By Anna Valmero
INQUIRER.net

“Experience excellence, experience Philippines.”

This is the new tagline of the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP). It now aims to get the world to recognize Filipino excellence in outsourcing services and achieve clear strategies to ensure better business environment and wide opportunities in this competitive industry.

BPAP CEO Oscar Sañez said the Philippines has a secret weapon to propel it to the top: excellence.

“Investing in the Philippines is more than business — it is the total experience that our clients get when partnering with Filipinos, namely English proficiency, work ethic, hospitable culture, infrastructure and lifestyle,” said Sañez.

Aside from less expensive operations, Sañez said Filipinos provide operational efficiencies as key advantage that make them the best outsourcing provider worldwide.

Despite the current economic slowdown, BPAP is confident that the Philippine information technology-business process outsourcing (IT-BPO) industry will hit this year’s $6.8 billion target. At 16 percent growth rate in this year’s first five months, employment rate rose by 40,000, said BPAP.

Ranking second in the global outsourcing arena, BPAP believes Filipinos have much to offer beyond BPO and voice-operated services. In this connection, BPAP has launched a collaborative effort to align itself with key local players in different growth areas such as software development, medical transcription, game development and animation segments, said Catherine Ileto, executive director for BPAP’s external relations unit.

Reinvigorating its marketing strategy, Ileto said BPAP has started deploying campaigns, such as an online recruitment and marketing tool in partnership with content developer Havoc Digital. BPAP also plans to tap for its talent marketing initiative the use of social media, specifically Yahoo! and social networking site Friendster.

BPAP will present in a plenary session the tagline in UK’s National Outsourcing Association Summit on November. This is in line to BPAP’s strategy to gain inroads in the United Kingdom and other markets specifically, Germany, Australia and Singapore.