Offshore companies in the Philippines
The term “offshore” may not be as familiar as outsourcing, but when people refer to offshore companies in the Philippines, they are referring to companies that do outsourcing functions in the Philippines for companies that are based outside the Philippines. Hence, the number of offshore companies in the Philippines may be close to a thousand. The companies may be small, medium or large. Some of the offshore companies in the Philippines concentrate on providing one or two specific services only whereas others provide a full suite of services.
There are different models of offshore companies in the Philippines. One such model is a company based outside the Philippines that has a branch company offshore in the Philippines. These companies are also called offshore captive centers of the parent companies. Among the largest offshore captive companies in the Philippines are Convergys and JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A-Philippine Global Service Center (headquarters in the U.S.), Macquarie Group and Telstra (headquarters in Australia), Accenture (headquarters in Ireland), Deutsch Knowledge Services (headquarters in Germany), Shell Shared Services (headquarters in the Netherlands), HSBC Electronic Data Processing (headquarters in Hong Kong), Hinduja Global Solutions (headquarters in India; ironically the Philippines’ top rival in the global business process outsourcing industry (BPO)), and many more. Small and medium offshore captive companies also operate in the country.
Then another category of offshore companies in the Philippines is those that are Philippine corporations tapped by multiple companies outside the Philippines to provide services to these companies. These companies can provide any number of services, whether they be voice (call center services) or nonvoice (BPO and knowledge process outsourcing) services. Some of the commonly outsourced services to offshore companies in the Philippines are sales and marketing support, customer relationship management, procurement, administration, technical/information technology support, back-office functions, book-keeping, healthcare services, animation, and a whole slew of other services.
The levels of offshore services provided by companies in the Philippines also vary widely: from comprehensive services (the traditional offshoring model where the company in the Philippines fully handles the engagement), seat leasing or facilities outsourcing, and other models with different combinations and degrees of management control and service levels.