates.
ePLDT’s Ventus call-center group consists of Parlance Systems Inc., Vocativ Systems Inc. and ePLDT Ventus Inc. The ePLDT Ventus Group operates six call-center facilities located in the cities of Makati, Taguig, Pasig, Mandaluyong, Quezon and Iloilo, rendering primarily voice-based services to large US-based clients and outsourcers.
BPO firm Sykes, although better known as one of the pioneer call centers, said Filipinos are a great asset. It describes Filipinos as intelligent and hard working and fit nicely within Sykes’ culture of “People Serving People.” Sykes enjoys and are proud of its partnership with Filipinos.
Sykes came to the Philippines in 1997 with just a small number of employees providing technical support through e-mail. It now has more then 10,000 employees across six sites providing customer care through multiple communication channels including chat, e-mail and voice.
Sykes is a family of global businesses delivering BPO services. Sykes is entrusted with the customer care of global brands primarily in Consumer Products & Services, Communications, Financial Services, Technology and Travel & Leisure.
Philippine BPO offerings
Business Processing (Back Office Operations) is one of the hottest job sectors in BPO. In 2006, there were 62 Business Processing firms employing some 36,000 persons. These firms generated revenues of $288 million.
The Philippines now provides some 40 Business Processing Services. Among these services are accounting and bookkeeping; payroll processing; asset management; financial analysis and auditing; inventory control and purchasing; human resources administration; customer management; credit card administration; factoring and stock brokering; revenue management; database management; supply chain management; legal transcription; litigation support; content development; publishing; loan processing; health insurance; sales and marketing; tax reporting; transaction management; sourcing and procurement; logistics; disaster recovery; business intelligence; network management and warehouse and inventory.
Counted among the leading third party providers of Business Processing Services are Accenture, American Data Exchange, SVI Corp, SPI Technologies, DAKSH eServices, The Environments Collaborative, Eximius BPO, Summersault, Inc., Infinit-O BPO, BPO International and BayanTrade Dotcom.
“Captives” or companies with in-house services include AOL, AIG BPSI, Chevron Texaco,HP, HSBC, Procter & Gamble, Flour Daniel, Deutsche Bank, Citibank Crescent Services, Shell Shared Services, Manulife, Alitalia, Watson Wyatt, Emerson, McKinsey & Co., Safeway and Thomson.
Medical transcription (MT), which next to contact centers is the best known BPO sector, remains a prime growth sector and a source of hot jobs for Filipinos. Filipino MT firms are noted internationally for their accuracy (98-99% accuracy rate) and have a swift job turnaround time of 12 to 24 hours.
There are some 100 MT firms employing 7,000 persons. There are also 15 MT schools. MT firms posted revenues of $98 million in 2006.
Key MT firms are eData Services, SPI Technologies, SVI Corporation, Medscribe Asia,
Transkripsyo, Inc., Total Transcription Solutions, Inc., Dictation Source and Pilipinas Data Contracts Corporation.
Legal transcription (LT), although new, offers bright promise since the Philippines’ legal system is patterned after that of the United States, the source of most legal transcription jobs.
There are nine operational LT firms employing 675 lawyers and legal personnel. The sector, which generated $9 million revenues in 2006, has among its key players Quisumbing Torres, SPI Technologies, SVI Corporation, CD Asia, Inc. and Medscribe Asia.
The Philippines had 100 software development companies in 2006 that booked $272 million revenues in 2006.
Among the firms providing software development services are Accenture, Headstrong, Microsoft, IBM Solutions, Jupiter Systems, Oracle, ADTX Solutions, TrendMicro, Gurango, Sun Microsystems, Intel Microelectronics, NEC and RCG Philippines.
Filipino animation continues to be a source of strength in BPO and is the oldest BPO sector (20 years in existence). The country’s 70 animation studios employ 6,500 persons and created revenues of $97 million in 2006.
Local studios consist of Holy Cow! Animation, Artfarm Asia, Digital Exchange, Top Draw Animation, Toei Animation, Top Peg Animation and Creative Studio, Creative Asia, Geebo Digital and Toon City, among others.
The relatively new Engineering Design Industry now consists of 24 companies employing 4,400 full time engineers. These firms reported revenues of $68 million in 2006.
Among these firms are JGC Phils., Fluor Daniel, Bechtel, Tsuneishi, Kajima Corp, Parsons, C & E Corp, EEI Corp, Eichleay Pacific, Inc., Hyundai Engineering, Foster Wheeler, Kellog, Brown & Root and Bouygues Construction.
The Philippines graduates 40,000 engineers every year and there are now some 100,000 licensed engineering professionals. Filipino engineers are prized for their high level of technical expertise in engineering design and practice internationally accepted engineering standards.
Human Capacity Build-up
There is general consensus that the BPO future of the Philippines is bright—at midnight and at midday. Industry players, however, are also fully aware that the opportunities at the horizon will only become reality if government, academe and industry work together in building the human resource.
The Philippine government recognizes the strategic importance of BPO as generators of revenues and employment. President Gloria Arroyo has set aside $10 million in government money to train people for employment in the outsourcing industry. Students and other persons interested in outsourcing jobs are given vouchers that can be used for tuition at vocational schools.
But of greater importance to the industry is its five-year roadmap being drawn up in assistance with international consulting firm McKinsey.
BPA/P president Dan Reyes said the roadmap will identify niche areas in the global marketplace in which the Philippines can be competitive against India and other outsourcing destinations such as China, Malaysia and eastern European countries.
He noted that while BPO is still predominantly call center-driven, both government and the private sector recognize the need to deliver higher-value BPO services such as HR and finance and accounting.
A glimpse of the BPA/P Roadmap 2010 was recently presented by BPA/P CEO Oscar Sañez during the Call Center Conference Exposition 2007. As it is still in its second phase, Sañez said the roadmap will be officially released later this year.
Sañez said the strategy involves not just the BPA/P members but also the local communities, education institutions and local government units to ensure its success.
For the location component, BPA/P will develop a set of products that identify and evaluate areas considered as "next wave" cities where startups and expanding BPOs can build new locations.
The reporting of next wave cities will contain the number of companies already operating in specific cities, telecommunications readiness, physical landscape, available expertise and possible challenges.
