Hopefully, you will have had the chance to read my article from last week where I wrote about my initial impressions of Manila on my recent trip to spend time with our Support Team.
If you haven’t you can click here to read it.
My aim with these articles is to either introduce or familiarise you with the Philippines if you know nothing about it, or possibly to address or challenge some preconceptions about the place.
When you think of the Philippines, it may conjure up images of other southeast Asian nations like Thailand where it's all beaches and islands and well, you are kind of right. The rural areas of the Philippines really are a lot of beaches, huts, and greenery.
But as much as those things are amazing, they are not the reason why some of the world's most innovative corporations decide to set up their offshoring operations there.
I mentioned in my last article that Frontline’s office is based in IBM Plaza, Quezon City and is next door to Accenture. I was also reminded by a former colleague at Intuit that Manila is where a large proportion of their “Rest of the World’ team is based in all types of roles, from marketing to telesales.
That’s right! The English is that good and the accent is so neutral that these firms run successful telesales operations from there.
For as much as the beautiful beaches, mountains and forests are a bonus, the reason so many smart innovative companies decide to set up in Manila is the abundance of smart young professionals with international business degrees who are multi-lingual and possess the kind of work ethic that most of our clients tell us is hard to find these days.
Frontline have grown at such a pace this year that our Management Team has expanded as rapidly as our client base has; this is another reason it was so important for me to head to the Frontline Headquarters and spend some time with our ever-expanding team.
Having spent a lot of time with the Marketing Team especially, (not that I had any doubts) the quality of the team is as good as any I have worked with at the likes of Intuit or Dext.
They know their market and they know their clients; they use the same international marketing strategies used by UK based firms and even when discussing playbook strategies and things we should try for next year.
There’s no look of confusion, they get it, they understand, and they contribute to the conversation.
What I’m getting at is, in the UK or US, we can sometimes succumb to stereotypical views of what we perceive to be “less developed” parts of the world and automatically think that a person from that region may suffer to keep up.
I can wholeheartedly tell you that’s not the case.
The key quality measure that every candidate needs to pass is “Would we employ them for our own support team at Frontline?” and only when they pass that test, do we then endorse them to you for interview. So, you can be assured that we are in this for the long term. Short stays do nothing for us. We want to build a long-term relationship with you and give you the confidence to grow your offshore team with us. You would never do that if we didn’t provide top-quality candidates.
As part of my trip to Manila, I had the opportunity to present to the board of directors and investors of Frontline on what’s happening in the UK market, what our biggest opportunities are and how we plan to expand next year.
As you can imagine in a room of MBAs with real-world experience in running everything from small owner-managed businesses to large multinational companies, I was relieved that the presentation went well, and they agreed with my strategy on how to build the UK business further! And as expected, in a room that also included the founders of Frontline that know it inside out and have grown the business to this point, we had a lot more ideas on top that will help us be even stronger in 2023.
Without sharing too much, as pioneers of offshoring and working with some of the best accounting firms in the world, we have a lot of knowledge that we would love to share with you and show you how you too can boost capacity without destroying your profitability.
So, keep an eye out for invites to some events that we are holding in the UK next year where we will not only share best practices on how to build an offshore team, but also first-hand advice from existing UK firms that are walking the walk right now.
So, if you are sick of the recruitment quagmire and want to make a strategic change to the way you work in 2023 – Click here to sign up for my monthly newsletters.
Until next month!
Bye!