Showing posts with label Philippines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philippines. Show all posts
Indians write the BPO script in Philippines
22 Jul, 2008, 0745 hrs IST
Deepshikha Monga & Chaitali Chakravarty, ET Bureau
The Economic Times
NEW DELHI: BPO firms, which have so far been big job creators in India, are now shifting employees from here to emerging outsourcing destinations, including the Philippines.
Not only are domestic BPOs like Genpact, Sitel and Intelenet hiring people in India in droves for their Philippine operations, MNCs like Citibank and Accenture with operations in that country, too, are relying on Indian talent.
“While at the associate level, the Philippines has talent that is comparable or superior to their Indian counterparts, there is a complete void at middle and senior management level. It’s largely Indian executives who fill this void at Indian, local and captive BPO firms in the Philippines,” says Quatrro BPO Solutions managing director Raman Roy.
The Philippines has emerged as an attractive rival outsourcing destination to India, on the back of its large English-speaking population, a slew of fiscal incentives and lower property rates. Apart from the capital, Manila, other places — Cebu, for instance — have also come up as favourites for setting up call centres.
“I have lost five managers in the past one year to BPO companies in the Philippines. The local firms offer superior compensation packages to executives who have cut their teeth with Indian BPO firms,” says head of another BPO firm, wishing to remain unidentified.
Another BPO firm chief says his company, too, has faced talent crunch at senior and middle management positions in the Philippines. He pointed out the example of MNCs — Citibank is a case in point — that employ a number of Indian executives to manage their captive operations in the Philippines.
There is a significant movement of voice processes to emerging destinations like the Philippines and Eastern Europe, says Positive Moves Consulting managing partner Vibhav Dhawan.
“Large MNCs, with presence in India, are expatriating a significant number of Indians to meet their talent needs in the short and long term in these new markets,” he adds.
Genpact, India’s largest BPO firm, went to the Philippines in 2006 and since then, has built a sizeable presence there. Speaking of its strategy to meet talent needs, Genpact president & CEO Pramod Bhasin said: “We start by using a mix of expats from India and hiring locally. The long-term goal is to have grooming and training for the local talent to eventually manage the Philippines operations. That time is, however, another 1-2 years away.”
Adds Nasdaq-listed BPO firm ExlService Holdings CEO Rohit Kapoor: “It’s certainly a challenge to find mid- and senior-management talent in the Philippines. We are dealing with it by taking our senior managers from India while also hiring local talent. So, our country manager, migration and transition and process head are all Indians while the HR head, operations and facilities heads are natives.”
Manila was ranked second among outsourcing destinations in Asia-Pacific by research firm IDC early this year, behind Bangalore. The BPO industry in the Philippines currently employs over 3 lakh people.
Deepshikha Monga & Chaitali Chakravarty, ET Bureau
The Economic Times
NEW DELHI: BPO firms, which have so far been big job creators in India, are now shifting employees from here to emerging outsourcing destinations, including the Philippines.
Not only are domestic BPOs like Genpact, Sitel and Intelenet hiring people in India in droves for their Philippine operations, MNCs like Citibank and Accenture with operations in that country, too, are relying on Indian talent.
“While at the associate level, the Philippines has talent that is comparable or superior to their Indian counterparts, there is a complete void at middle and senior management level. It’s largely Indian executives who fill this void at Indian, local and captive BPO firms in the Philippines,” says Quatrro BPO Solutions managing director Raman Roy.
The Philippines has emerged as an attractive rival outsourcing destination to India, on the back of its large English-speaking population, a slew of fiscal incentives and lower property rates. Apart from the capital, Manila, other places — Cebu, for instance — have also come up as favourites for setting up call centres.
“I have lost five managers in the past one year to BPO companies in the Philippines. The local firms offer superior compensation packages to executives who have cut their teeth with Indian BPO firms,” says head of another BPO firm, wishing to remain unidentified.
Another BPO firm chief says his company, too, has faced talent crunch at senior and middle management positions in the Philippines. He pointed out the example of MNCs — Citibank is a case in point — that employ a number of Indian executives to manage their captive operations in the Philippines.
There is a significant movement of voice processes to emerging destinations like the Philippines and Eastern Europe, says Positive Moves Consulting managing partner Vibhav Dhawan.
“Large MNCs, with presence in India, are expatriating a significant number of Indians to meet their talent needs in the short and long term in these new markets,” he adds.
