IBM's Presence in the Philippines Grows with New Business Process Outsourcing Facility

The Philippines may not be the first place people think of when high-tech expansions are discussed, but that's a point IBM (News - Alert) is looking to correct thanks to the recent establishment of a new business process outsourcing (BPO) facility in the Philippines. This particular facility will be geared toward one main direction: social business.

The Philippines facility will give IBM a significant edge in the BPO market, and represents part of a growing move on IBM's part to give it more of a presence in the social business market as well. With companies making progress from consumer networking to business networking--which is the essential definition of "social business"--a new set of solutions is required, and that's what IBM is looking to put into play.

Among the solutions that IBM will be offering through its new Philippines location will be the Customer Experience Suite, the Traveler mobile access system, the Sametime instant messenger and the Connections enterprise social networking system. This brings a whole lot of extra power into play, and gives IBM a lot to offer in terms of social business.

IBM expects to have the facility online and operating in the early days of 2013, and in turn expects it to be a major part of getting more businesses involved in the social business concept. It's not the first foray that IBM has made into the social business sector, of course; IBM already has several facilities devoted to providing social business tools in locations like Ireland, India, Brazil, China, Japan and North America. Indeed, there's a lot at stake for IBM and for businesses involved in social business alike as BPOs brought in fully $11 billion in revenue just last year.

That massive return has also made this a very high stakes game for the Filipino government as well, as BPOs now represent the second largest source of foreign income in the Philippines. The largest source? Workers abroad returning portions of their pay to their families back home.

With that kind of revenue at stake, and steady expansion projected, it's not surprising that IBM would be looking to expand its own stake in things in a bid to get a larger chunk of the pie. There's nothing quite like a comparatively new but rapidly growing market sector to make a reasonable company sit up and take notice. IBM's new measure will likely pay significant dividends for both IBM and the Philippines alike.