PC Mall subsidiary opens offshore office in Edsa Central

OSRP, a wholly-owned subsidiary of US company PC Mall Inc., recently inaugurated its first office outside North America on the second level of Edsa Central Pavilion, Greenfield District, Mandaluyong.

The office warming party was attended by executives of OSRP, Greenfield Development Corp., the project assurance consultation team, and the first batch of OSRP employees.

Edsa Central Greenfield District is accredited by the Philippine Export Zone Authority (PEZA) as an Information Technology (IT) zone.

With headquarters in Los Angeles, California, many offices within the US, and a branch in Canada, OSRP sells computer technology products to US businesses, consumers, government and educational institutions, posting approximately $1.2 billion in sales last year.

According to OSRP president Dan DeVries, the Edsa Central office will have majority of its employees in place by year’s end. The first batch of workers will do back office operations, with most of the people focused on Internet content. The next round will consist of IT people like web programmers, web designers and application designers, as well as accounting and credit processing people.

The final batch of employees is going to be taken up by call center people who will provide technical support and customer service.

"We’ll know by the end of the year or the first quarter of 2006 where we’re going on the whole expansion plan. We’re pretty excited," he says.

DeVries is happy about the fact that the office is located in Edsa Central, Mandaluyong, which is situated along Edsa, in the middle of Quezon City, Makati, Pasay and Manila, easily accessible from outlying areas like Parañaque and Alabang, and is connected to the MRT.

The team that made it easy for OSRP to make the move to Edsa Central is EnVision, which does Project Assurance for OSRP and other American and European companies that plan to operate in the Philippines.

The Philippine office of OSRP is an offshore branch which means that no local staff is hired as a temporary agent: "Nobody is contractual, they’re all part of our company," DeVries explains. He cites that OSRP general manager Komal Shah has worked for PC Mall for 10 years while he has been in the company for 13 years, pointing out that the office wants its employees in the Philippines to stay and work the same length of time for the company.

Employee turnover is an issue in any workplace but DeVries believes that the way to stop the cycle is to make people enjoy their jobs and to treat them fairly. Aside from hiring its own employees (instead of doing it on a contractual basis), it is not focused on traditional call center operations where most turnovers occur.

"Most of our people are going to be sales people. Instead of just taking calls that are coming in, they will make calls out and try to form a relationship with people who buy IT products in the US. In addition to a base salary, they’re going to get a commission, which is not what happens with most call centers. So literally the better they are at their job, the more money they make. It doesn’t matter how long they’ve been with us; somebody who has been with us for six months can make a lot of money. It’s a performance thing... you kind of write your own ticket. So hopefully we can avoid some of the turnover with that," DeVries says.