Genpact, India’s largest BPO firm, went to the Philippines in 2006 and since then, has built a sizeable presence there. Speaking of its strategy to meet talent needs, Genpact president & CEO Pramod Bhasin said: “We start by using a mix of expats from India and hiring locally. The long-term goal is to have grooming and training for the local talent to eventually manage the Philippines operations. That time is, however, another 1-2 years away.”
Adds Nasdaq-listed BPO firm ExlService Holdings CEO Rohit Kapoor: “It’s certainly a challenge to find mid- and senior-management talent in the Philippines. We are dealing with it by taking our senior managers from India while also hiring local talent. So, our country manager, migration and transition and process head are all Indians while the HR head, operations and facilities heads are natives.”
Manila was ranked second among outsourcing destinations in Asia-Pacific by research firm IDC early this year, behind Bangalore. The BPO industry in the Philippines currently employs over 3 lakh people.
Medical Transcription in India: A challenging career option!
Upendra Singh | MyNews.in
1/7/2008, 7:04:10 PM(IST)
Medical Transcription is one of the fastest growing fields in health care business in Western countries, especially in the US where the entire healthcare industry is based on insurance, and detailed medical documents are needed for processing insurance claims. Therefore, the hospitals and doctors avail medical transcription services to cater with the demands of documental records, basically outsourcing the business. In the last few years, India has shown an unprecedented success in this field of medical transcription cashing in on the outsourced business from US and other western countries.
Medical Transcription provides an exciting and challenging job option with an ever expanding knowledge based career. It is the process whereby a medical transcriptionist has to accurately and swiftly transcribe medical records dictated by doctors and their associates comprising of history and physical reports, clinical notes, office visit notes, operative reports, consultation notes, discharge summaries, official letters, psychiatric evaluations, laboratory reports, x-ray and MRI reports and pathology reports. A medical transcriptionist is a person who carries out the process of converting the voice format of medical data into text data.
The data is received in the form of digital data files and voice data files and converted into text format in the process of transcription. There are certain prerequisites to convert those voice files into text documents which basically involve transcription and editing. To ensure maximum accuracy, the editing part of the transcribed files include quality checking, visual proofreading, spelling checks, grammatical corrections, rephrasing to streamline the context, and removal of inconsistencies and illogical content so that the desired accuracy of at least 98% is met before being uploaded back to the clients.
India provides an ideal locale for conducting medical transcription work with a large population of educated English speaking people, a large pool of IT professionals, the internet revolution, and the computer-savvy new generation aided by free market policy. Advancement in technology has tremendously metamorphosed the global economy and work place and the field of medical transcription has undergone tremendous progress because of constant advances in communication and Internet technology. Majority of the work is outsourced from US, but even British and Australian doctors are beginning to consider India as a possible source of getting this work done-quickly and efficiently.
Outsourcing of medical transcription work to India has the direct and immediate advantage of cost reduction, reliability in turnaround time, and total document security. The comparative low cost in India to those of US or other developed countries serves as an encouragement for companies abroad to outsource their work to the Indian Medical Transcription field thereby making India to be one of the top destinations of medical transcription industry. Turnaround time is critical in this industry, and India, because of its advantageous time zone in comparison to America and Europe, holds the advantage of delivering the work the very next working day for them.
India witnessed a boom in medical transcription field a few years back with a plethora of companies and training institutes mushrooming all over the place, but due to lack of training, experience and planning, most of them went into oblivion. Those who augured well with this new concept of business still persist and are providing job opportunities to thousands. The success of the surviving companies is a kind of indication that medical transcription, if handled appropriately, has the capability of creating opportunities and maneuvering the Indian job scenario to an extent.
Transcription services in India range from small, one-person home-based businesses to sophisticated, high-tech IT enabled corporations which employ transcriptionist on well paid pay rolls. In the metros and major cities, many big business names have ventured into this field and are flourishing and expanding day in and day out. Most of the bigger companies prefer to have in-house training programs so as to cater with the demand and curb down the effects of growing attrition rate. Some medical transcription firms even get their work done by employing on-site as well as home-based medical transcription basis.
It is not a cake walk for Indian companies in this field to compete with the medical transcription professionals of the western nations who seem to enjoy all the advantages of language and backdoor environment. Every now and then there is an anti outsourcing voice raised for the work outsourced to India and trying to bring out faults in the work done here. At the same time, Indian industry is pitted against some new developing destinations like China, Philippines, Sri Lanka and others who are eager to fight out with Indian dominance. But still India enjoys an upper hand with its efficient work force and competency which augurs well with the high demanding western world. Ultimately, what matters most is the honest work, truthfulness, and diligence which would win against all odds!
