eCentral Business Show^©

Why offshore to Philippines with Mike O'Hagan

Mon 10:47am 04 Dec 2017

In the final of these series with Mike O'Hagan he explains why offshore to the Philippines. Considering culture, time zone and education system, there are a lot of reasons that the Philippines makes sense.

Video Transcript
why all short of the Philippines is a subject today's East Central Business shop John Nayler and joined by Mike Hagen third the interview with you third little spot it's been inspiring stuff my feet are talking to us good okay now why are short of the Philippines you know obviously feel the fairly strongly burn this morrow you maybe put on the white what a part of my Australian businesses and GFCI move to back into the Philippines and it saved my company and it saved my bacon is and at the same time I've discovered a phenomenal resource that every business needs to use to grow yeah and that's the Philippines 105 million people okay that's a lot six hundred years ago the Spanish went attack went in there and introduced Christianity it's a devout Christian country the only country in the whole of Asia now I'll get that yep in 1898 it became a become American and the Americans took over and ran it for about 40 to 45 40 years about 80 years hmm they came in and and put their their education system in which is probably a more practical educational system in Australia put it in made it compulsory zowie illiteracy rate of nineteen ninety seven point four percent and made it compulsory in English so you've got a hundred and five million people who are the third largest english-speaking country in the world Christian base which means they have the same core values that we doing same same public holidays and same everything else it all fits together well whore it is always late with an American with American education system and then unfortunately the Spanish political system got left behind and in my opinion that the Spanish political system almost guarantees poverty and corruption because if you look at South America and Central America you'll find out that the history is led to this and you can see where the Spanish aren't doing that great either they had a there may be no key for their political system is multi lied and the last don't talk to each other and when you live there you can see and understand what's going on a little bit it's very sad but then then so therefore their wages are low with the average wage of a university qualified person and very well trained is probably about a hundred Australian dollars a week right I can't be there that's and educating those take 18 you're connected to the Internet and hey presto suddenly we've got workers and instantly at our dispose of all that can work for us online hmm now having said that 2025 years ago the large big international corporates out sourced to these countries to India Poland and Ireland and Philippines in these countries they put in voice call centers in those days that was before computerization and then when computerization came in they moved in back office processes what they did is called outsourcing so they went in and they set up very structured set processes which is why how corporates work hired sort of the lower end of town and exposed as far as the education system is concerned in these countries got people just to follow structured processes mm-hmm and that worked for them very well about nine years ago the likes of oDesk which is an hour caught up work came along which is an online platform which people can hire people were in the world there's hundreds of others like a bit but upwards a particularly big one you know up work has 12 million words in it today time yeah I've heard of Odessa like with the honey boy do you know the name changed their ones names change that he merged with Elance and with about 3.8 million businesses using it I think enlarge his use of road disk in the world of Australia Wow there's a lot of micro businesses in particular and small business in Australia using a desk mm-hmm it emerged but of course what that came home based and home based is okay if you want one or two full-time people or if you want some sort of specialized skill and only what a part-time but when it comes to building a team it didn't work very well so outsourcing was running a structured process it really didn't work for smaller businesses then along came a home-based and it didn't really work and in a murder coming out of that today we've now got co-manage spatial staff leasing many names and what that is is the third party incorporated in the Philippines state they handle it and they date they have all the office space and you come in and you just hire small growth space off them they supply the equipment they supply the legal entity for the employer for the employment of the worker you control the wages and you can build your own team in your own space and that is absolutely exploding right now gas bloating yeah I went to million Filipinos currently working for Western businesses is that right yeah it's citrusy even the inspiration behind there you know I questioned that back in the day so no I like to develop local talent I like to invest in local fellow though the Bears share my my mind my space and you know and have a good great relationship with employees but I then something simple but anything you send offshore it's a great way to live lift a country out of poverty why directly employing someone or being in that model you're actually doing something really really cool for that that other country in this case you're saying the Philippines is a great candidate absolutely you're living little amount of poverty for doing it but listen listen the world's changed and I think the concept of a country hmm is something that we're gonna probably find it's gonna is dissolving right there I I don't think 10 years from now we're going to talk about iPhones and iPads and all that sort of stuff we're going to talk about the time when the borders of the world literally dissolved and the world became one because nowadays there wouldn't be too many things in this room that aren't made in China hmm not mine them because they're not made in China because the world's become one we're all trading with