Accenture Philippines Inc. is pursuing a P1-billion expansion program in five locations in the country.
Data from the Philippine Economic Zone Authority showed Accenture planned to put up more sites as demand for call and data services continued to drive the industry’s growth in 2015.
“We have approved the request of Accenture and we hope to see more BPO companies expanding their operations here in the Philippines,” Peza director general Lilia de Lima said over the weekend.
Data showed Accenture was expanding two centers in Cebu IT Park, one in Gateway Tower in Cubao, one in Vendi IT Hub and one in Uptown Bonifacio Global City.
The expansion projects will cost Accenture an additional P1 billion in investments and generate an additional 7,607 in employment. They will add another $182 million worth of service exports to the Philippines.
Accenture is one of the world’s leading management consulting, technology services and outsourcing companies employing over 170,000 people worldwide.
They serve 91 of the Fortune Global 100, nearly two-thirds of the Fortune Global 500 and government agencies in 49 countries.
Accenture has been in the Philippines for over 20 years offering a variety of services from application development and management to business process outsourcing Accenture recently won its second Outstanding Community Project Award from Peza at the recent 20th Anniversary and Investors’ Recognition Night 2015.
Business process outsourcing companies are expected to add 150,000 jobs this year, boosted by the expansion of the healthcare segment.
The Information Technology and Business Process Association of the Philippines said the local industry aimed to take advantage of the rising need among US companies for talents adept at handling a special type of healthcare support.
ITBPAP president and chief executive Jose Mari Mercado earlier told reporters the US was looking for Filipino talents to support the US migration to the International Code for Diseases 10 from the current ICD 9.
ITBPAP said of the 150,000 BPO jobs needed in 2015, around 20 percent would come from the healthcare space.
ITBPAP expects total BPO revenues to rise from $18.9 billion in 2014 to $21.9 billion in 2015 and $25 billion in 2016.
Contact centers still dominate the BPO industry with revenues of $11 billion in 2014. Healthcare contributed $3 billion and employed 87,000 people last year.
“We’re lagging behind healthcare but with this new opportunity, we hope to catch up. We expect to bridge the gap in competency soon enough,” Mercado said.
He said a number of companies in the Philippines were now investing in having Filipino nurses acquire US nursing accreditation to serve the UDS demand for remote healthcare.
The group also identified what it called “captives” as another growth area. Captives refer to in-house contact centers serving the needs of a single company.
About 187,000 people worked in the “captives” segment which generated revenues of $3.44 billion in 2014.