They talk about expertise and professionalism, about facilities and infrastructure, about incentives and opportunities. They raved about all these on top other pluses they considered in their Philippines investments.
Education
Experience
Work Ethic
Value for Money
Strategic Location
Quality of Life
Stable Demogratic Government
Jane Su, Principal, Bank of America Equity Partners
“The Philippines has all the elements required to compete successfully in the IT sector Our joint venture with RCBC is Bank of America’s first IT investment in the Philippines. We hope to be able to use this as a stepping stone to investment in the Philippine IT sector.”
Ms. Ling I. Bundgaard, General Manager of Intel Philippines
cites the supportive business climate of the Philippines for the competitiveness of the company.
Download the highlights of an interview with Ms. Ling conducted by the Department of Trade and Industry in July 2000
Education
Managing Director, Philippine plant of world’s no. 1 producer of digital signal processors (DSPs) and analog chips, two of the semiconductor industry’s fastest-growing segments.
“Large, hardworking, well-educated English-speaking workforce.”
Managing Director of a computer giant’s Philippine-based manufacturing plant.
“With better educational attainment than people of neighboring countries, thus better in labor and manpower skills. Also, their wide usage of English promotes communications with foreigners like Taiwanese and the like.”
Experience
Robert Fluor, VP, Fluor Corporation
“We picked the Philippines because of its engineering talent. They’re more cost-effective and their workers are competitive globally We certainly endorse the Philippine work ethic. It’s been a win-win situation for us.”
Steve Chang, CEO, Trend Micro
“I don’t know how we knew it was a good place for virus skills, except that when we went, we saw very quickly that there were good people there.”
Raj Vattikuti, CEO & President, Complete Business Solutions, Inc.
“In five years, we have grown from 15 to 1,500 employees, which clearly shows the type of talent and the innovations we have found in the Philippines We looked worldwide for locations, including India and Mexico, and we realized we could not do this any other place but the Philippines.”
Work Ethic
Jack Robertson, General Manager, Caltex Shared Services Centre in Manila.
“We looked at several locations. One of the big draws here was the abundant supply of people. We have very highly educated, motivated people working for us.”
Raj Vattikuti, CEO & President, Complete Business Solutions, Inc.
“It is ideal in terms of the professionalism and education of its workforce, its understanding of this business, and the level of its infrastructure. It is a place where we can do projects seamlessly. Doing business in the Philippines has been a very rewarding experience for us.”
Mike Ritonia, VP for International Operations, America Online
“To sum up, the advantage of doing business in the Philippines is it offers a very good cost point, labor is available and you get a very good labor force that’s highly skilled. What I like about Filipinos is they’re loyal and hardworking. They come to work on time. They have good attitudes. They’re very trainable. They want to learn and they want to get better. That’s the kind of stuff I look for as a manager. Whether they actually come in with the skills or not, what really matters is they want to learn. And AOL can teach them.”
Value for Money
Tony Strange, General Manager Philippines, Complete Business Solutions, Inc.
“The prime reason we moved to the Philippines is its manpower. The country offers much by way of technology skills. We’ve been able to find what we need, when we need it. All the staff have been extremely diligent. On their own initiative, to meet a deadline, we had a group of six of our people form themselves into three groups working 18-hour shifts each, without needing any prodding from us. That’s the kind of quality you’ll find in the Philippines.”
“Our turnover rate is 7-8% at the mid-manager level, which is relatively low. On the senior management level, none of our original people have left.”
“In the space of 10 weeks, we formed the company, got our incentives, and set up our office.”
Mike Ritonia, VP for International Operations, America Online
“It is ideal in terms of the professionalism and education of its workforce, its understanding of this business, and the level of its infrastructure. It is a place where we can do projects seamlessly.”
“Doing business in the Philippines has been a very rewarding experience for us.”
“The Philippines allows us to manage our production times at 40% cost savings over the U.S.”
“The major advantage to doing business in the Philippines is it has a highly available workforce. When we put an ad in the papers — which we rarely do — we came up with a backlog of acceptable resumes that lasted us four or five months. And this is a workforce that works, at a rate we can afford and still make money off it.”
Strategic Location
Chairman and CEO of a global courier service
The world’s largest express delivery company chose Subic Bay Freeport as the site of its first Asia-Pacific Hub which now connects 16 major economic and financial centers in the region, “because of its proximity to most of Asia’s trading centers.”
Mike Ritonia, VP for International Operations, America Online
“We have a 24-hour-seven-day schedule and the 12-hour time difference with the Philippines works very well.”
Quality of Life
Regional VP and General Manager of the Philippine office of a consumer products company.
One of the factors which made this world leader in consumer products locate its back office operations in the Philippines is the country’s “good blend of cost of doing business and standard of living. We did not select the Philippines because salaries here are the cheapest. You can get cheaper salaries elsewhere. Vietnam, China, Indonesia, and India are cheaper. It is important to us to select a site that has a reasonable quality of living. The kind of culture, the kind of surroundings in Metro Manila, cost of housing being more reasonable than in other countries, good housing facilities, good school facilities by way of the International School and other types of schools for children of expatriates.”
Managing Director, Philippine plant of chip industry leader.
“Among our reasons for setting up operations here are the tax incentives offered in the economic zones.”
Stable Demogratic Government
Sean Clifford, A Principal at Deloitte Consulting in Hong Kong
The Philippines may also have another advantage over some other Asian locations: Its democratic system, chaotic as it sometimes appears to outsiders, seems to foster flexibility and creativity. While Singapore’s leaders fret about how to teach their citizens to be more creative, the question doesn’t arise in the Philippines. This “bodes well for things like software development.”
Raj Vattikuti, CEO & President, Complete Business Solutions, Inc.
“It excites companies like ours that the Philippine government has a clear vision.”