For the business environment component, BPA/P intends to enhance perceptions regarding the Philippines as an ideal location for operators. To do so, BPA/P intends to conduct a risk perception survey of locators, build success case studies and launch industry-wide campaigns to address intellectual property and Internet security, among other issues.
Improving the future/lending a helping hand
The European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (ECCP) and its IT foundation, the European IT Service Center (EITSC), are committed to human capacity building.
EITSC is an initiative of ECCP, the German Development Cooperation (GTZ) and the Asia-Europe Foundation of the Philippines to bridge the needs of Europe with the IT/BPO capabilities in the Philippines.
EITSC is currently in a partnership with Hanns Seidel Foundation and the European Union on human capacity building. EITSC and Hanns Seidel Foundation with co-funding from the European Union initiated a five-year program that takes a progressive approach to answering the call for more qualified workers in the IT/BPO sector.
Of particular interest to ECCP and EITSC is improving the quality of the college graduates that will be needed to grow BPO.
Last year, some 80 universities and colleges began incorporating open source subjects into their computer science (CS) and information technology (IT)-related courses under an EITSC sponsored program that seeks to help schools develop more employable graduates.
“There is a growing demand for open source, and this program aims to enhance the skills of students in open source systems,” said EITSC manager Dominic Sabado. EITSC is also a partner in the Philippine Open Source Initiative (Positive) program.
Positive is a joint project of the Gesellschaft fuer Technische Zusammenarbeit (a development arm of the German government); Wireless Services Asia (a private European company) and EITSC. Positive encourages local tertiary-level schools with CS or IT-related subjects to download and use free open source course materials developed by six partner schools.
The materials include syllabi, course presentations, laboratory workbooks and exercises and tests developed over six months by the Asia-Pacific Colleges, Angeles University Foundation, Cebu Institute of Technology, Don Bosco Technical College, Mindanao State University Institute of Technology and the Department of Science and Technology Region 7 Open Source Computer and Security Laboratory.
EITSC recently organized a forum with academe and software development companies to initiate the creation of a Dual Training System (DTS) curriculum for software development training.
Last May, EITSC also organized a Summer Enrichment Program in which 72 teachers took part in a train-the-trainer program. Topics covered included communication and English improvement and teaching techniques for teachers; technical and business writing techniques; IT fundamentals & database systems and Operating Systems. A similar activity is set to take place during the upcoming semestral break of schools.
ECCP executive vice president Henry Schumacher noted that international clients are looking for a number of criteria when eyeing an outsourcing business partner. These include proven capabilities in project management and execution, the availability of specific skills and ability to ramp up manpower at short notice, and quality management standards. ‘That’s the reason why we ran a quality management program – ComQual – for 16 software companies during the last two years’, Schumacher added, ‘ a successful program that was co-funded by the European Commission and generated initial contracts from European clients in the amount of US$ 0.5 million.’
He pointed out that ECCP has been continuously engaged in projects aimed at improving the work skill levels of Filipinos. In July, the government welcomed ECCP’s decision to support efforts to address the perennial problem on job and skills mismatch and the efforts of industry and stakeholders to find needed skills.
Labor Secretary Arturo Brion cited ECCP for committing to join public and private collaboration aimed at remedying the job and skill mismatch.
Brion said the ECCP's support would greatly boost the government's efforts to help students and graduates gain entry-level industry requirements through apprenticeship and dual training.
ECCP, through its member-companies, intends to provide college students on-the-job training until they graduate. It also aims to ask other chambers of commerce to partner with schools in training college students.
Brion said ECCP's commitment to help address the skills and job mismatch would fill the gap in the efforts to help students and graduates gain workplace training and entry-level requirements essential in their search for jobs, including those positions classified as hot jobs such as business processing operations.
He noted the ECCP initiative dovetails with the national efforts to facilitate employment and meet industry skills requirements aimed at sustaining the growth of the economy.
BPA/P is keenly aware of the human resources challenges facing BPO. Under the talent development component of its roadmap, Sañez noted that a major problem was mismatch between the location of the potential hires and the center, followed by the problem of top talents such as engineering, accounting and nursing graduates moving to other countries.
He said the talent component strategy should focus on increasing financial aid to students, improve work and study flexibility, launch continuous training campaigns that are relevant to industry requirements, and developing competency tests for students and trainers in schools.
A radical approach to the problem of hiring shortage involves opening up recruitment to non-traditional talents such as high school graduates, college dropouts and housewives, thus the need for strict competency tests.
Gil Genio, CEO of Innove Communications, subsidiary of Globe Telecom, believes addressing resource challenges such as talent and process maturity is one of three ways by which the Philippines can expand its share in the global BPO market. The other two ways are focusing on infrastructure investments and leveraging on government policies.
Genio said Asia could account for 10% of the total ITES market ($18 billion in the U.S. alone), with the Philippines taking five percent.
Complementing contact centers are lesser known but potentially powerful BPO engines that are creating employment, and are driving investments, growth and career building. These engines are taking Starship Philippines on a new course to “The Other Side of Midnight” where revenues are made by the light of day.
The Business Process Association of the Philippines (BPA/P), the industry’s major association, expects BPO industry revenues to almost triple to $12.1 billion by 2010 from the 2006 level of $3.45 billion. In 2006, call centers continued to contribute most of BPO revenues from foreign clients, some 77%.
BPA/P estimates call center revenues at $5.29 billion in 2010, up a huge 97% over three years, but, more significantly, less than 45% of total BPO industry revenues.
The other 55% will be contributed by the other sectors or engines of BPO: Business Processing (Back Office Operations); Medical & Legal Transcription; Software Development and Maintenance; Animation Industry and Engineering Design
Best of all for job seekers is that these sectors—also collectively called “non-voice”—offer wider employment for Filipinos (including middle aged professionals) and that the working hours take place in daylight. For BPO firms, many of which operate contact centers, the rise of daytime BPO maximizes their investments in IT and physical infrastructure.
“The Other Side of Midnight” is on the rise.
BPA/P estimates the industry should grow by some 48% in 2007 to reach revenues of $4.9 billion. By 2010, BPA/P believes outsourcing could be a $12 billion industry employing 900,000 persons.
