DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/21 August) – A group from Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Davao will visit China next year for a benchmarking visit to business process outsourcing (BPO) firms in Dalian and Beijing in a bid to help Davao City attract Japanese clients.
ICT Davao president Samuel Matunog said in an interview they want to learn the best practices of the Chinese who cornered most of outsourcing services for the Japanese market.
“We want to observe how they are training the Chinese to become native speakers in Japanese, English, Spanish, and other languages. How are they doing it? Chinese have the most difficult tongue to train and if they do it, why is it that we cannot do it here in Davao,” he said.
He said they also hope to know the kind of government support and private sector participation that has enabled China to penetrate the Japanese market.
“We are surprised because the Japanese market is huge. We are surprised because we expect Philippines will be able to corner a portion of that market but this market is going to China and it is going to Vietnam. I do not know why we continue not to have a better penetration in a Japanese market,” he added.
Matunog said the Philippines needs to invest in talent development to create a workforce that can engage the Japanese clients in either voice and non-voice services.
He said China has a language university that trains workforce to be more proficient in foreign languages.
“Most of these outsourcing services for the Japanese market are captured by China all because they are native speakers. You cannot detect the accent anymore,” he said.
The Philippines ranked 3rdin the Tholons Service Global Index 2017, a research report and ranking of Top 50 “Digital Nations” and Top 100 “Super Cities”, next to India which ranked 1stand China 2nd.
ICT Davao will stage the 2018 LivEx and Innovation Summit on October 19 to 22 at the Marco Polo Hotel for technology and outsourcing innovators and key players in the technology space in Davao City, he said.
He said various speakers will talk about the technology ecosystem in the city and the Philippines including the telco industry and digital transformation through innovation. (Antonio L. Colina IV/MindaNews)
