High-end services pushed

By Grace Sarmiento, CW Reporter

While it is true that call center operations bring in substantial contributions to the local economy, the country should be focusing on the “higher value-added IT services” such as software development in order to take full advantage of the growing outsourcing business.

This was the recommendation presented by former Senator Raul Roco during the 8th IT Professionals’ Congress organized by the Philippine Computer Society last July 1-2, 2003 at AIM Conference Center Makati. Speaking before a crowd made up of chief information officers and IT managers, the former solon said that with higher value-added services as the focal point, then the national strategy should be aligned with the cultivation of the country’s human resources to be able to supply these high-end IT service requirements.

“While call centers and similar IT-enabled services like animation and medical transcription generate revenues, they are mostly lo value-added services. Higher-value service such as software development almost always comes only as an “afterthought,” he said.

“We should break away from this. The Filipino is not only creative and talented, we are a hard-working lot too, so we might as well exploit these inherent advantages,” he continued.

Talent Pool
The only way for the Philippines to figure in the higher value-added IT services market is for the country to have a vast pool of competent scientists and software engineers. The best approach to achieving this goal is to intensify education, said Roco.

“There should be intensified education across all disciplines from the primary up to the collegiate level. I think it is also best to assess the existing education system in the country, and see if it remains responsive to the current requirements of the industry,” he said.

Apart from this, continuous education and the development of innovative and creative thinking skills are surefire measures in increasing the number of competent IT professionals in the country. He lauded the efforts of the UP Open University in enabling distance learning. Measures such as this should be adopted by more institutions to allow even those in remote areas equal access to quality education.

“Knowledge-sharing is also important. Sharing of best practices is the only way to go if we want the country to grow,” he stressed. Companies should consider this move not as an expense item that leads to a loss, but actually as a gain for them.

Labor Policies
Lastly, policies governing labor and compensation should also be reassessed. These policies hold the key in keeping our high-priced IT human resource intact, Roco said.

“I don’t believe we have a shortage of competent IT professionals. What we lack is the resolve to keep all these brilliant scientists within our shores. If these professionals can avail themselves of good compensation packages right here in the Philippines, I don’t see any reason why they would want to work abroad,” he pointed out.

More importantly, these labor policies should be directed at Filipino scientists and IT professionals working abroad. Attractive retirement packages, for instance, can be a major come on in attracting offshore IT professionals back to the country to share their expertise with their countrymen, Roco said.