Consulting firm A.T. Kearney, in a recent ranking of the most desirable global services locations that are competitive for BPO, rated the Philippines fourth in the world behind India, China and Malaysia. The Philippines was outside the top 10 three years ago.
The Philippines generated offshore service revenues of $2.1 billion in 2005, placing third behind India and China and slightly ahead of Malaysia. That's up 62% over the $1.3 billion it gained in 2004, and a huge increase from the start of the decade when BPO employed just 2,400 people and the industry had revenues of merely $24 million.
A.T. Kearney said the Philippines gets high marks for its large, educated talent pool and English language skills, but falls behind some of the other locations in infrastructure.
A natural offshoot of this rapid BPO growth is the increase in the number of jobs on offer to Filipinos. The industry employs 250,000 persons (including call center agents) today. BPA/P's goal is to produce one million jobs in the BPO industry.
BPO rising
The ascendancy of BPO confirms the shift in employment and investments from the cost-effectiveness of call centers to the skills quality and competence of non-voice BPO. This development strengthens the Philippines' position as an emerging global leader in the burgeoning BPO industry.
BPO firms employ people from a wider variety of professions than do contact centers, which need to focus their talent search on Filipinos who, also, can speak with an “English neutral accent.” Non-voice BPO opens its doors to engineers, architects, designers, medical professionals, medical researchers, human resources professionals, lawyers, accountants and animators.
These professionals work in virtual teams to service client needs. And the language they use is, of course, English, the language of world business. In other words, English proficiency is required on the other side of midnight, too.
It is a reality confirmed by BPA/P, which points out that English proficiency is the key to success, as it is required by all six sectors of the industry.
BPO’s growth surge is being fueled not by low-value-added call centers but by higher-end outsourcing such as back office work, medical transcription, legal services, animation, Web design, software development and shared services.
The number of people employed in back office work is expected to jump to 299,000 by 2010 from the present 36,000, a growth rate of 730 percent. BPA/P says Business Processing or Back Office Operations and Medical Transcription are the leading areas of opportunity for employing large numbers of Filipinos.
Medical transcription is experiencing a growth rate expected to top 1,600 % from 2006 until 2010, with employment surging from 7,000 to 122,000. Employment in software development is projected to jump from 16,000 in 2006 to 75,000 in 2010.
BPA/P believes back office services, medical transcription and software development will replace call centers as the high growth BPO sectors. All these sectors will experience faster revenue and employment growth than call centers.
“More companies are coming in from India and the U.S.,” said BPAP Executive Director Mitch Locsin. “Many of these companies will start with voice and move up the value chain.”
He noted that revenues from non-voice BPO services will surpass contact center or voice revenues by 2010.
“Back office services are the next big thing in BPO,” he said. “Our job now is to get Filipino accountants, bookkeepers and engineers to focus on their studies to prepare for the future.”
He said one of Philippine BPO’s biggest challenges is beef up its manpower resources, quality certification and security compliance. Locsin revealed that all these issues are being addressed by BPAP and are in the final stages of implementation.
As for the hot jobs in BPO, Locsin said opportunities abound in Finance & Accounting (F&A) since 28% of Philippine graduates come from Business Administration and related courses.
Opportunities exist in moving up the value chain and doing more high value added services such as Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO).
Locsin said BPAP is convinced that English proficiency is the key to success in BPO, as it is required by all sectors of the industry.
“The Philippines can excel in all of the e-Services sectors because of its quality of service that we provide,” he said.
Coming to the Philippines
A few years ago, the Royal Dutch Shell Group determined the creation of a network of Shell shared services centers (SSSCs) in strategic locations across the globe would be key in its efforts to deliver services at competitive costs and standards.
SSSC Manila, a wholly owned subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell plc, was established in July 2004. It was the fourth SSSC to be established and has over 1,100 employees, the largest in terms of manpower compared to other SSSCs in Glasgow, Guatemala, Kuala Lumpur and Krakow.
SSSC Manila mainly performs back office accounting and finance work exclusively for Shell clients abroad. These clients include Shell companies in the US, Europe (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Poland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands) and Asia (Malaysia, Thailand, Australia and the Philippines).
The bulk of finance work provided by SSSC Manila includes hydrocarbon accounting (reconciling fuel movements); accounts payable (or processing of vendor payments); accounts receivables (collections of receivables from both internal and external customers) and general accounting (financial reporting, fixed asset inventory, payroll accounting). Other activities being serviced include master reference data maintenance; contracting and procurement (buying activity). human resources service desk and customer services.
SSSC Manila general manager Noel Paraso said the center proves Filipinos can perform according to the same high standards expected from foreign employees. Paraso noted the continued interest in transferring more work to SSSSC Manila because trust has already been established.
“We make sure the standard of services do not suffer here,” Paraso said. “We ensure successful migration of these processes by putting in place a stringent migration methodology and hiring people with meaningful skills, background and experience; people who are accounting, business, economics, and engineering majors. We also give them very thorough, very focused training”.
OfficeTiger, a U.S. owned printing services firm working out of India, chose the Philippines to provide its legal services outsourcing. It expects to make the Philippines the main center for "pre-media" outsourcing work, including desktop publishing, composition, typesetting and graphic design.
A ranking OfficeTiger manager said design work is an area where Filipinos have and edge. The company has found an incredible depth of design talent in the Philippines, the kind of talent that is hard to come by in Bangalore, Hyderabad or Chennai.
OfficeTiger is looking at its Philippine operations to provide 40% to 50% of its total annual revenue growth over the next three to five years. Its clients include large insurance companies, retailers and publishers of books and directories.
The country’s dominant telecom firm, Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT), took a significant slice of the BPO industry in 2006 by acquiring SPI Technologies, Inc., the second largest dedicated BPO company in the Philippines and the ninth largest independent BPO service provider worldwide, through subsidiary ePLDT, Inc.
SPI operates in 23 locations in North America, Europe and Asia, servicing over 150 customers including Fortune 500 companies. With 6,500 employees worldwide, SPI services these customers onsite, and from facilities in the Philippines, India, US, China and Vietnam.
SPI’s core capabilities include content editorial and production, litigation support coding and electronic data discovery, medical transcription, database structuring and management and transaction processing.
PLDT president Napoleon Nazareno said the addition of SPI into ePLDT will broaden the group’s participation in BPO, which analysts forecast to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 9.2 % until 2010.
