Dell and PFSweb expands call center operations

As planned, Dell finally opened its 2nd call center in the Philippines. The company will actively recruit 100 personnel a month until it meets their 2600 manpower target. Its investment for the 2nd call center is estimated to reach US$9.7 million.

PFSweb also expanded its call center facility to house its wholly owned subsidiary eCost.com (an online discount retailer).

The Philippines is one of most attractive offshoring location in the world.

Stellar Call Centres expands internationally into the Philippines

Stellar Call Centres just announced the establishment of a new call center and business process outsourcing facility in Makati City, Philippines, to service domestic and international clients seeking a low-cost offshore outsourcing solution. Client services will continue to be provided by the Australian-based management team. (iTWire)

J-Tel Holdings also announced a decision to consolidate their interests in contact centre outsourcing businesses around the world under a single global brand that will take effect this March 1, 2007.

Steve Morphett, Chief Executive Officer of Stellar Call Centres, the leading Australian contact centre outsourcer owned by J-Tel, has been appointed to the position of President and Chief Executive Officer of the global Stellar business. John Hollingsworth, Chief Operating Officer of Stellar Call Centres, will take up the reigns as Chief Executive Officer of Stellar Asia Pacific.

The new global brand will now encompass 19 call centre facilities across the globe, including nine contact centres in Australia, one contact centre in the Philippines, seven contact centres in Canada and two contact centres in the UK. In addition, the global brand will include the recently formed Australian company Stellar Business Process Solutions, which specialises in document management, workflow automation technology and business process outsourcing services.

“The new global brand brings together a number of previously separate brands, including Excell Contact Centres and Stellar Call Centre Solutions, which have been highly successful in their respective domestic markets,” said Steve Morphett. “We expect continued strong growth across our existing domestic markets, and look forward to penetrating the US market with our new offshore offering in the Philippines.”

Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune send circulation customer service calls to a Philippines call center

Tribune's Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, already send circulation customer service calls to a call center in the Philippines operated by APAC Customer Service of Deerfield, Ill., with other Tribune papers to follow soon. (Forbes)

EBags' sales escalating with back-office support in the Philippines

According to Rocky Mountain News, that's because call center workers in India replied to shopper's e-mail queries, and dozens more in the Philippines answered 80 percent of the telephone calls. (Nordmark said the Filipinos offer a cheaper alternative and pick up the American accent easily.)

How MediCall rode out Typhoon Milenyo

MediCall Inc., a Pleasanton, California-based company that supports the health care industry, has a call center in Makati City with 230 agents, primarily nurses. On September 28, during Typhoon Milenyo, areas like Makati City suffered power outages, among others. MediCall's proper preparation, made the company able to dodge all the hassles that most companies endure at that time. Operations were hardly affected and not a single call was missed. (InfoWorld Nederland)

ClientLogic to buy Sitel for $450 million

Nashville-based ClientLogic Corp. will triple in size with a plan to pick up its larger rival Sitel Corp. for roughly $450 million. The company has grown in recent years both in the U.S. and abroad, adding call centers in places such as Mexico and the Philippines to meet the growing demand for outsourcing. (Tennessean.com)

Dell to open 2nd call center in Philippines

Dell plans to open a second call center in the Philippines early next year to provide additional tech support for its U.S. customers. It will also increase the number of staff from 700 to 1400. (NetworkWorld)

Aranca opens Manila office

Aranca is the first international firm so far, to begin research operations in Phillipines, branded as a low cost call centre destination. The company provides investment, business and economic research services to over 70 clients in the UK, US, Australia and Asia. (Moneycontrol India)

Motif goes global, to set up facility in Philippines

According to Business Standard, Motif will be opening a 2 million dollar facility in the Philippines and shall focus on voice-based services. It is eyeing on starting with 200 employees and expect to surge up to 1500.

