CEBU CITY – Close to 1,000 executives from local and international Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) companies arrived in this city for the 8th Contact Islands 2024 conference which started on Wednesday, July 24, at Fili Hotel in Nustar Cebu.

MITCH Locsin (left), chairman of the Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP), and CCAP Board Director Haidee Enriquez grace the 8th Contact Islands 2024 conference in Cebu City. (Calvin D. Cordova)

The three-day conference organized by the Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP) aims to resolve challenges that the industry is facing, such as cybersecurity, infrastructure development, upskilling of workers, uncertainties of taxation in both national and local government, artificial intelligence (AI), and macro-economic conditions.

“Various challenges and opportunities are emerging that further make this year’s Contact Islands conference timelier and more interesting than ever,” Mitch Locsin, chairman of CCAP, said in a press briefing prior to the start of the conference.

CCAP is  the umbrella organization of the Contact Center and Business Process Outsource sector with 154 member-firms within the Philippine IT-BPM industry.

CCAP Board Director Haidee Enriquez said the Philippines is moving towards niche jobs under Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) such as e-finance and accounting, healthcare, medical coder, and cybersecurity, among others.

Enriquez urged industry stakeholders to work with the government to maximize the potential of the Philippines.

Officials from various government agencies and local government units will attend the conference.

CCAP is seeing a continued robust growth for Cebu's information technology and business process management (IT-BPM).

Enriquez said that the BPO industry in Cebu will continue to expand as it remains to be the primary BPO hub outside Metro Manila.

“People are still coming to Cebu,” said Enriquez.

Enriquez said Cebu is expected to continue to attract investments, particularly in the expansion of existing outsourcing companies here.

“The customer experience that our industry provides is the embodiment of our collective vision and concerted actions. Through the years, the Philippines, being the primary provider of excellent contact center and outsourced business processes to the world, has served as the heart of customer experience. We have already weathered numerous storms, but we have to continuously and relentlessly face many more inevitable and unexpected challenges,” Enriquez said.

The contact center and IT-BPM sector accounts for about 83 percent of the entire IT-BPM industry revenue annually.

Based on data from global research company Everest Group, the contact center and IT-BPM sector posted a $29.5-billion revenue in 2023, equivalent to almost 83 percent of the $35.5-billion revenue of the entire IT-BPM industry. It employed 1.51 million full-time employees (FTEs) in the same year, accounting for 89 percent of the 1.70 million FTEs of the whole IT industry.

By the year 2028 (based on the IT Industry Roadmap), the sector is projected to account for about $49 billion of a target $59-billion IT industry revenue and projected to be manned by about 2.5 million FTEs.