The Philippines has a resilient tech landscape, but despite its impressive growth, the country still needs more talents, which is the lifeblood of a healthy tech ecosystem. “The whole world has the same challenge: we do not have enough engineers to build the digital infrastructure,” said Paco Sandejas, the founder chairman of Stratpoint Technologies, Narra Ventures, and Xepto Education. “Today, digital is the new sexy word for what we used to call ICT technologies. However, the new digital infrastructure that will empower self-driving cars and automated robots that deliver our goods, is in need of good engineers.”
Foreseeing the potential of the country as a regional tech hub, Sandejas was one of the first who really promoted software outsourcing and business process outsourcing in the 1990s. With former President Joseph Estrada, Department of Trade and Industry Secretary Jose Pardo, Bureau of Internal Revenue Commissioner Dakila Fonacier, and, eventually, DTI Secretary Manuel Roxas II, Sandejas promoted the fact that Filipinos here can do the work for engineers around the world. Sandejas focused first on Silicon Valley in California, home to the world's largest high-tech corporations.
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“I started Stratpoint because our friends in Silicon Valley asked me if we have technology talents in the Philippines that can help them in their startups and software companies,” said Sandejas.
“Prior to that, I already had a PhD in electrical engineering. I then moved to product marketing, and then to investing in technology companies. Later, I started Narra Venture Capital, together with Dado Banatao, the Ayala Group, and later the Lopez Group as investors. At that time, we were the first technology-focused venture capital firm in the Philippines. Back in 1997, I joined H&Q Asia Pacific, the first technology venture."
By 2001, Sandejas and Banatao decided to focus on investing in technology for the country to empower smart Filipinos who wanted to help the country become more competitive, instead of just importing computers, mobile phones, and software from all over the world, thereby, giving their hard-earned money to other countries. They intended to give back that economic output to the country and provide exciting jobs to Filipinos.
“The smartest friends I met in the University of Philippines, they all went abroad and decided to stay there because that is the only place that will utilize their technology talents. They want to do research and development. They want to become inventors. They want to invent and create, but nobody wants to invest in them,” Sandejas lamented.
However, another challenge the group had to contend with was brain drain, a phenomenon that still plagues the country until now and contributes to the lack of local tech talents.
“The smartest friends I met at the University of Philippines all went abroad and decided to stay there because that is the only place that will utilize their technology talents. They want to do research and development. They want to become inventors. They want to invent and create, but nobody wanted to invest in them,” Sandejas lamented.
Taking IT to the next level
With the help of Sandejas, government officials, upon realizing the country’s potential to become an important tech hub, decided to support the IT-BPO sector. However, in order to sustain the initiative, the country needed more talent. Initially, the government targeted to produce about 300,000 IT and engineering-related graduates who could work in the IT-BPO industry. Though the target was achieved, Sandejas eventually saw another concern.
“From that group, a subset could take higher-order computer programming jobs. Today, there are more graduates of IT and computer science. These are popular degrees now but, sadly, there are not enough top-level computer scientists teaching the subjects at PhD level. So, you will have people with a Master’s Degree and a Bachelor's Degree in computer science, electrical engineering, or IT. But what we noticed at Stratpoint, is that there is a need to prepare people better for jobs in the industry. In order to address this, Stratpoint created training programs to achieve that,” he said.
The company also has Stratpoint University, which facilitates the process of onboarding new hires. The new employees train to learn modern methodologies and technologies that they probably did not acquire in school. Stratpoint University is similar to being at UP, Ateneo, or other schools. Unlike conventional institutions, however, learners have the benefit of learning from active mentors and senior architects from industry who help in mentoring new graduate developers and hires from other companies.
“Within Stratpoint University, we have an architect academy where we teach expert programmers to become system architects and help them understand how to build large system. In addition, we provide technical and career mentorship. These are very important for us to ensure that we inspire and motivate our talents. In addition, we have brown bag sessions for career and personal development, as well as technical talks,” Sandejas added.
Resilience amid the pandemic
As one of the first proponents of IT-BPO outsourcing, Sandejas and his team know that employees from the Philippines could perform work for companies overseas. The companies Sandejas founded are among the pioneers in the country in enabling high-technology work, which includes remote work. This setup helped his companies remain resilient amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Today, we believe in using technology to make both our personal and professional lives happier. Our meeting rooms come with the technology for hybrid meetings. We use tools like Slack as to make communication efficient, robust, and complete. Of course, we try to make our offices conducive to productive work and fit them out comfortably. We encourage people who want to come to the office to collaborate, and hang out with each other. Remote and hybrid work is good and efficient,” said Sandejas.
Xepto Education
However, Sandejas added that interpersonal connection remains essential at the workplace. “The pandemic showed that we are still hungry for human interaction. Even at work, everyone recognizes now that you can only develop so much on your own. You really need to be interacting with others. Therefore, with regard to our other company, Xepto Education, we recognize that learning is a social activity. You learn from others. We encourage people to come to work. We are also proponents of flexible work schedules that allow our workers to adjust and not waste time. We use technology to automate tasks like project reporting, time scheduling, and others. We also try to focus on being an output-based management group. We utilize the Xepto Education platform for a variety of tasks such as onboarding and training effectively hundreds of new employees through Stratpoint University,” he explained.
