ICT, BPO sectors growth rely on niche skills development

CEBU, Philippines - The Information, Communication and Technology as well as the Business Processing industries in Cebu are seen to further flourish if the five niche skills that Cebuanos are known to be good at will be given utmost attention.

Jerry Rapes, the chairperson of Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI) ICT/BPO committee said that the private sector has to work closely with the academe in terms of developing the skills of Cebu’s manpower pool. The five niche skills include cloud computing, healthcare, animation, games development, and mobile applications.

Cebu is already gaining ground in the aspects of cloud computing and healthcare, however, the pool of skills needs to be sustained for Cebu to attract topnotch and high value BPO investments.  

In the area of animation and game development skills, Cebu needs to let the world know of the capability of the Cebuanos in these particular fields.

In animation for instance, although most Cebuano talents are capable of world-class jobs apt for Hollywood movie production, the industry has to sustain this industry by complementing the skills with the appropriate tools to further hone the talents of Cebuanos in animation.

“Tools for animation are not cheap. The equipment are highly expensive,” Rapes said explaining that the reason why foreign companies are enjoying the creativity of Filipinos, especially Cebuano skilled animators, because of the lack of capital expenditure to provide proper equipment and technology to develop a local animation industry.

In animation, there is a growing number of small operations of multinational companies headquartered mostly in Hollywood and in Japan, doing animation outsourcing.

Although, these companies are usually operating silently here, this is a testament that there is a rich resource of creative manpower pool here.

Rapes said it is important for Cebu to know its top expertise in software development and high-value technology skills, in order to focus and harness these advantages.

In the mobile applications, on the other hand, Cebu is also gaining popularity on this specific field, as more universities are now developing good innovations in mobile applications, which are also supported by the private telecommunication giants.

Rapes, who is also the vice president for Asia Pacific sales of G2iX a software development firm, believes that if these five skills expertise of Cebu will further harnessed to its maximum level, Cebu will be able to rake multi-billion-dollar investments on high-value BPO jobs, not just inviting the voice-BPO investors.

Aside from the United States, Cebu can also attract high-value ICT/BPO investments from other countries like Japan, Australia and Europe.

“There are a lot of opportunities to explore the high value outsourcing market in Europe, and also in Australia,” Rapes said.

Stakeholders of BPO/ICT sectors are confident that Cebu will not only attracting voice-BPO investments in the next few years, but more on high-value outsourcing jobs that will bring about good paycheck to highly creative geek- manpower.