Media
Publication: BusinessMirror
International
ICT Awards - Philippines
By
David Llorito
UP
TO 40 regional heads of big multinational companies are expected to witness
the citation of the best business process outsourcing (BPO) companies in the
country when the Canadian Chamber of Commerce holds the International ICT
Awards—Manila 2007 on March 1 at the New World Renaissance Hotel in Makati.
Richard Mills, president of the International ICT Awards—Manila 2007, said
the event presents a great opportunity for the local BPO sector to showcase
to the world its best features that made it a dominant player in the ICT
industry in the Asia-Pacific region.
Mills said 15 regional managers of global companies have already confirmed
their attendance to the event and the number is expected to reach as high as
40 in the coming days.
“They will take a look at the BPO companies here and see how they are
doing,” Mills told the BusinessMirror, which is the International ICT
Awards— Manila 2007 media partner.
Even the major sponsors of the event, he said, are big international firms,
namely, Five9, Nortel, BlackBerry, TPI and Colliers International. The PLDT
Business Solutions is the local sponsor.
The
ICT awards is being promoted internationally with the help of regional
publications like MIS Asia, ComputerWorld and Telecom Asia. The organizers
expect 300 to 400 guests in the event.
Mills said while the Philippines is already being regarded as equal or even
better than India in the BPO field, there is a need for big events like this
to continue promoting the domestic industry.
“Other countries are also competing with us so we have to make these
companies come here first,” he said.
Mills said even if the Philippines is just entering its “fast-growth
period,” the domestic BPO sector is already outperforming that of India,
particularly if based on the employment generated.
He noted that India, with close to a billion people, only has about one
million BPO personnel, whereas the Philippines, with a population of over 80
million, already has 200,000 industry employees.
Also, Mills said the annual average 50-percent growth in employment in the
past few years in the local BPO is the best-ever in the world by a single
industry, far better than the “dot.com” years in the US. “And these
are real jobs and real money,” he said.
Even the number of inquiries that he is receiving from abroad on the
country’s BPO sector has increased from an average of two per month last
year to two inquiries per week these days.
Undoubtedly,
Mills said the BPO sector is the biggest employer that gives the
best pay in the country today.
He
said the country is now entering a critical stage which could be seen by
people in the future as the time when the Philippines emerges as one of the
tigers of Asia.
The BPO sector, he said, will be playing a major role here, along with
electronics and mining.
Awards to be given away are the BPO Company of the Year, Best New BPO
Locator of the Year, Best Mid-Sized BPO Company of the Year, BPO Employer of
the Year, Fastest Growing BPO Company of the Year, Most Innovative BPO
Company of the Year and the ICT Individual Contributor of the Year Award
each for the public and private sectors.
Five finalists will be chosen in each category and the winner will be
announced in the awards gala night.
The judges are Belen Bonifacio, managing director of the Cebu Educational
Development Foundation for Information Technology (CEDF-IT); Celeste Ilagan,
Board of Investments–Department of Trade and Industry executive director;
Mitch Locsin, executive director of the Business Process Association of the
Philippines (BPAP); Don Felbaum, head of the ICT Committee of the American
Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines; Henry Schumacher, executive director
of the European Chamber of Commerce of the Philippines; Sean Georget,
executive director of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce of
the Philippines, and Mills.
Keynoting
the event are Jim Dvorkin, CTO of Five9 and one of Silicon Valley
USA’s foremost technology gurus, and Manuel V. Pangilinan, chairman of the
board of PLDT.
Mills said nominations for the event will close next week.
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