IT, BPO, & Business Services

The Philippine workforce is young, well-educated, skilled, and highly adaptive to technology and its technical skill requirements. They are fluent in Western-accented English and are patient - a trait which comes in handy when facing customers [31].

The engine that propels the outsourcing industry in any developing country is its lower cost of doing business. Other services and products that benefit from low labor costs, such as professional services, office rental, office supplies, food and lodging are also very reasonable in the Philippines. Health care costs and taxes are also much cheaper than in developed countries [32].

The national government supports the BPO industry by creating relevant policies and programs. A recent example for the same would be the Data Privacy Act, which puts into place stringent international quality data privacy standards, thereby ensuring that sensitive information being handled on a daily basis remains secure.

The Philippines’ focus on growing industries in both voice and non-voice sectors such as global in-house centers (GICs), healthcare information management, animation, and gaming also ensure future BPO growth in the country [33].

Investors in the Philippine BPO industry are offered a sizable number of incentives, including tax holidays, tax exemptions on imported equipment, simplified import procedures, and freedom to employ foreign nationals [34].

Led by digital transformation, the BPO industry of the Philippines is expected to be influenced by the top trends emerging in Industry 4.0 including Big Data and Analytics (BDA), Internet-of-Things (IoT), Automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI), and cloud computing, all of which rely heavily on the IT-BPM industry. With the formulation of the AI Roadmap, the Philippines is laying the foundations to keep up with rapidly changing times and improve its technology adoption and competitiveness [35].

With the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0) and with the accelerated digitization of government, industry, and society as a whole due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an opportunity for accelerated growth in high-value services, particularly in animation, game development, global in-house centers, health information management (HIM), IT, and software development [35].

The Philippine software market is expected to grow due to the increasing number of software-centric startups within the country. The country’s hardware market revenues are further estimated to have a potential rise in the overall sales of computers and peripherals. Resulting from the increasing number of internet users across various verticals is anticipated to boost the demand for antivirus solutions in the near future to avoid any data breach or illegal cyber activity [30].