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Back in the early 90s as I was about to end my college days, our professor and department chair, the venerable Ms. Annie Vistro-Capistrano, asked each of the graduating students to talk about the industries that we went to for our summer job.
Majority of my classmates back then went into the banking, finance and manufacturing industries. As my turn came, I said that I went to the services industry, specifically the management services division of an accounting firm.
At first, I got perplexed look from my classmates until Ms. Vistro-Capistrano told the class to watch for this sector as the IT revolution would transform the entire landscape and fuel a boom in this industry.
Either she is a fortune teller, or she knew something then that we don?t. But, her words of wisdom happened around 10 years later. And, today we are seeing the growth of the services industry, led primarily by the call centers, business process outsourcing (BPO) operations and software development companies.
Ten years ago, Cebu?s pride used to be the manufacturing facilities located in the Mactan Export Processing Zone areas. Today, while we are still proud of the MEPZ facilities, spectacular growth is happening within the several IT zones around Metro Cebu. What used to be empty buildings in the business parks are now filled up. New buildings are sprouting all over. And, yes, hiring season has never been more exciting. In fact, hiring season is now no longer just limited to March and October. It is now yearlong, particularly the aggressive hiring campaigns of call centers.
In a couple of months, Cebu will welcome several new BPO operations. BPO deals primarily with outsourced work in back room operations such as finance and accounting, logistics, payroll processing, billings and even document handling. In recent years, several large companies overseas have streamlined their back room operations and, with the availability of reasonably priced IT infrastructure, allowed these works to be outsourced to lower-cost facilities without sacrificing the expected work outputs.
The entry of these BPO companies will certainly excite the labor market with more quality jobs in accounting and finance, logistics and IT support work being offered. This definitely means well for all Cebuano job seekers and even for those in nearby cities and provinces as this means more choices and perhaps better opportunities. This will also mean a big shot in the arms of the Cebu economy in general. Feeling the initial gains are the local real estate players as office space and residential houses for assigned expatriates are taken up. Retail establishments, particularly food outlets, near the call centers and BPO facilities will also gain from the expected increased purchasing power from well-paid single and young professionals.
The best side of this transformation of Cebu?s economy from one anchored on trading to manufacturing and now towards services is that one can see how Cebu is moving up the value chain. As we move towards the service industry, we are also moving towards a higher-value, knowledge-based economy. This is in contrast to what used to be an economy based on purely low-cost labor and factory-based skills. One can notice, for example, that work-related issues for the service industry are not primarily about minimum wage or work stoppage. Rather, the issues are more of resource availability, employee retention and knowledge/skills development. Undoubtedly, employees in this growing service industry are highly paid and better trained.
The questions then we have to ask ourselves is this: Are we ready to embrace this new industry and take advantage ? or better yet, sustain ? this growth as the companies come to Cebu by providing the available resources, skills/knowledge, infrastructure and, more importantly, a learning ?can-do? attitude?