PLDT said SPI will give it excellent opportunities to enhance its North American customer base, broaden its revenue streams, as well as derive potential cost synergies in the marketing and selling of voice-based services in the countries where SPI operates.
ePLDT’s Ventus call-center group consists of Parlance Systems Inc., Vocativ Systems Inc. and ePLDT Ventus Inc. The ePLDT Ventus Group operates six call-center facilities located in the cities of Makati, Taguig, Pasig, Mandaluyong, Quezon and Iloilo, rendering primarily voice-based services to large US-based clients and outsourcers.
BPO firm Sykes, although better known as one of the pioneer call centers, said Filipinos are a great asset. It describes Filipinos as intelligent and hard working and fit nicely within Sykes’ culture of “People Serving People.” Sykes enjoys and are proud of its partnership with Filipinos.
Sykes came to the Philippines in 1997 with just a small number of employees providing technical support through e-mail. It now has more then 10,000 employees across six sites providing customer care through multiple communication channels including chat, e-mail and voice.
Sykes is a family of global businesses delivering BPO services. Sykes is entrusted with the customer care of global brands primarily in Consumer Products & Services, Communications, Financial Services, Technology and Travel & Leisure.
Philippine BPO offerings
Business Processing (Back Office Operations) is one of the hottest job sectors in BPO. In 2006, there were 62 Business Processing firms employing some 36,000 persons. These firms generated revenues of $288 million.
The Philippines now provides some 40 Business Processing Services. Among these services are accounting and bookkeeping; payroll processing; asset management; financial analysis and auditing; inventory control and purchasing; human resources administration; customer management; credit card administration; factoring and stock brokering; revenue management; database management; supply chain management; legal transcription; litigation support; content development; publishing; loan processing; health insurance; sales and marketing; tax reporting; transaction management; sourcing and procurement; logistics; disaster recovery; business intelligence; network management and warehouse and inventory.
Counted among the leading third party providers of Business Processing Services are Accenture, American Data Exchange, SVI Corp, SPI Technologies, DAKSH eServices, The Environments Collaborative, Eximius BPO, Summersault, Inc., Infinit-O BPO, BPO International and BayanTrade Dotcom.
“Captives” or companies with in-house services include AOL, AIG BPSI, Chevron Texaco,HP, HSBC, Procter & Gamble, Flour Daniel, Deutsche Bank, Citibank Crescent Services, Shell Shared Services, Manulife, Alitalia, Watson Wyatt, Emerson, McKinsey & Co., Safeway and Thomson.
Medical transcription (MT), which next to contact centers is the best known BPO sector, remains a prime growth sector and a source of hot jobs for Filipinos. Filipino MT firms are noted internationally for their accuracy (98-99% accuracy rate) and have a swift job turnaround time of 12 to 24 hours.
There are some 100 MT firms employing 7,000 persons. There are also 15 MT schools. MT firms posted revenues of $98 million in 2006.
Key MT firms are eData Services, SPI Technologies, SVI Corporation, Medscribe Asia,
Transkripsyo, Inc., Total Transcription Solutions, Inc., Dictation Source and Pilipinas Data Contracts Corporation.
Legal transcription (LT), although new, offers bright promise since the Philippines’ legal system is patterned after that of the United States, the source of most legal transcription jobs.
There are nine operational LT firms employing 675 lawyers and legal personnel. The sector, which generated $9 million revenues in 2006, has among its key players Quisumbing Torres, SPI Technologies, SVI Corporation, CD Asia, Inc. and Medscribe Asia.
The Philippines had 100 software development companies in 2006 that booked $272 million revenues in 2006.
Among the firms providing software development services are Accenture, Headstrong, Microsoft, IBM Solutions, Jupiter Systems, Oracle, ADTX Solutions, TrendMicro, Gurango, Sun Microsystems, Intel Microelectronics, NEC and RCG Philippines.
Filipino animation continues to be a source of strength in BPO and is the oldest BPO sector (20 years in existence). The country’s 70 animation studios employ 6,500 persons and created revenues of $97 million in 2006.
Local studios consist of Holy Cow! Animation, Artfarm Asia, Digital Exchange, Top Draw Animation, Toei Animation, Top Peg Animation and Creative Studio, Creative Asia, Geebo Digital and Toon City, among others.
The relatively new Engineering Design Industry now consists of 24 companies employing 4,400 full time engineers. These firms reported revenues of $68 million in 2006.
Among these firms are JGC Phils., Fluor Daniel, Bechtel, Tsuneishi, Kajima Corp, Parsons, C & E Corp, EEI Corp, Eichleay Pacific, Inc., Hyundai Engineering, Foster Wheeler, Kellog, Brown & Root and Bouygues Construction.
The Philippines graduates 40,000 engineers every year and there are now some 100,000 licensed engineering professionals. Filipino engineers are prized for their high level of technical expertise in engineering design and practice internationally accepted engineering standards.
Human Capacity Build-up
There is general consensus that the BPO future of the Philippines is bright—at midnight and at midday. Industry players, however, are also fully aware that the opportunities at the horizon will only become reality if government, academe and industry work together in building the human resource.
The Philippine government recognizes the strategic importance of BPO as generators of revenues and employment. President Gloria Arroyo has set aside $10 million in government money to train people for employment in the outsourcing industry. Students and other persons interested in outsourcing jobs are given vouchers that can be used for tuition at vocational schools.
But of greater importance to the industry is its five-year roadmap being drawn up in assistance with international consulting firm McKinsey.
BPA/P president Dan Reyes said the roadmap will identify niche areas in the global marketplace in which the Philippines can be competitive against India and other outsourcing destinations such as China, Malaysia and eastern European countries.
He noted that while BPO is still predominantly call center-driven, both government and the private sector recognize the need to deliver higher-value BPO services such as HR and finance and accounting.
A glimpse of the BPA/P Roadmap 2010 was recently presented by BPA/P CEO Oscar Sañez during the Call Center Conference Exposition 2007. As it is still in its second phase, Sañez said the roadmap will be officially released later this year.
Sañez said the strategy involves not just the BPA/P members but also the local communities, education institutions and local government units to ensure its success.