Sandejas and his team believe in the holistic development of each person, emphasizing physical and mental wellness, and reliance on technology-enabled learning and development initiatives. On that aspect, Stratpoint partnered with Xepto Education. Founded in 2008, Xepto Education is focused on developing the most modern digital education platforms to make learning possible for all Filipinos regardless of economic background as well as provide access to quality education. It is no surprise, therefore, that Stratpoint also uses Xepto platforms in its processes.
“Right now, we are trying to acquire or partner with more learning resources.Given this, we need to work with various universities. The mentorship we give our recent hires can be done earlier. Students can attend our partner universities and receive training there and become more mature in understanding the software lifecycle and the development process,” said Sandejas.
Xepto was founded when the Department of Education asked for help in the computerization of schools. Sandejas was already part of other similar efforts for the last 30 years, donating computers and providing internet connectivity to schools. However, studies showed that oftentimes it was a case of technology for technology’s sake.Instead of helping the teachers and students, technology sometimes became the problem. The teachers would sometimes have no idea of what to do with the computers.
“At Xepto, we make it a point that we identify the root cause first and do not propose solutions until we really understand the cause of the problem. After that, we can design and build the best system solutions that truly satisfy the customer's needs. Not only have we built IT platforms, but the infrastructure, the software, and data tools as well. These benefit the students and the teachers whether it is a remote, face-to-face, or hybrid setup,” Sandejas explained.
“In these circumstances, we tried to figure out what is effective. At Xepto, we believe that education should focus on pedagogy. More than the technology, the heart of Xepto Education solutions is pedagogy. The focus is not to sell a new computer or a new software. Hence, we point out to clients what is important and what is not, even if it means they do not buy the technology. We end up training and supporting our client schools. Training is about the human being, the teachers and the administrators. We train them to use our technology or, sometimes, other people’s technology so that they can become more efficient and more effective as educators,” he continued.
“The fuel of the Xepto Education platform is data. With data, we know the students and the teachers are using the platform properly. We know if they are learning or just wasting their time doing other things. If we help them become more efficient, then we can improve on those systems and even the educational processes. Luckily, we are quite successful doing that,” he added.
Building infrastructures for nation-building
Marc Andreessen, one of the world’s top venture capitalists, wrote a blog in which he said software is eating the world. In other words, software and other digital or ICT technologies are really the essential infrastructure of the modern world. In the same vein, Stratpoint continues its vision to become the most trusted engineering advisory firm. The company claims that it can build software and infrastructure to help other companies create their own digital infrastructure regardless of the industry.
“Our first clients were the industries that were first to digitize, equipped with the budget, and had the ambition to be the first. These include the telecommunications companies, such as Globe Telecom and Smart Communications. We also have the financial industry because money moves through this sector. Then, you also have the marketing industry that is becoming digital at such a fast rate. These are the three industries that asked us to help them build their digital infrastructure,” said Sandejas.
“We believe that with our skills, we are stewards of resources for the common good that would help the Philippines. Therefore, we want to help build a digital infrastructure for the entire country, the national digital infrastructure, not just for telecom and finance but also for health and education. In fact, from the Narra and the Stratpoint synergies, we spun off Xepto Education because we can help the digital infrastructure for education of the country,” he continued.
Sandejas and his team have partnered with private educational institutions to address the gaps between what is taught at the tertiary level and prepare students for what the industry requires. As part of PhilDev Foundation, Sandejas is trying to help schools prepare themselves with all these technological know-hows and innovate based on that.
“If you are trained to be innovative, you know how to connect the dots. If you can connect the dots between the infrastructure and the application, and if you can build things, you are prepared to work in start-ups or even solve societal needs. I want computer science and engineering graduates to prepare for the rigors of a globally-competitive software industry working at internet speeds. Do not just buy the technology. You must know how to deploy it, use it, and you must work fast. It is not enough that you know it,” said Sandejas.
“Our mission is to make education affordable for everyone. We are putting our heads together to figure out the needs and give the best content, tools, and resources to our beloved hero teachers. At Xepto, our job is to figure out how to make the education process effective yet affordable. We feel fulfilled when Stratpoint and Xepto Education can help in this area,” he added.
A shared vision
The one byline that Stratpoint strongly uses today is cloud. Everyone is moving to the cloud; it stopped from becoming the new thing. It is now becoming the minimum requirement. For Stratpoint, cloud is the springboard for digital transformation as it allows organizations to have a distributed workforce, launch projects fast, innovate much faster, and lower costs. With 2022 closing, Sandejas shared his vision for his companies in the future.
“We want to be recognized not just as the digital infrastructure builders for the Philippines but also to become one of the best teams in Asia for digital engineering consulting. Whether you are in the U.S. or anywhere, we can build your digital products. That is what we want for Stratpoint. We want to be top-of-mind as one of Asia’s top engineering and digital consulting firms. For Stratpoint and Xepto Education, we want to become a breeding ground that nurtures the highest quality young technology professionals. It is my goal that when we train them, we give them the opportunities to grow and, eventually, empower them to contribute to solving the digital problems of the world and grow the tech industry in the Philippines,” Sandejas concluded.