Rearing to go.

Cagayan de Oro City (CDO) is selling itself as a “well-prepared emerging, yet key, business process outsourcing (BPO) destination in the Philippines.”

According to Engr. Elpidio M. Paras, chairman of the Cagayan de Oro ICT Business Council, while CDO is always getting its share of negative publicity every time Mindanao, where CDO is located, is mentioned, advisories preventing people, including businesses from going into Mindanao need not be generalized, since CDO is unnecessarily affected by bad perceptions attributed the southern group of islands of the Philippines.

Big locators “need to see beyond Cebu City (when considering growing outside Metro Manila), and CDO, as the alternative gateway to Mindanao, shows a lot of promise,” Paras said during the CDO leg of Convergence 2009 ICT Roadshow, spearheaded by the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT), in partnership with Business Process Outsourcing of the Philippines (BPAP), Coordinating Council of Private Educational Associations (COCOPEA), and the IT Journalists Association of the Philippines (CyberPress) to enhance awareness in the potentials in the use of ICT.

With four universities in the city alone, and six others in surrounding cities, CDO produces some 7,000 graduates per year, therefore a “grand coup” for companies, particularly in the BPO industry, looking at finding “qualified manpower to effectively (run) their operations in the Philippines,” Paras said.

For Ruben A. Vegafria, president of Promote CDO Foundation Inc., and former president of the CDO Chamber of Commerce and Industry Foundation Inc., aside from the “still largely untapped sources of manpower,” CDO already has the capacity to host approximately 5,000 seats, located at “some six other buildings already certified by the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA).”

It helps, too, that the cost of living in CDO is “much lower than metropolitan destinations,” Paras said, adding that salaries can be “as low as half of what is offered in Metro Manila, so that businesses can (profit) well.”

The biggest BPO player to locate in CDO is Concentrix, a US-based company into technical and customer support, sales and marketing, and back office transaction processing. It currently has 1,500 employees, with services focused on voice and back office operations.

The city, however, “already plays host to numerous small and medium enterprises offering BPO services, particularly software development and transcription services,” Paras said.

CDO is among the Next Wave BPO destinations identified by the CICT, ranking 8th in the Top Ten list. Interestingly, CDO “was the first in Mindanao (to offer BPO services),” Vegafria said, even if “it has been relegated to (a lower position by Davao City, and even Dumaguete).”

“We believe we have what it takes to be a key player, and we will continue pushing (for that dominance),” Vegafria ended.