Flexible-work software GoTo eyes aggressive growth targets in the Philippines, citing huge opportunities in the country and the region.
Lindsay Brown, Vice President and General Manager, GoTo Asia Pacific, said during a virtual press conference did not give specific growth target for the Philippines, but stressed that “Targets are aggressive, and they should be because we're, we've got a great opportunity here.”
Brown, however, noted that the company revenue contribution in the region has grown from less than 10 percent in terms of sales from its channels. Last year, Brown said the revenue grew 30 percent and he urged his team to work for more than 50 percent growth through its channel partners.
With that, Brown also egged on its new Philippine partner VST ECS Phils. Inc. to post higher growth of “probably triple digit in terms of his growth this year.”
Jimmy Go, president and CEO of VST ECS, said that although they were just appointed this year as Philippine partner for Go To, he cited the big local market.
Go stressed there are already an existing base of users from the finance sector from small medium business. “So, we look into being able to tap almost all of the industry because during this pandemic, everybody's really going into good call meetings, and everybody has proven that you know, it's a more efficient thing. So, we cannot disclose the exact numbers but definitely we do look at the peak growth,” Go said.
Aside from the Philippines, GoTo also announced its Southeast Asia expansion with a channel-first approach focused also in Singapore and Malaysia. This announcement followed the recent news in early February of LogMein rebranding to GoTo.
Together with its established international presence in North America, South America, Europe, and APAC, GoTo demonstrates its commitment to supporting small-and-midsize enterprises (SMEs) globally and across the region with their changing flexible work collaboration and IT support needs.
Its optimism in the region, especially in the Philippines, is largely based on the huge population working on a hybrid work arrangement, accelerated by the pandemic.
It is estimated that there are more than 70 million SMEs in Southeast Asia as of 2020. They account for 99 percent of all businesses in the region, employing over 140 million people and form the backbone of Southeast Asian economies. Working largely remotely over the past two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has created a shift in the way employees prefer to work. A recent study by EY found only 15 percent of the Southeast Asian workforce indicating that they prefer to work from the office full time. The majority would prefer to work anywhere (32%), work remotely full time (29%), or in a hybrid work arrangement (23%). Despite the obvious increase in organizational reliance on digital tools for employees, the study found that only 42 percent of organizations are utilizing productivity tools.
“At GoTo, we understand the unique challenges faced by SMEs and are dedicated to focusing our resources to address these pain points. We want to bring this set of knowledge to better serve Southeast Asia together with our ecosystem of partners, and best-in-class collaboration and support products,” said Brown.