1/7/2008, 7:04:10 PM(IST)
Medical Transcription is one of the fastest growing fields in health care business in Western countries, especially in the US where the entire healthcare industry is based on insurance, and detailed medical documents are needed for processing insurance claims. Therefore, the hospitals and doctors avail medical transcription services to cater with the demands of documental records, basically outsourcing the business. In the last few years, India has shown an unprecedented success in this field of medical transcription cashing in on the outsourced business from US and other western countries.
Medical Transcription provides an exciting and challenging job option with an ever expanding knowledge based career. It is the process whereby a medical transcriptionist has to accurately and swiftly transcribe medical records dictated by doctors and their associates comprising of history and physical reports, clinical notes, office visit notes, operative reports, consultation notes, discharge summaries, official letters, psychiatric evaluations, laboratory reports, x-ray and MRI reports and pathology reports. A medical transcriptionist is a person who carries out the process of converting the voice format of medical data into text data.
The data is received in the form of digital data files and voice data files and converted into text format in the process of transcription. There are certain prerequisites to convert those voice files into text documents which basically involve transcription and editing. To ensure maximum accuracy, the editing part of the transcribed files include quality checking, visual proofreading, spelling checks, grammatical corrections, rephrasing to streamline the context, and removal of inconsistencies and illogical content so that the desired accuracy of at least 98% is met before being uploaded back to the clients.
India provides an ideal locale for conducting medical transcription work with a large population of educated English speaking people, a large pool of IT professionals, the internet revolution, and the computer-savvy new generation aided by free market policy. Advancement in technology has tremendously metamorphosed the global economy and work place and the field of medical transcription has undergone tremendous progress because of constant advances in communication and Internet technology. Majority of the work is outsourced from US, but even British and Australian doctors are beginning to consider India as a possible source of getting this work done-quickly and efficiently.
Outsourcing of medical transcription work to India has the direct and immediate advantage of cost reduction, reliability in turnaround time, and total document security. The comparative low cost in India to those of US or other developed countries serves as an encouragement for companies abroad to outsource their work to the Indian Medical Transcription field thereby making India to be one of the top destinations of medical transcription industry. Turnaround time is critical in this industry, and India, because of its advantageous time zone in comparison to America and Europe, holds the advantage of delivering the work the very next working day for them.
India witnessed a boom in medical transcription field a few years back with a plethora of companies and training institutes mushrooming all over the place, but due to lack of training, experience and planning, most of them went into oblivion. Those who augured well with this new concept of business still persist and are providing job opportunities to thousands. The success of the surviving companies is a kind of indication that medical transcription, if handled appropriately, has the capability of creating opportunities and maneuvering the Indian job scenario to an extent.
Transcription services in India range from small, one-person home-based businesses to sophisticated, high-tech IT enabled corporations which employ transcriptionist on well paid pay rolls. In the metros and major cities, many big business names have ventured into this field and are flourishing and expanding day in and day out. Most of the bigger companies prefer to have in-house training programs so as to cater with the demand and curb down the effects of growing attrition rate. Some medical transcription firms even get their work done by employing on-site as well as home-based medical transcription basis.
It is not a cake walk for Indian companies in this field to compete with the medical transcription professionals of the western nations who seem to enjoy all the advantages of language and backdoor environment. Every now and then there is an anti outsourcing voice raised for the work outsourced to India and trying to bring out faults in the work done here. At the same time, Indian industry is pitted against some new developing destinations like China, Philippines, Sri Lanka and others who are eager to fight out with Indian dominance. But still India enjoys an upper hand with its efficient work force and competency which augurs well with the high demanding western world. Ultimately, what matters most is the honest work, truthfulness, and diligence which would win against all odds!
BPO’s Philippine operations get British standards certification
Friday, May 16, 2008. Sun.Star Cebu
ACCENTURE delivery centers in the Philippines have been awarded the British Standards Institute (BSI) Management Systems ISO 27001 certification for information security.
The only international standard that provides a truly independent assessment of an organization’s information security, ISO 27001 aims to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information assets of an organization.
BSI has also recommended the certification as compliant with the requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), covering Accenture’s health operations services in the Philippines.
HIPAA certification is a US law enacted in 1996 to protect healthcare customers’ privacy, integrity and availability of information such as health, demographic and other personal data, especially those containing electronic protected health information (ePHI). HIPAA compliance is mandatory for the healthcare industry, including its service providers, to protect participants and beneficiaries in group health plans.