For the location component, BPA/P will develop a set of products that identify and evaluate areas considered as "next wave" cities where startups and expanding BPOs can build new locations.
The reporting of next wave cities will contain the number of companies already operating in specific cities, telecommunications readiness, physical landscape, available expertise and possible challenges.
For the business environment component, BPA/P intends to enhance perceptions regarding the Philippines as an ideal location for operators. To do so, BPA/P intends to conduct a risk perception survey of locators, build success case studies and launch industry-wide campaigns to address intellectual property and Internet security, among other issues.
Improving the future/lending a helping hand
The European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines (ECCP) and its IT foundation, the European IT Service Center (EITSC), are committed to human capacity building.
EITSC is an initiative of ECCP, the German Development Cooperation (GTZ) and the Asia-Europe Foundation of the Philippines to bridge the needs of Europe with the IT/BPO capabilities in the Philippines.
EITSC is currently in a partnership with Hanns Seidel Foundation and the European Union on human capacity building. EITSC and Hanns Seidel Foundation with co-funding from the European Union initiated a five-year program that takes a progressive approach to answering the call for more qualified workers in the IT/BPO sector.
Of particular interest to ECCP and EITSC is improving the quality of the college graduates that will be needed to grow BPO.
Last year, some 80 universities and colleges began incorporating open source subjects into their computer science (CS) and information technology (IT)-related courses under an EITSC sponsored program that seeks to help schools develop more employable graduates.
“There is a growing demand for open source, and this program aims to enhance the skills of students in open source systems,” said EITSC manager Dominic Sabado. EITSC is also a partner in the Philippine Open Source Initiative (Positive) program.
Positive is a joint project of the Gesellschaft fuer Technische Zusammenarbeit (a development arm of the German government); Wireless Services Asia (a private European company) and EITSC. Positive encourages local tertiary-level schools with CS or IT-related subjects to download and use free open source course materials developed by six partner schools.
The materials include syllabi, course presentations, laboratory workbooks and exercises and tests developed over six months by the Asia-Pacific Colleges, Angeles University Foundation, Cebu Institute of Technology, Don Bosco Technical College, Mindanao State University Institute of Technology and the Department of Science and Technology Region 7 Open Source Computer and Security Laboratory.
EITSC recently organized a forum with academe and software development companies to initiate the creation of a Dual Training System (DTS) curriculum for software development training.
Last May, EITSC also organized a Summer Enrichment Program in which 72 teachers took part in a train-the-trainer program. Topics covered included communication and English improvement and teaching techniques for teachers; technical and business writing techniques; IT fundamentals & database systems and Operating Systems. A similar activity is set to take place during the upcoming semestral break of schools.
ECCP executive vice president Henry Schumacher noted that international clients are looking for a number of criteria when eyeing an outsourcing business partner. These include proven capabilities in project management and execution, the availability of specific skills and ability to ramp up manpower at short notice, and quality management standards. ‘That’s the reason why we ran a quality management program – ComQual – for 16 software companies during the last two years’, Schumacher added, ‘ a successful program that was co-funded by the European Commission and generated initial contracts from European clients in the amount of US$ 0.5 million.’
He pointed out that ECCP has been continuously engaged in projects aimed at improving the work skill levels of Filipinos. In July, the government welcomed ECCP’s decision to support efforts to address the perennial problem on job and skills mismatch and the efforts of industry and stakeholders to find needed skills.
Labor Secretary Arturo Brion cited ECCP for committing to join public and private collaboration aimed at remedying the job and skill mismatch.
Brion said the ECCP's support would greatly boost the government's efforts to help students and graduates gain entry-level industry requirements through apprenticeship and dual training.
ECCP, through its member-companies, intends to provide college students on-the-job training until they graduate. It also aims to ask other chambers of commerce to partner with schools in training college students.
Brion said ECCP's commitment to help address the skills and job mismatch would fill the gap in the efforts to help students and graduates gain workplace training and entry-level requirements essential in their search for jobs, including those positions classified as hot jobs such as business processing operations.
He noted the ECCP initiative dovetails with the national efforts to facilitate employment and meet industry skills requirements aimed at sustaining the growth of the economy.
BPA/P is keenly aware of the human resources challenges facing BPO. Under the talent development component of its roadmap, Sañez noted that a major problem was mismatch between the location of the potential hires and the center, followed by the problem of top talents such as engineering, accounting and nursing graduates moving to other countries.
He said the talent component strategy should focus on increasing financial aid to students, improve work and study flexibility, launch continuous training campaigns that are relevant to industry requirements, and developing competency tests for students and trainers in schools.
A radical approach to the problem of hiring shortage involves opening up recruitment to non-traditional talents such as high school graduates, college dropouts and housewives, thus the need for strict competency tests.
Gil Genio, CEO of Innove Communications, subsidiary of Globe Telecom, believes addressing resource challenges such as talent and process maturity is one of three ways by which the Philippines can expand its share in the global BPO market. The other two ways are focusing on infrastructure investments and leveraging on government policies.
Genio said Asia could account for 10% of the total ITES market ($18 billion in the U.S. alone), with the Philippines taking five percent.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Martians
Three decades ago, a group of British scholars set out to determine the extent of man's penchant for War.
In their search for answers, these intrepid data crunchers manually pored over modern and ancient texts covering 5,000 years of recorded history, from the earliest Mesopotamian civilizations up until the 1970s when the Vietnam War continued to rage.
In all that time, these researchers discovered that mankind has had only had 27 years--an insignificant 27 years--of Peace, which they defined as the absence of War anywhere on this planet.
Reading about this in one of few dailies allowed under martial law astounded me and is so vivid it remains with me to this day.
Only twenty-seven years without a war anywhere on this martial planet. Incredible!
And hammering home Man's seeming thirst for War is fresh research revealing there have only been 26 days of Peace since 1945. That's only 26 out of the 22,000 days from 1945 to 2005.
Our country continues to contribute to the enduring evil of War with its festering twin insurgencies, including Asia's only remaining communist rebellion.
Mankind has never given peace a chance. History proves that and so do the thousands of wars and armed conflicts and over a billion deaths.
Sadly, War has always been--and remains--the favored arbiter of disputes between nations or armed groups. It is also the least effective sowing, as it so often has, the bloody seeds of the next conflict and the one after that.
