Four German companies plan to set up or expand their shared services and customer support operations in the Philippines to serve their global clients, according to the Trade Department.
Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez said the Philippines was now attracting more German and other European companies in the BPO sector.
“The IT-BPM [information technology-business process management] sector of Germany selected the Philippines as the location of their shared service centers catering to the Asia Pacific markets,” he said.
Lopez identified the four German firms as Fresenius Medical Care, Boehringer Ingelheim, Merk Inc. and BMW.
Fresenius Medical Care, a unit of Fresenius Kabi Global, operates 21 dialysis clinics all over the country. “They see the need to further expand their operations in the country to 25 clinics by end 2017 and up to 37 by 2020,” Lopez said.
It opened a shared service center in Alabang in 2015, servicing the accounting and finance operations of 30 countries with a plan to increase manpower to 130 in the next three years from 77 in 2017.
Fresenius Kabi also plans to open IT-BPM operations in the Philippines in the short term.
Boehringer Ingelheim which has been in the Philippines for 50 years will open a shared service center in October 2017 with 200 employees.
Merck opened its IT-BPM operations in the Philippines in July 2016 with an initial 125 employees, offering procurement, accounting, human resources and IT services for its North America and Asia-Pacific markets. The company plans to expand its operations in the next three to four years by expanding services and scope and increasing its labor force to 800 people by 2020.
BMW tapped Bosch Communications Center in the Philippines to accommodate inquiries from its Asean clients.