Accenture is one of the first companies in the world to have complied with the information security management systems requirements of HIPAA. “These joint certifications reinforce Accenture’s commitment to safeguarding the protected information that our clients have entrusted us with,” said Mitch Gross, global delivery lead for Accenture’s Health Administration BPO (business process out-sourcing) Services business.
“We’re pleased to be the first delivery center in Accenture’s Global Delivery Network to be awarded (an) ISO 27001 and HIPAA Certification,” said Beth G. Lui, country managing director for Accenture in the Philippines. “Such recognition further strengthens Accenture’s industry leadership and helps validate the Philippine delivery centers as a preferred partner by our trusted clients as it helps provide a safe and secure information security environment.”
Accenture was recently named Philippines’ Business Process Outsourcing Employer of the Year at the Information and Communications Technology Awards 2008, following its 2007 win as BPO Company of the Year.
Accenture employs 178,000 people in 49 countries. (PR)
Philippines - English proficiency improved but BPO leaders warn against complacency
By JESUS F. LLANTOabs-cbnNews.com/Newsbreak
Despite improvement in the self-assessed English language proficiency of the Filipinos, the Philippines should not remain complacent and should sustain its efforts to further improve its competence in the language to maintain its position as top destination for the business process outsourcing (BPO), experts said.
The results of the April 2008 survey of the Social Weather Stations on the self-assessed proficiency in the English language of the Filipinos showed a "substantial recovery" in understanding, reading, writing, speaking and thinking using the language compared to 2006.
The survey, which was commissioned by Promoting English Proficiency Project of the American Chamber of Commerce and the Makati Business Club, was conducted by interviewing 1,200 respondents and has a margin of error of +3%. Ramon del Rosario Jr., president of the MBC, said the improvement in self-assessed competence is a market-driven response to the rise of BPO industry. "They realized that if they want to be employed, they really need to hone their skills and one of the skills needed by the market is English proficiency," del Rosario said. Don’t be complacent "It’s a step forward but we have a long way to go," said Jamea Garcia, executive director for talent of the Business Process Association of the Philippines (BPAP). Garcia added that other countries have been striving to improve the quality of their workforce by strengthening the English proficiency of their workers to become attractive BPO destinations. She said China, Vietnam and Latin American countries are fast becoming important destinations of outsourcing firms. "We should not be complacent so we can still maintain our advantage," Garcia told abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak. The Philippines was named by the UK National Outsourcing Association as the outsourcing destination of the year for 2007. BPAP estimates that by 2010 the BPO outsourcing industry can generate US$13 billion revenues, or 10-percent share of the global market, and provide one million jobs. As of 2007, around 300,000 people are working in the BPO sector. This means that the industry needs to augment its workforce by 600,000 in the next two years to meet the target for 2010. Lack of qualified applicants A November 2007 industry-wide survey by the BPAP and Outsource2Philippines.com showed that 46 percent of the companies surveyed found that only 6-20 percent of applicants qualified. Two-thirds (66 %) of the companies, the survey showed, had to provide new hires free remedial English training. Other sectors in the BPO industry, like medical transcription, also experience low absorption rate due to lack of qualified applicants. Raymund Eruma, executive director of the Medical Transcription Industry Association of the Philippines, Inc (MTIAPI) said some transcription companies found only 2-3 out of 10 applicants qualified. "Most of them are having problems comprehending dictations." Garcia said in a previous interview that this scenario is one of the threats to the growth of BPO industry. "If we continue with what we are having this moment, we might not have enough workers to meet future demand." Language proficiency training Oscar Sañez, CEO of BPAP, said these measures should be continued and strengthened as the demand for workers continues. He added that a large pool of qualified applicants can save the resources of a company. "Recruitment and training [of new hires] cost a lot of money," Sañez said adding that minimizing recruiting and training costs can add roughly 2-3 percent points in the company’s profitability. Sañez said that the measures being undertaken today are just short-term solutions. He said that what is needed are reforms in the education, particularly changes in the curriculum. — With research by Fharhana Abdurahim.
Experts in the BPO industry, however, said that although the results of the survey sound positive, there is a need to sustain the measures that have been started to improve the Filipinos’ competence in the language since others countries are also trying to get a share of the global BPO market.
BPO firms, however, are having a hard time filling positions because of the low recruitment yield and lack of applicants who are fluent in English.
A number of programs have been designed by the government, the industry players and the academe to develop English proficiency of the students and the workers. Scholarships from the government and tie-ups between the industry and academe are among the measures taken to develop a pool of qualified workers for the BPO industry.
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