When you want to cut costs, improve efficiency and focus more on your core business, offshoring is naturally an attractive option.
But not all countries are equally suitable.
Although cost savings are important, there’s a lot more to successful offshoring than that. You have to consider a range of other issues, including culture, work ethic, economic climate, government support and education levels of the talent pool.
All things considered, the Philippines ticks more boxes than any other offshoring location. Here are nine reasons why...
1. You get amazing value for money
Naturally, the main reason businesses want to offshore is because the cost of labor in their home country can be prohibitively high. With offshoring, you can scale faster, cut costs and boost profits. If you look at the cost of living in the Philippines, it’s far less than what it costs in Australia, the US or Europe. That means you can pay someone a good wage for much less than you’d need to pay at home - up to 70% less, in fact.
2. Filipinos speak great English
Communication is key when integrating an offshore team - the fewer language barriers, the better. English is an official local language (alongside Tagalog) making the Philippines one of the largest English speaking countries in the world. Fortunately, you’ll find your Filipino team members are easy to talk to. This is due to the fact that Filipinos have many Western culture similarities, their accents are also very similar to that of the US.
3. Your teams will get along just fine
Offshoring to a country with good cultural fit helps your onshore and offshore teams communicate effectively, it minimizes potential misunderstandings and helps achieve outcomes faster. While most other top offshoring destinations fall short in this area, the Philippines is an excellent cultural fit for Australian, American, European and Canadian companies.
4. Filipinos work (very) hard
If you’ve had bad experiences with outsourcing in the past, you might be worried about getting taken advantage of by your remote team. After all, you can’t see them and you’re not physically there to make sure the work is getting done. But that’s not an issue with Filipino offshore teams, especially with good management. Filipinos are renowned for their amazing work ethic and are eager to demonstrate their productivity. They’ll at least match, if not exceed your onshore team’s dedication.
5. Customer service is top notch
It’s likely that one of the key business functions that’s a real resource drain is customer service - it’s time consuming and often expensive to maintain. But when you offshore to the right destination, that stops being an issue for your business. Filipinos aren’t just amazing at customer service, they genuinely love doing it. Their manner is extremely warm, friendly and empathetic. Combined with their excellent communication skills, they’re great at talking on the phone, managing your online community or running your online chat.
6. Economic climate and government support is strong
Many popular offshore destinations offer great value for money, but add risk to your business with an unstable local government and economy. However, the Filipino government is stable and the economy is strong, in fact, it’s one of fastest growing economies in Southeast Asia. They welcome foreign investment and actively invest back in their infrastructure and technology to support the outsourcing industry.
7. Filipinos will work during your business hours
A good offshore provider will be able to build a team that can work the same business hours as you, no matter what time zone you’re in. This means you can offer prompt, reliable business-hour customer service and if your offshore team works closely with your onshore team, there’ll be no inconvenient or frustrating delays.
8. They’ve got the tech
Remote teams and employees need good technology and infrastructure to do their jobs. But this is where so many other offshore destinations fall short. In major Philippine cities, like Manila and Clark, the infrastructure is very similar to major world cities like Atlanta or Austin.
9. You need the talent
Offshoring isn’t just about saving money. It’s also about harnessing talent you can’t necessarily find in your local market (or on a large scale). The Philippines has a highly educated, diverse talent pool. Hundreds of thousands of university graduates enter the workforce each year. With so many people ready to work, we’ve built a database of 200,000+ screened candidates with training and experience in customer service, finance, HR, design, animation, development, marketing and more areas (and specialties within each of those disciplines).
Learn more about offshoring to the Philippines
If you want to keep exploring offshoring in the Philippines, read about why you should offshore to the Philippines and check out our tips to build a successful offshore team.
