Owed largely to the skilled labor pool in Cebu and the growing flexibility of the global outsourcing industry, outsourcing firms in the city are now looking to expand or are already expanding their services beyond their usual brand of clients.
Outsourcing vendors in Cebu that usually just provide BPO solutions and are blessed with employees who possess specialized skills can now extend the services they offer to knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) seekers. (Read about the differences of BPO and KPO here.) In a nutshell, KPO involves outsourcing processes that are connected to, or are themselves, core commodities of the parent company. Examples of KPO services include teaching, legal work, healthcare, research, and design and animation.
A collective goal of outsourcing firms in Cebu is not just to add KPO services to their roster of offerings but also to increase their knowledge-based personnel to meet the growing demand for customized services. These services require not just good English skills but more importantly technical and analytical prowess in diverse fields other than communication and information technology (e.g., healthcare, finance, legal work). What local outsourcing providers now have to address is a more tailored brand of customer service and a more stable, secure, and efficient market. These qualities will attract clients who are eyeing global expansion.
Cebu's IT-BPO industry has near-perfected the ropes of the field that they are now ripe to take more specialized, knowledge-based tasks. Local outsourcing vendors have made themselves a name in the American market and are now looking to penetrate other markets in other countries such as Australia, the United Kingdom, and China. The way things are going now, we can pretty much say that Cebu continues to be a wise investment.