each other hmm and we hang on to this thing called a country in a war you know whatever it is we say well mister this is all about our country maybe we live on planet Earth or not in the country maybe is a different way of thinking about it hmm so globalization whether you like it or not is a reality yeah they're all involved because we all own stuff that was made overseas we're all talking to people so manufacturing was thing and now services are going and employing people is happening it's just a natural progression and of course in the world of free enterprise when you've got competition and everything you can't run a business nowadays unless you're keeping your your overheads pretty trimmed up mm-hmm and to do that a lot of people have to do it I was Offshore's there's the way you get that done yeah I never when I went when I offshore India I didn't want to I was forced to my defected I had a back down turn I had the bank being very nasty and booking about taking my house off me I am red ink everywhere I had people Australians losing their jobs yes yes because we couldn't afford to have them mm-hmm so I saved the company by moving the back end to the Philippines hmm and as a result we've imported a lot more a lot more Australians because you've got back on the way it is you know Wow boom again you know we drive Japanese trucks in their company why that's because that's the best track economic for what we do yes all part of what we do it's all globalize yeah right so and the thing is and don't know how you want to broaches answer this question but you know in terms of Philippines contrasting with other places there's other place in the country like I know the Czech Republic say for instance its proximity to Germany that's something they're doing so they're working very hard for in a offshore capacity well in the offshoring area and globalization area where the big explosion is happening right now is their small medium businesses in the West and it's not just Australia but it's it's everywhere Americans and everywhere else so I've discovered they can build a team and grow the team so your typical team might have one two coders and a Webby and then some sales people on the phones and the counts receive all accounts payable and whatever else you do that'll be the team and they sit together in a common office by sharing with each other developing a thing called TAS acknowledge the Philippines stands out because it's english-speaking yeah it's Christian based to Australia it's on the same time zone as Western Australia so they started it's six o'clock in the morning we are can we just eight o'clock Queensland time and finish at 3 o'clock in the afternoon which is quite it you know it's five o'clock Queensland time so it's a similar time zone there's no other country that lines up like that any other country has an accent problem they have very international accent with it with on the phones and there other countries have some other issues some political issue the wrong side of the planet as far as timing on those sort of so Philippines really lends itself based upon the features you're talking about if you want to talk about as a country oven features but I'm showing it's certainly quite compelling I quite often get people say to me nah but you know places like India and in Eastern Europe have got much better IT skills yes and no there's a hundred and five million Filipinos like Australia there's some people here with very good IT skills every country there's people with good IT skills so I think it's more a case of looking for them and finding what you want more than being generalization every country has got good and bad skills in every area so I don't think you can sort of say I want to go there especially if you're building an all-round team hmm because what we're discovered especially from home-based is when a lot of us guys like myself ended up with home-based people all around the world and different things all trying to work on one business we ended up with a big mess yeah we had and yeah you need to put them together in one office hmm you know if you look around there was a 6 or 7 years ago there was quite a big move towards home base and Southwest Airlines and Apple and Google all talked about that they've all very quietly stopped talking about it they've all come back you know apples just only yesterday Apple opened its very big office space building as build in Silicon Valley why because we've discovered we all need to be sharing together developing this thing called tesak knowledge which is actually harris image drive their business yeah no I get that and that's part of what we love to do in east-central you know I'm very keen on building a set of knowledge that works within this building and and does what it does greatly yeah support of our great people from the filters as well as already do so you're talking to preach to the converted mic did I actually run business learning to us I've been doing it for five years now yeah that's right how do we get some more more go okay well um I just quickly read a card I have all my businesses the only business that I actually work in is I actually personally conduct these tours and somebody else organizes them all for me yeah I have they had three days as we in the Philippines and we go around and visit a whole lot of different places all different types of things we look at learning from every place we visit yeah right and we also talk a fair bit of my theory about systemising and duplicating in there sort of things so half about offshoring and how to how to develop real low-cost teams and get high productivity and you have a half sort of in entrepreneurship so I've been doing that under the under the brand Mike's business tools Mike's my K yes business tools tou tou are Escom okay yeah well just put my name Marco Haven and LinkedIn you'll find me anyway and mini movers Michael Hagen and mini movers will bring me up anywhere yeah and five men just about everything it's got a some way you can message me and you'll find I don't think that I'm thing Fabri Mike okay well might catch up here then again okay thank you very much Mike for being on the east central business so we're done for today I'm John Nayler thank you