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Stealth
Branding
By Michael Alan Hamlin
August 11, 2003
By 2007, the U.S. market for business
process outsourcing (BPO) will be worth US$173 billion, as enterprises
increasingly focus on core competencies and strive to lower costs
and increase productivity. Although core competency focus is not
a new message, doing it - at least in terms of outsourcing non-core
processes - is. According to Gartner Research vice president Sujay
Chohan, only one percent of U.S. firms are presently outsourcing.
But 19 percent have plans to do so.
BPO refers to a myriad of business
processes, including customer contact center operations, accounting
and finance, engineering and architecture services, creative and
editorial, payroll administration and processing of insurance and
other customer claims, for instance. While most of the BPO market
will remain in the U.S., Chohan believes that around US$28 billion
in services will go offshore. That's a big piece of the pie, and
one the Philippines intends to go after.
To do that, the Department of Trade
& Industry (DTI) last week organized an e-services forum called
Building a Value Roadmap. DTI refers to BPO services as e-services
because advances in technology - along with globalization - have
made it both practical and cost effective to offload non-core processes
half-way around the globe. While last week's forum was intended
to identify drivers to help the Philippines leverage BPO trends,
in the past two years the company has already achieved some notable
successes.
The most obvious is in the contact
center space. Three years ago, the Philippines had less than 2,000
call center representatives. By the end of this year, that number
is expected to reach 60,000. As a result of that startling growth,
the Philippines has become an acknowledged center for this segment
of the BPO industry, and is almost always cited to media reports
and research as one of the world's top three sites for contact centers
along with India and China.
For once, rather than resting on
that laurel, the Philippines is thinking aggressively about ways
to extend its position. Action plans involve working with the educational
sector to assure that the Philippines continues to churn out university
graduates with the knowledge and skills to fill e-services jobs.
DTI is making internal changes and working with the Securities &
Exchange Commission to make investing in and setting up BPO centers
easier. And it is taking seriously the work of creating a brand
for the Philippines that will be synonymous with the provision of
high-tech e-services.
The DTI forum included presentations
by industry experts like Chohan and practitioners like Terry Seaford,
senior director for offshore operations at Convergys, a US$2.3 billion
company specializing in datacenter and contact center services.
Convergys will have two contact centers in the Philippines by the
end of the year. The afternoon was devoted to workshops mandated
to develop recommendations for strengthening the Philippines' attractiveness
to BPO investors. About 200 local and international industry figures
participated in the workshops.
The workshop I attended was assigned
the task of developing alternatives for strengthening Philippine
branding and marketing initiatives. Here are some of the recommendations
we made.
Focus. The Philippines has very limited
resources for marketing itself. And so has little choice but to
engage in what might be termed stealth branding. By stealth branding,
I'm referring to very focused communication initiatives that target
specific targets. For instance, for finance and accounting, communication
should zero in on associations whose membership consists primarily
of financial executives. For contact centers, communications should
center on top industry publications and conferences and exhibits,
for instance. The point is to get the message cost-effectively to
people who count.
One Voice. The Philippines has been
successful in its efforts to recruit contact center investment because
DTI effectively marketed the Philippines to this segment in cooperation
with the local call center industry. But with that success, others
are trying to get into the game, claiming that they now are responsible
for marketing the Philippines e-services. This both dilutes the
Philippines' message, and confuses potential investors. Communications
must be coordinated, and someone has to be in charge.
Success Stories and Independent Research.
To be credible, the Philippines needs third-party, credible "virtual"
spokespeople to communicate their successful experiences. Information
pushed out to media organizations and through other distribution
channels should be built around these success stories, as well as
independent research by internationally respected firms like Gartner
and IDG.
Non-Traditional Distribution Channels.
In the same way that these communication efforts should focus on
specific investor targets to achieve maximum return on limited resources,
communications should leverage non-traditional distribution channels.
These channels include media, of course, but also the Internet,
events, and other direct channels that take the Philippine message
directly to investors, analysts, and other rainmakers.
Champion. DTI secretary Manuel A.
Roxas II has done the Philippines a tremendous service by championing
the e-services sector, and making its development a clear priority.
He's also had the good sense - and graciousness - to enlist the
support of his boss, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, in this
effort. Whatever you might think of Ms. Arroyo, investors do take
notice when the head-of-state champions a sector, and takes ownership
of its communication initiatives. The happy faces sitting at Ms.
Arroyo's table last week, were admittedly anecdotal but impressive
evidence nevertheless of the power of the chief executive.
It appears to me that the DTI is
intent on doing all these things. What's most impressive to me,
I suppose, is determination among the e-services sectors and DTI
not to take success so far for granted. There's just too much at
stake to make that mistake again.
(Michael Alan Hamlin is the managing
director of consultancy TeamAsia and the author of three books on
Asian economies and companies. His latest book is Marketing Asian
Places, of which he is a co-author (Wiley, 2001), and he is
currently at work on High Visibility: The Making and Marketing
of Asian Professionals into Celebrities. Write him at mahamlin@teamasia.com.).
Copyright © 2003 Michael Alan
Hamlin. All Rights Reserved.
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