Medical Transcription Philippines

The Philippine offshoring and outsourcing (O&O) industry is indeed headed in a clear direction, one punctuated by growth that industry leaders hope would lead to more prosperity not only for industry players but also for the country in terms of economic development.

The Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP), the umbrella organization of the thriving local O&O industry in the Philippines with over 200 member-companies and 5 associations, in an update, was optimistic in achieving its objectives based on its “Roadmap 2010″ initiative, which was launched late last year with no less than Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in attendance.

“Roadmap 2010″ is a strategic industry initiative aiming to up the ante in making the Philippines a significant and recognizable powerhouse in the global O&O market. It seeks to capture at least 10 percent—around US$13 billion in revenues—of the total projected US$130-billion global O&O pie, representing a 41 percent annual revenue growth rate. The initiative also seeks to generate significant employment for close to a million Filipino O&O workers by the year 2010 working in both the voice and non-voice services, including IT offshoring (ITO) and engineering services offshoring (ESO) services sectors of the industry. With Roadmap 2010 in place and with the assistance of all its major stakeholders, BPAP executives believe that the target is attainable. Presently, the local O&O industry has close to US$5 billion in revenues compared with US$1.5 billion in 2004 for a 49 percent annual growth rate. At the same time, the industry provides direct employment to 300,000 workers, up by 45 percent a year from 100,500 workers back in 2004.

These impressive numbers reflect the collective achievement of highly skilled Filipino talent excelling in various offshoring IT and business process services offered in the country, like voice and non-voice (medical and legal transcription, finance and accounting), ITO (software development, systems integration, animation), and ESO (engineering and architectural design). Based on BPAP’s own analysis, the local O&O industry is growing in all sectors. Revenue-wise, the contact centers, or the “voice” side, still dominate the industry with US$3.6 billion in revenues, followed by “non-voice” or the back-office operations like finance and accounting (F&A), legal and medical transcription with US$700 million. The ITO and ESO sectors, though still with a small base, continue to experience growth with US$423 million and US$152 million in revenues, respectively.

With respect to providing direct employment, contact centers have around 198,000 workers, non-voice with 62,000, ITO with 29,000 and ESO with 8,000. Again, though still small in terms of worker base, continued growth is expected for the ITO and ESO sectors. Growing preference of global clients for the Philippine O&O industry also continues, and this is attributed to several factors, foremost is quality-based talent value. According to a survey done by the McKinsey Global Institute among human resource (HR) managers, HR agencies and heads of global resourcing centers from three continents (Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America), Filipinos are among the most-preferred workers for hiring by companies in specific areas of expertise like engineering, finance and accounting, and other generalist practices. Continue reading here