Develop diverse talents for outsource industry

Diversify, diversify, diversify!

Vikrant Khanna, Tholons principal, gave this advice to businesses involved in the outsourcing industry in the country especially those in Cebu so that they can continue to be one of the top outsourcing destinations in the world.

“What you can do to sustain your prominence and improve your ranking is to constantly develop diverse choices of talent capabilities. You can develop more specialized skills that’s difficult to duplicate elsewhere, data analysts, software or hardware product developers and technology scientists. These are talents that offer more value than the usual English speaking agents which will make investors come, grow and stay,” he said.

This is a critical key to sustain the country’s momentum, said Khanna, who was referring to cities of Manila and Cebu, which ranked 2nd and 8th respectively in this year’s best outsourcing destinations in the world, said Khanna during the recent Information and Communications Technology/Business Process Management Forum at the Marco Polo Plaza Cebu.
Manila moved a notch higher displacing Bangalore, India at 2nd place.

Cebu, however, remained at the 8th ranking despite many efforts to draw in more investors here.
Khanna said that while the country has made its name the best in “customer service” related outsourcing and has been on the list for many years now, the country may not consistently hold this position with other cities in the world now putting serious efforts to also attract this kind of outsourcing investments in their localities.

“A wide portfolio is very critical in the movement of world’s ranking and attractivesness to investors. If a city has already developed its research and development capabilities, it has to move to lure ‘wise’ business process management types of investments,” he said.

He said this is a way to define your strengths and weaknesses and adding values to your offering to capitalize and remain competitive in the fast growing and demanding outsourcing industry.
He said, now is the right time to do this—add more offerings, promote these while maintaining your niche in the customer service space by adding more value to your offerings.

“You can only protect if you have more values to offer,” he said.

The industry is expected to grow further in the next years dictated mostly by the development of ICT like cloud outsourcing, the app industry and the technology analytics.

“Cebu and Manila should brace for this trend as it brings tremendous opportunities. The apps industry alone is expected to reach US$160 billion by 2016,” he said.