Witness World War 1, the "War to End All Wars" that ignited World War 2 (history's bloodiest), which then led to the proxy wars between democracy and communism that, in turn, saw Muslims take up the sword in the conflicts that batter today's world.
And if one gazes at the 19th century, one witnesses our own revolution against Spain, one of the many wars for independence fought by enslaved peoples against predatory European empires, chiefly those of Britain, Spain and France.
Why does man avidly seek to kill?
The answers are as complex as the causes of war. But whether one believes the Biblical comment that Wars begin in men's hearts, or take into account my mother's opinion that most wars are ignited by greed, one cannot escape the reality of War's stranglehold on civilization.
Looked at in this aspect, Peace appears to be those rare moments when Mars, the God of War, loosens its relentless chokehold on mankind's neck. Peace, therefore, is mankind breathing freely.
A New Year has arrived and with it the inevitability there will be no additional days of peace in 2007 to add to those precious 26 days. The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Chechnya will see to that, as will our own communist insurgency.
Then there are those "Wars-in-Waiting" such as North Korea, Lebanon, Iran, Taiwan, Russia and Georgia, among others.
A broad look at centuries of warfare reveals that the mutual exhaustion of both combatants--not military victory--has been the chief reason for ending most wars.
The evolution of today's warfare into drawn out and savage guerilla conflicts will again confirm this, and will ensure that military victory truly becomes a mirage in the desert.
With military victory all but impossible, there seems little reason why Man should go to war at all. But leave it to Man to invent reasons to kill his fellowman. George Bush and Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction come to mind here.
The commandment, "Thou shall not kill," remains the Eternal Casualty of War; Peace on Earth an empty promise.
This planet doesn't deserve the name Earth. Mars would be a more fitting name for this blood soaked rock, and Martians a more exact description of its dominant life form.
Welcome to Mars. And which War do you want to fight in first?
In their search for answers, these intrepid data crunchers manually pored over modern and ancient texts covering 5,000 years of recorded history, from the earliest Mesopotamian civilizations up until the 1970s when the Vietnam War continued to rage.
In all that time, these researchers discovered that mankind has had only had 27 years--an insignificant 27 years--of Peace, which they defined as the absence of War anywhere on this planet.
Reading about this in one of few dailies allowed under martial law astounded me and is so vivid it remains with me to this day.
Only twenty-seven years without a war anywhere on this martial planet. Incredible!
And hammering home Man's seeming thirst for War is fresh research revealing there have only been 26 days of Peace since 1945. That's only 26 out of the 22,000 days from 1945 to 2005.
Our country continues to contribute to the enduring evil of War with its festering twin insurgencies, including Asia's only remaining communist rebellion.
Mankind has never given peace a chance. History proves that and so do the thousands of wars and armed conflicts and over a billion deaths.
Sadly, War has always been--and remains--the favored arbiter of disputes between nations or armed groups. It is also the least effective sowing, as it so often has, the bloody seeds of the next conflict and the one after that.
Witness World War 1, the "War to End All Wars" that ignited World War 2 (history's bloodiest), which then led to the proxy wars between democracy and communism that, in turn, saw Muslims take up the sword in the conflicts that batter today's world.
And if one gazes at the 19th century, one witnesses our own revolution against Spain, one of the many wars for independence fought by enslaved peoples against predatory European empires, chiefly those of Britain, Spain and France.
Why does man avidly seek to kill?
The answers are as complex as the causes of war. But whether one believes the Biblical comment that Wars begin in men's hearts, or take into account my mother's opinion that most wars are ignited by greed, one cannot escape the reality of War's stranglehold on civilization.
Looked at in this aspect, Peace appears to be those rare moments when Mars, the God of War, loosens its relentless chokehold on mankind's neck. Peace, therefore, is mankind breathing freely.
A New Year has arrived and with it the inevitability there will be no additional days of peace in 2007 to add to those precious 26 days. The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Chechnya will see to that, as will our own communist insurgency.
Then there are those "Wars-in-Waiting" such as North Korea, Lebanon, Iran, Taiwan, Russia and Georgia, among others.
A broad look at centuries of warfare reveals that the mutual exhaustion of both combatants--not military victory--has been the chief reason for ending most wars.
The evolution of today's warfare into drawn out and savage guerilla conflicts will again confirm this, and will ensure that military victory truly becomes a mirage in the desert.
With military victory all but impossible, there seems little reason why Man should go to war at all. But leave it to Man to invent reasons to kill his fellowman. George Bush and Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction come to mind here.
The commandment, "Thou shall not kill," remains the Eternal Casualty of War; Peace on Earth an empty promise.
This planet doesn't deserve the name Earth. Mars would be a more fitting name for this blood soaked rock, and Martians a more exact description of its dominant life form.
Welcome to Mars. And which War do you want to fight in first?
Where is the Filipino Intelligentsia?
Where is the Filipino Intelligentsia?
Is the concept of a Filipino Intelligentsia at all plausible? Or is it "un-Filipino" in a society where the stomach is king and the brain a look-alike stomach located in the skull?
Does this collection of intellectuals and knowledge workers exist at all as a distinct level of our society? Is it at the forefront of intellectual thought in science, the arts, culture, technology, the academe and politics?
Or must we hunt for these beings with the intense enthusiasm of astronomers searching for extra terrestrial intelligence? Are these creatures to be found in planets such as Starbucks and Seattle's Best where intelligent and unintelligent conversation seems to exist only amid clouds of simmering coffee?
Do they, like the ancient Greek Pythagoreans, gather in secret locations for fear of persecution by the jaded masses, there to revel in their shared knowledge among others of their kind? Are they the "educated derelicts" scoffed at in a famous ode to materialism, which boasts that only persistence and determination guarantee worldly success?
Is the Filipino intelligentsia those widely read and seemingly omniscient political columnists? Is it those stentorian TV newsreaders that reflect their network's bias for tawdry journalism? Or those mealy mouthed politicians with facile comments on whatever issue hogs the headlines?
Is it the rich? The richly educated? The long-suffering middle class that props up the economy but which receives a pittance in return? The religious orders steeped in arcane learning? Or, were I a game show contestant; is the answer, letter D, or All Of The Above?
