Cordova-based firm to offer franchisable BPO businesses

CUBOS

Looking to encourage more local players to get into the outsourcing business, an owner of a local large BPO company based in Cordova, Cebu will soon be offering franchisable BPO businesses.

Michael Cubos, 32, who founded Performance 360 Solutions Inc. in Davao and Performance 360 Global Services in Cordova, Cebu, has recently piloted a franchising system that he will soon offer to local investors.

In an interview, Cubos said he and a partner piloted a 15-man call center now operating in Cebu IT Park, whose IT support, technology platform and business development were provided by Performance 360 Global Services based in Cordova.

“After years of running my own company, I think I already have the right formula on how to successfully run an outsourcing business,” said Cubos.

Cubos entered the outsourcing business in 2012 with an initial investment of P10,000 when he set up the 10-seater contact center in Consolacion town in northern Cebu.

Performance 360 Solutions Inc. then opened in Davao in 2013, followed shortly by the 130-seater call center in Cordova.

Cubos said he is targeting to launch and offer the business by last quarter of 2017.

“Right now we are ironing through the profitability study and the operations manual which will serve as their bible on how to run the business,” said Cubos.

He added that he wants to duplicate the same value and culture in all the franchises that is why he also said he will be carefully choosing who he offers his franchises to.

Under the franchise, Cubos said they will provide the business development support which includes looking for clients and designing the services to be offered.

They will also provide all the IT support including the system that the franchisee will be using during the operations.
“We will also train their agents which is what we have been doing now,” he said.

Cubos said that by offering a system that has already worked for him, he can help those who want to start their own outsourcing business.

“Also because we have always been operating outside of the usual outsourcing paradigm, this can also help spread the growth of the industry across Cebu as one can open in the countrysides and help create jobs in that area,” he said.

Cubos said there are already at least three investors who have already expressed interest.

“There’s someone in Medina in Misamis Oriental, one in Maasin in Leyte and another one in Cotabato,” he said.

Trump

Cubos said local companies now operating in Cebu don’t feel threatened with what the newly elected president of the United States of America, Donald Trump, has announced which was to bring back jobs to the US.

“We don’t think that will affect us especially that our clients in the US are the small and medium enterprises. We talk to them (clients) every day and they think (Donald) Trump, being a businessman, will eventually craft a policy that will help businesses grow,” he said.

Cubos said that should companies in the US stop outsourcing their services, they will go bankrupt.

“For example, a client of ours pay $5 per hour here, but if they stop outsourcing, they will end up paying $15 per hour there, which will really increase their expenses by at least three-fold. They’ll go bankrupt,” he said.

Cubos said that his clients are confident that at the end of the day, Trump will always look at policies that will help the businesses more, not drive them to close their shops.

Expansion

Aside from the US, Cubos said the Chinese market has also started to open up especially after President Rodrigo Duterte visited the country.

“There was a Chinese investor who came to Davao (City), which is now known as the new capital of the Philippines, and he wanted to partner for an ESL (English as Second Language) business. By January, we will be hiring at least 150 teachers for our ESL operation in Cordova,” said Cubos.

He said there are a lot of Chinese parents who enroll their children to ESL classes.

“The students start as young as 4 years old to 15 years old. These are mostly middle class families in China,” he said.
Cubos said he was looking at growing the ESL operations to at least 1,000 teachers by the end of 2017.

He said that there’s still huge opportunities in the outsourcing business and he feel that the local investors should now start riding the wave of growth.