Ateneo, La Salle to offer postgrad courses on outsourcing
Posted September 12, 2008
MANILA, Philippines – The De La Salle University (DLSU) Graduate School of Business and Ateneo de Manila Professional Schools will pilot postgraduate courses intended to help produce supervisors and middle managers for the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry.
Business Process Association of the Philippines (BPAP) will start several training programs this October, according to BPAP chief executive Oscar Sañez.
In a separate interview, Jamea Garcia, executive director for talent development, said a basic supervisory program will start in October. This program will run for about 4 to 5 days.
Garcia said De La Salle in Greenhills and Ateneo in Makati will hold the supervisory program. "Eventually, we want to expand it outside of Metro Mania," she said.
In November, De La Salle and Ateneo will hold a 16-day certificate program for middle managers that could be credited to an MBA degree program, she said.
Garcia said the 16-day program will have several modules intended to develop the leadership and management skills of operations managers of the BPO industry.
"It will cover competencies needed by manager specific to call centers and BPO firms, including leadership skills and performance reviews," Sañez added. "We need to promote intensively mid-managers. Companies can use this program as an incentive to their employees."
BPAP projects the local outsourcing industry would need more than a million workers by 2010 to support further growth, and sustain its revenue target of P12 to P13 billion.
Based on current estimates, the BPO industry earned more than P4 billion last year and now employs less than half a million workers.
But more than just doubling the workforce, industry executives have raised the need to develop and promote more managers in order to become more competitive with the likes of India.
Benedict Hernandez, general manager for eTelecare's local operations, estimates nearly 30 percent of his company's current workforce of more than 10,000 people is those not doing voice-based services.
In an interview, Hernandez said eTelecare has promoted people from its ranks to client managers or those personally engaging customers in the US.
"Our managers, however, are those that have been with us for a number of years," he said.
The need to produce more manages becomes more pressing as the country begins moving into higher-value non-voice services that require project management skills, Hernandez said.
Source: INQUIRER.net, September 1, 2008
By Lawrence Casiraya