And who are the leading lights of this invisible stratum of society? The "ilustrados" had Rizal, del Pilar and Jaena. Who speaks for the Filipino Intelligentsia of today? Who are its thinkers? And where can one read about their multitude of opinions, and of the necessary conflict of ideas that mark an Intelligentsia?
Who are these people?
Without an Intelligentsia, who is there to speak out with authority on those complex issues that bedevil the Filipino? Who will wield the Intelligentsia's power of using knowledge to goad governments and corporations into positive action? In this Information Age, why are Filipinos who know more afraid to show society they know more?
Is Knowledge a scarlet letter?
Perhaps a Filipino Intelligentsia does exist. But nothing has been heard of it. Perhaps it's because intellectuals prefer to work muted in the background, as if they were simply neurons.
But there is, however, truth to that centuries old observation that the true aim of education is not knowledge but action.
The Filipino Intelligentsia must take action by using its vast knowledge to make sense of the world around us. It must proudly announce its existence. It must assert itself against the strident voices of loud amateurs, rabble-rousers, hedonists and politicians of whatever ideology as the brains of this nation.
Where is the Filipino Intelligentsia?
Is the concept of a Filipino Intelligentsia at all plausible? Or is it "un-Filipino" in a society where the stomach is king and the brain a look-alike stomach located in the skull?
Does this collection of intellectuals and knowledge workers exist at all as a distinct level of our society? Is it at the forefront of intellectual thought in science, the arts, culture, technology, the academe and politics?
Or must we hunt for these beings with the intense enthusiasm of astronomers searching for extra terrestrial intelligence? Are these creatures to be found in planets such as Starbucks and Seattle's Best where intelligent and unintelligent conversation seems to exist only amid clouds of simmering coffee?
Do they, like the ancient Greek Pythagoreans, gather in secret locations for fear of persecution by the jaded masses, there to revel in their shared knowledge among others of their kind? Are they the "educated derelicts" scoffed at in a famous ode to materialism, which boasts that only persistence and determination guarantee worldly success?
Is the Filipino intelligentsia those widely read and seemingly omniscient political columnists? Is it those stentorian TV newsreaders that reflect their network's bias for tawdry journalism? Or those mealy mouthed politicians with facile comments on whatever issue hogs the headlines?
Is it the rich? The richly educated? The long-suffering middle class that props up the economy but which receives a pittance in return? The religious orders steeped in arcane learning? Or, were I a game show contestant; is the answer, letter D, or All Of The Above?
And who are the leading lights of this invisible stratum of society? The "ilustrados" had Rizal, del Pilar and Jaena. Who speaks for the Filipino Intelligentsia of today? Who are its thinkers? And where can one read about their multitude of opinions, and of the necessary conflict of ideas that mark an Intelligentsia?
Who are these people?
Without an Intelligentsia, who is there to speak out with authority on those complex issues that bedevil the Filipino? Who will wield the Intelligentsia's power of using knowledge to goad governments and corporations into positive action? In this Information Age, why are Filipinos who know more afraid to show society they know more?
Is Knowledge a scarlet letter?
Perhaps a Filipino Intelligentsia does exist. But nothing has been heard of it. Perhaps it's because intellectuals prefer to work muted in the background, as if they were simply neurons.
But there is, however, truth to that centuries old observation that the true aim of education is not knowledge but action.
The Filipino Intelligentsia must take action by using its vast knowledge to make sense of the world around us. It must proudly announce its existence. It must assert itself against the strident voices of loud amateurs, rabble-rousers, hedonists and politicians of whatever ideology as the brains of this nation.
Where is the Filipino Intelligentsia?
Coming soon? Filipino "contractors" in Iraq
It's only a matter of time before we see heavily armed Filipino "contractors" in Iraq--if they aren't there already.
But unless some journalist blows the whistle, we'll never know for certain if that grim, Pinoy looking guard dressed in civvies and toting an M4 automatic rifle is a real Pinoy. He might also be a Colombian, Fijian or an American of Filipino descent.
Mercenaries are back. Only today, they go by the more respectable name of "contractors" who "officially" provide "only" outsourced combat support for a numerically weak U.S. military.
Contractors, however, are involved in combat in Iraq, which is inevitable since the insurgency is a guerilla war with no front line. Or in U.S. bureaucratese, Iraq is a "non-linear battlefield" (NLB).
Iraq is the largest market for the new "private military companies" (PMCs) that together constitute an industry worth more than US$100 billion (P5.4 trillion). Contractors are also in Afghanistan and in South America, particularly Colombia, assisting in the anti-drug war.
The more than 20,000 contractors in Iraq are the second largest armed force in that country behind the U.S. Most of these contractors are ex-U.S. military men. Special Forces operators, especially those from the U.S. Army and Navy, and the British Special Air Service (SAS) and Special Boat Service (SBS) are in particularly high demand for contract work.
Some of the other contractors known to be in Iraq are Australians, South Africans, Fijians, Colombians (trained by U.S. Special Forces) and Nepalese (Gurkhas).
As a group, contractors have suffered the second highest number of combat casualties (killed and wounded in action) next to the U.S. An Internet website lists the deaths of some 250 contractors of varied nationalities in Iraq. In contrast, Britain has less than 100 combat deaths.
Although no figures for wounded have been announced, some sources estimate this figure at six times the number of dead. Over a thousand casualties for a group whose "official" job is to act as security guards for facilities and offices, and bodyguards for important people.
The four Americans whose gory murders in Fallujah clinched the U.S. decision to storm that city in November 2004 were contractors.
Contractors are mostly employees of PMCs such as Kellog, Brown & Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton, Inc.; Control Risks Group (CRG), which has an office at the Citibank Tower in Makati; MPRI; Custer Battles; Erinys and Blackwater.
The are, as yet, no purely Filipino PMCs but the Philippines does have in abundance the raw material that goes into the making of contractors: trained combat infantry. In the Philippines' case, many of its infantry are veterans of years of guerilla warfare. It is an advantage not possessed by any other contractor country except Colombia.
The stunning growth of PMCs is in inverse proportion to the progressive weakening of the U.S. Army. With only 1.4 million men and women today as against over two million a decade ago, the U.S. Army is now involved in two simultaneous wars (Afghanistan and Iraq) and is preparing for a third (Iran). A conflict in Korea cannot be ruled out.
