This post was written by our valued team member, Hannah Rae Villarba, from Davao City, Philippines. She’s one of our newer reps and we’re truly honored to have her. We’ve asked her to write about BPO as it relates to the Philippines and Davao, specifically.

Ask anyone what BPO means in Davao City, Philippines and no more than 30% will know what you’re talking about. For the most part, the closest to correct answers you’d get would be call center jobs, good English, and sleep-all-day-work-all-night jobs.

Well, these may all be true, but there is absolutely more to Business Process Outsourcing than just that. Technically, BPO is hiring a third-party company to do some business functions or “processes” for another company. The fundamental logic behind BPO is to reduce costs and focus on core work. A BPO Company can do several processes for different companies at the same time – and with the advances on Information Technology and the worldwide web it can be done quickly, even in different countries.

With the nature of BPO work, there is a need for employers to ensure that their workforce is fit to tend to every need and every demand of every customer. This means that employers train their teams to be highly skilled and highly flexible. Add to it the fact that BPO companies cater to foreign companies, and are largely run by foreign bosses, the Filipino BPO worker is sure to learn to be global.

In Davao City, BPOs have found a new haven. With the city fast becoming an IT hub and the Davaoenos warmly receiving the BPOs flocking around town, the city is abuzz with the new definition of “nightlife”. One such company – where I proudly belong – is TryBPO.com Incorporated. Working here has to be, by far, one of the most exciting and most challenging things I’ve ever encountered.

Apart from the nocturnal lifestyle, each workday is like being warped halfway around the world getting the businesses of people in North America running on the net while staying on your desktop! I did not even need a visa to know that some John Smith is running this really awesome Plumbing Company in the middle of Humble, Texas. And the challenging part here is to actually get these businesses known – and make them stand next to Angelina Jolie in internet popularity.

It seems almost unbelievable, but hundreds and thousands of small and medium businesses all over the United States are getting known because of the work that TryBPO.com does. Four thousand miles away here we are, helping them to get found online.

A thought comes to mind: with the rise of Business Process Outsourcing, and the high number of Small and Medium Businesses (SMEs) in the Philippines, we should also start thinking about getting into BPO work, locally. The Filipino workforce has been getting better at the work done by BPO’s and can do a lot of good for the Filipino entrepreneur. Getting more work done at lesser costs would definitely boost the confidence of the Filipino businessman. Becoming more known on the web would not hurt either.

Maybe, just maybe, when this happens, Business Process Outsourcing would become closer to the Filipino hearts than the “it-is-a-foreign-job” connotation that some give it today.