Thought Leaders in Outsourcing: Interview with David Schnitt, CEO of IQ BackOffice (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What are the dynamics in the Philippines right now, and what are the dynamics in Chennai that you are seeing in each of your segments?

David Schnitt: What we see in Chennai is that there is still competition for good talent, as there is anywhere. But the Indian economy has slowed, and because of that we find it is easier to find good people than it was a couple of years ago. In Chennai it is a lot easier, but we are still finding a lot of good people who are available. But it is not booming, and it is not completely as crazy as it was. On the other hand, the Philippines are booming. It is amazing to see the amount of construction there and the buzz. A lot of the call center business has shifted from India to the Philippines. But the Philippines are also very good in terms of accounting and other high-end processes. We find that there is a lot of demand for talent in the Philippines and there are a lot of good graduates who don’t require a huge amount of training.  The are a lot of outsourcing companies there in addition to a lot of companies that set up their back office operations here, like JP Morgan, for example. The Philippines are just booming like India was 10 years ago.

SM: How do you compete for talent in that scenario?

DS: We compete in a number of different ways. One of the things we can do successfully is that we can give people are lot more empowerment and responsibility than they would get in larger outsourcing companies. I have interviewed a number of candidates who have been with the Accentures of the world. Their job was to add up one column on a spreadsheet. They have a very narrow scope of what they are doing within a larger process. We give our people the scope of their work. That gives them a lot more job satisfaction; they learn a lot more and grow a lot more professionally because we are not such a large organization compared to the others. They know there is a lot of opportunity for advancement. In addition, in the Philippines, our parent company is Ayala Corporation. I started the company but I sold it two years ago to Ayala Corporation, which is the largest conglomerate in the Philippines. Candidates in the Philippines know they are working for the preeminent company.

SM: Your clients are mostly U.S. clients, right?

DS: Most are headquartered in North America. Increasingly they are global companies. When we sign on with a new client, they don´t want us to just help them with things in the U.S., but the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, Asia, etc. Last year we signed on a software company that is based in Ottawa and that has operations in about 50 countries around the globe. We handle multiple processes for them, including accounts payable, accounts receivable, order management, etc. We do that for every region around the globe in different languages. Our clients are increasingly looking for that kind of skill set from us, and of course we are happy to provide it to them.

SM: Is nearshoring a trend in your industry?

DS: We don´t see any demand for that at all.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Thought Leaders in Outsourcing: Interview with David Schnitt, CEO of IQ BackOffice
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