The regular U.S. Army and its reserve component, the National Guard, are stretched close to breaking point on the ground as it is. There are no indications that Washington contemplates restoring conscription to significantly increase the combat strength (or "end strength") of its all-volunteer army.
Without this militarily sound but politically suicidal move, however, the U.S. Army is left with no choice but to continue outsourcing its combat support operations to PMCs to free more men for combat.
These support operations include feeding the troops, equipment maintenance, administrative work and construction. KBR, the largest employer of contractors in Iraq, employs Filipinos in non-combat roles inside fortified military bases.
Should the U.S. Army find itself involved in three or four wars within this decade, its reliance on PMCs will inevitably extend beyond combat support into active combat. There simply won't be enough uniformed fighting men to go around.
The butcher's bill in Iraq for the U.S. comes to more than 10,000 casualties since 2003, most of these are combat infantry. These losses will take years to replace. Turning a raw recruit into a proficient combat soldier takes some two years of intense training at huge cost. Producing combat leaders takes longer, up to a decade for battalion commanders.
With conscription a non-option, the only recourse for the U.S. Army is outsource its "non-mission critical" functions so it can comb out more men and women for its core competency, which is warfighting.
The U.S., however, has a huge pool of retired or resigned servicemen already trained in the U.S. way of war. Contractors are being drawn from this pool.
Money draws contractors to Iraq and Afghanistan. Combat contractors are paid lavishly by any standard. Ex-SAS men can receive up to 14,000 British pounds monthly (P1.5 million). Even for those at the bottom of the pay scale such as the Fijians, monthly salaries are in the region of US$1,000 (P54,000).
But more ominous than their involvement in combat (a fact that goes against current U.S. doctrine) are indications that the U.S. is leaning towards making contractors an organic component of its future armed forces. And this will profoundly alter the complexion of future war.
But unless some journalist blows the whistle, we'll never know for certain if that grim, Pinoy looking guard dressed in civvies and toting an M4 automatic rifle is a real Pinoy. He might also be a Colombian, Fijian or an American of Filipino descent.
Mercenaries are back. Only today, they go by the more respectable name of "contractors" who "officially" provide "only" outsourced combat support for a numerically weak U.S. military.
Contractors, however, are involved in combat in Iraq, which is inevitable since the insurgency is a guerilla war with no front line. Or in U.S. bureaucratese, Iraq is a "non-linear battlefield" (NLB).
Iraq is the largest market for the new "private military companies" (PMCs) that together constitute an industry worth more than US$100 billion (P5.4 trillion). Contractors are also in Afghanistan and in South America, particularly Colombia, assisting in the anti-drug war.
The more than 20,000 contractors in Iraq are the second largest armed force in that country behind the U.S. Most of these contractors are ex-U.S. military men. Special Forces operators, especially those from the U.S. Army and Navy, and the British Special Air Service (SAS) and Special Boat Service (SBS) are in particularly high demand for contract work.
Some of the other contractors known to be in Iraq are Australians, South Africans, Fijians, Colombians (trained by U.S. Special Forces) and Nepalese (Gurkhas).
As a group, contractors have suffered the second highest number of combat casualties (killed and wounded in action) next to the U.S. An Internet website lists the deaths of some 250 contractors of varied nationalities in Iraq. In contrast, Britain has less than 100 combat deaths.
Although no figures for wounded have been announced, some sources estimate this figure at six times the number of dead. Over a thousand casualties for a group whose "official" job is to act as security guards for facilities and offices, and bodyguards for important people.
The four Americans whose gory murders in Fallujah clinched the U.S. decision to storm that city in November 2004 were contractors.
Contractors are mostly employees of PMCs such as Kellog, Brown & Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton, Inc.; Control Risks Group (CRG), which has an office at the Citibank Tower in Makati; MPRI; Custer Battles; Erinys and Blackwater.
The are, as yet, no purely Filipino PMCs but the Philippines does have in abundance the raw material that goes into the making of contractors: trained combat infantry. In the Philippines' case, many of its infantry are veterans of years of guerilla warfare. It is an advantage not possessed by any other contractor country except Colombia.
The stunning growth of PMCs is in inverse proportion to the progressive weakening of the U.S. Army. With only 1.4 million men and women today as against over two million a decade ago, the U.S. Army is now involved in two simultaneous wars (Afghanistan and Iraq) and is preparing for a third (Iran). A conflict in Korea cannot be ruled out.
The regular U.S. Army and its reserve component, the National Guard, are stretched close to breaking point on the ground as it is. There are no indications that Washington contemplates restoring conscription to significantly increase the combat strength (or "end strength") of its all-volunteer army.
Without this militarily sound but politically suicidal move, however, the U.S. Army is left with no choice but to continue outsourcing its combat support operations to PMCs to free more men for combat.
These support operations include feeding the troops, equipment maintenance, administrative work and construction. KBR, the largest employer of contractors in Iraq, employs Filipinos in non-combat roles inside fortified military bases.
Should the U.S. Army find itself involved in three or four wars within this decade, its reliance on PMCs will inevitably extend beyond combat support into active combat. There simply won't be enough uniformed fighting men to go around.
The butcher's bill in Iraq for the U.S. comes to more than 10,000 casualties since 2003, most of these are combat infantry. These losses will take years to replace. Turning a raw recruit into a proficient combat soldier takes some two years of intense training at huge cost. Producing combat leaders takes longer, up to a decade for battalion commanders.
With conscription a non-option, the only recourse for the U.S. Army is outsource its "non-mission critical" functions so it can comb out more men and women for its core competency, which is warfighting.
The U.S., however, has a huge pool of retired or resigned servicemen already trained in the U.S. way of war. Contractors are being drawn from this pool.
Money draws contractors to Iraq and Afghanistan. Combat contractors are paid lavishly by any standard. Ex-SAS men can receive up to 14,000 British pounds monthly (P1.5 million). Even for those at the bottom of the pay scale such as the Fijians, monthly salaries are in the region of US$1,000 (P54,000).
But more ominous than their involvement in combat (a fact that goes against current U.S. doctrine) are indications that the U.S. is leaning towards making contractors an organic component of its future armed forces. And this will profoundly alter the complexion of future war.
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