Manila, Philippines – The local Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sector is pushing to enter new markets with the aim of reaching untapped customers in United States and potential clients in Asia and the United Kingdom.

Maulik Parekh, President of PLDT BPO firm SPi Technologies said that for the last 10 years more than 80% of BPO revenues and other outsourced services came from United States. “Now we have to look at where else to get the revenue. It’s about time to spread the Philippines’ wings to other locations” he said.

The BPO industry is growing fast and the Philippine BPO sector is looking at Japan, Europe, Australia and New Zealand as lucrative and possible new sources of much-needed investment, revenues and contracts.

“Because of the growth in the Asia-Pacific region, there’s now a big demand (for BPO services). We’re trying to capitalize on our language capabilities. The biggest demand is for Mandarin, Japanese, Thai, Bahasa and Korean,” said Gillian Joyce Virata, Executive Director for information and research of the Business Processing Association of the Philippines.

Finding Mandarin speakers is not that difficult since Philippines has a big population of Filipino-Chinese and native Chinese. Korean nationals who are studying English in the country can also be tapped to the BPO industry’s advantage by employing them for jobs that requires Korean language.

Japanese companies and organizations were conducting their own language training mainly to support Filipinos already working in Japan.

Now BPO players are not only looking at other places and regions to get revenues but also increasingly turning to non-voice services that are earning higher yields than voice.

Growth in offshore business processes indicates that BPO is not a passing fancy, but represents a paradigm shift in how companies operate.