Call Center Outsourcing Gets Easier

James Stinson’s company Global Sky, operates a call center operations facility in Manila, which is fully setup for inbound and outbound calling to places like the US, Canada, Australia, UK, and many other countries worldwide. Stinson is an American businessman with years of offshore contracting experience, says that it takes extra care and contracting skill to outsource properly and acquire the assurances and control to ensure your project functions effectively and remains in safe hands. (PR Web)

Interview with Lance Rosenzweig, PeopleSupport

SocalTech interviewed Lance Rosenzweig of PeopleSupport as to how PeopleSupport evolved. According to Rosenzweig, its migration of operations to the Philippines is one of the three important decisions they have made, that contributed to their survival and success in business.

Ingram Micro May Offer Outsourced Backroom Ops for VARs

Following its own success in outsourcing telephone contact with VARs to the Philippines and other location, Ingram Micro is working on a program to allow VARs to outsource some of their backroom operations, according to The Channel Insider.

Call Center Philippines 2006 Job Fair

The Call Center Philippines 2006 Job Fair, set on March 18-19, 2006 at the EXPO Trade Hall of Festival Supermall Alabang expects a multitude of applicants as it features the country’s largest business process outsourcing companies, information and communication technology institutions, call centers, local and international IT related recruitment firms, training agencies and other allied companies.

Applicants in this event have the edge to be hired on the spot as it brings on complete recruitment procedure starting from initial interviews, to testing and to the eventual on the spot job offer.

Interested applicants are suggested to bring several copies of their resume. For more information, please call PHILTRADE Exhibits at 8253482 or 8250804.

Harte-Hanks Establishes Office in the Philippines to Focus on Marketing Operations

Harte-Hanks, Inc., a worldwide, direct and targeted marketing company, announced today that it will open a marketing operations center in Manila, the Philippines, that will provide contact center, data entry, mail tracking and data management services supporting primarily North American and other English-speaking markets.

Harte-Hanks has conducted business in Manila since 2002 via a partnership, and will begin to move equipment to its new facility there by year's end, with operation to commence soon thereafter. Initially, it is expected that there will be 475 customer service agents in Manila -- and a capacity of up to 700 work stations. Specifically, Harte-Hanks will provide technical and product support for client engagements, and will conduct various back-office functions for clients.

The Manila operation also will perform data collection and verification for the Harte-Hanks CI Technology Database (CITDB), a telephone-built database of information technology (IT) and enterprise market intelligence on 680,000 business sites in North America, South America and Europe. Currently, Harte-Hanks-owned facilities conduct CITDB data gathering in the United States, Brazil, Ireland and Spain, and operations will continue in these nations.

The company also announced that it has promoted Jason Cavo to the position of managing director, direct marketing, who is charged with management of the Manila operation. He has been a Harte-Hanks employee since 2000, serving as a senior account manager for technical markets working in the company's Austin, TX, office.

Harte-Hanks, Inc., San Antonio, TX, is a worldwide, direct and targeted marketing company that provides direct marketing services and shopper advertising opportunities to a wide range of local, regional, national and international consumer and business-to-business marketers.

Sykes, Siemens Business Services, and the Philippines experience

Sykes Global Services recently reported a revenue growth of £7.6m for last year and doubling of staff. It is interesting to find out that Sykes conversion to a call center service provider took place as it fulfilled the need of Adobe, the software company. This prime client call center needs is being fulfilled by Sykes call centers in the Philippines. (The Herald)

Siemens Business Services (SBS) reported revenues of €5.37bn but losses of €690m. Over-capacity is deemed as one of the reasons for its lost. To resolve, the company shall cut additional 3,000 jobs worldwide, outside of Germany's 2,400 job cuts. Half of the €1.5bn cost savings shall be attributed to the job cut while the other for offshoring to countries such as the Philippines. SBS has set up an offshoring center in the Philippines that will act as a call center, for Asia and the US. (Ovum)

Research initiatives
Alsbridge, a global sourcing advisory firm began their Fall 2005 Offshore, Outsourcing, and Shared Services tour with visits across Asia to the Philippines, Thailand and India. The Asian tour was preceded by trips to Canada and will be followed by visits to Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Poland in Europe. The purpose of the Fall 2005 Tour is to gather the most up to date information on the cost, quality, and risk of delivery of services – independent of service provider and local authority influence – from viable offshore locations.

Companies and newswriters are encouraged in helping write-up the Business Process Outsourcing entry in Wikipedia.