Saturday, April 22, 2006

Philscan optimistic about Philippines as expanding outsourcing partner

(This is an update of the article we wrote a few years back - "Danish-Filipino IT company continues to expand in spite of dull market")

Danish/Filipino company Philippine and Scandinavian IT Services has been one of the steady web-development company for the past 6 years.

Its unique combination of Scandinavian design and quality coupled with Philippine IT expertise at local price levels, continues to be the backbone of it's production. The production is primarily for Denmark and other European countries, but also companies and organisations in the Philippines are increasingly appreciating the value of the design and quality offered by the company.

Philscan.com's web production is a mix of custom-made dynamic CMS solutions, CMS templates and modules, static html and flash sites, hosting and service agreements. It has also involved itself in web-based software development on project basis as well as IT-development and services based on hourly payment. Among the projects recently completed are an online telemarketing system for a Danish customer, and a genealocigal software for a Norwegian company.

President and CEO of Philscan.com, Per Stangegaard (Danish) believes that there continues to be big opportunities for Philippine produced services overseas, provided the Philippine companies partner up with foreign know-how in the individual markets, and he invites other Philippine companies to offer their services through philscan.com, especially for the Scandinavian markets.

“We welcome partners, and prefer to keep our own organization to a core of a few very experienced staff, and project coordinators. There is a natural skepticism in Europe against outsourcing to unknown companies in foreign countries, and the piles of offers received from overseas, are normally being totally ignored, unless they are presented “live” by nationals of the targeted countries and by suppliers with their own presence and control in the country of production. Philscan therefore increasingly see a role as a link/facilitator between the best Philippine suppliers/producers, and it's Scandinavian customers"

Per Stangegaard adds "In the Philippines we have teamed up with i.a. http://www.worldpartner.com whose services we thus also promote to our markets, and we welcome such partnerships with local providers of top quality products and services."

He continues: "It is not only from the Philippines that we welcome partners. There is an increasing interest among our customers to set up joint-ventures in the Philippines. We have in 2005 set up one such seperate joint-venture company, Langhoff Promotions (Phils.) Inc. which, apart from offering that company's corporate profiling products and gifts/give-aways in the Philippines, is now producing all the IT and graphic/creative design needs af Langhoff Promotion in Europe.

"I think that such partnerships will increase in the future, and I could well see Philscan.com enter into more joint-ventures with European and American companies who want the security of having ownership in their own service organization abroad. We welcome this development, and one of the main problems to solve may be the limit of 200.000 USD needed for foreign investors to own more than 40% of such joint-ventures. This holds back many small and medium sized foreign companies from investing in the Philippines."

Per Stangegaard (47) first lived in the Philippines from 1983 to 1991, and returned in 2000 to permanently set up base in this country. "Having lived in, and visited a great number of countries, I found that the Philippines for me, has the right combination of people qualities, competitiveness, and quality of life that I wanted to combine with my native Denmark's many qualities, but cold weather. It creates a good balance in my life, so that is why I have made it my purpose to introduce and build on Denmark's and the Philippines' strong points to each other," he ends.

Philscan.com is a fully owned subsidiary of Philippine and Scandinavian design, FILTRA Inc.

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