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So says Dan Reyes, the president of Sitel Philippines which recently won the BPO Company of the Year Award from the prestigious 2nd ICT Awards (Philippines) held last March 13 at the Renaissance Makati City hotel in a glittering ceremony that paid tribute to the cream and the crop of the Philippines’ fastest-growing industry.
The man knows whereof he speaks. Even as a young college student taking up computer science, he already had a path in mind. He chose his course because, at a time when personal PCs were just a speck of an idea in Bill Gates’ mind, he felt that computers would be the next big thing. The young Dan also cherished ambitions of “heading my own business. Papasok muna ako sa isang multi-national company. Every three years, dapat may mararating na ako. And at the same time, contribute to society.”
People power
He certainly has achieved his aims. Sitel is one of the top players in a sector that has employed 400,000 people and pumped US$5 million into the national economy as of 2007. From the initial order to fill 200 seats in 2002, the company has now mushroomed to 6 sites, 4 of which are based in Manila, that employ 9,000 people.
“I didn’t think we were going to be this large,” Reyes acknowledges, the trace of wonder still in his voice. He recalls the days when he would work “48 hours straight at one time, not sleeping”, supervising the operations, making sure that the new company was recruiting enough qualified people to deliver on client’s expectations.
That Dell account in 2002 was the turning point for the start-up company. “It was a major client who gave us only five weeks to hire 200 people who would start taking calls,” Reyes says. “They were happy and surprised to see that we pulled it through.”
The secret to this tremendous growth lies in his people, Reyes says, who the company is continuously developing and improving. The mentor in him readily gushes about their accomplishments, “Ilalaban ko ang mga supervisor ko mano y mano sa kahit anong industriya dito sa Pilipinas in terms of their skill set. You have these young supervisors in their twenties who handle 15 people a day and half a million pesos’ worth of accountability every month. That’s the kind of responsibility they deal with. Wala kang makikitang ganitong klaseng industriya.”
Sitel programs are designed to equip their employees with the skill training, resources, and other tools that they need to excel in their work and enhance their professional development. Each employee is also encouraged and trained to be able to step up to an upward position should a senior be promoted to a higher rank, transfer to another site, or even resign. “Our pipeline is very healthy and we do have a succession plan,” Reyes says, adding that in this business, “Dapat mayroon kang pagkukunan at hindi ka huhugot sa ibang call center.”
A sense of ownership
The much-dreaded piracy cannot thrive in a culture that encourages the growing of leaders within. A sense of ownership and responsibility is something that Reyes passes down to his people. After all, the idea of putting up a BPO at a time when the industry had not yet taken root in the Philippines was his, articulated in a business paper that he had to submit for his management course in the Jardine executive program. The board of the outsourcing firm he was working in took one look at his paper and offered him half of the capital to set up his own BPO, if he could find another partner for the other half. That other half turned out to be PLDT, and the rest as they say is history.
“Idea mo ito, ikaw ang may pakana nito,” the Board would remind him again years later when they asked him to take a more hands-on approach. Reyes smiles at the memory, “They put me on temporary assignment until the company became bigger and bigger.”
And Sitel, as well as the BPO sector, will grow bigger still. Reyes says that the industry is projecting 10 million more additional jobs in two years’ time. He also maintains that as far as driven young (or not so young) employees are concerned, a BPO can offer a “skies-the-limit” career path. “You can go as far as high as where I am now,” he points out. “I have an operations director who’s only 26 years old but who handles 500-600 people.”
It all starts with a dream and the drive and determination to follow through. “Kailangan mo ring magbanat ng buto,” he advises. “Have a plan or an endgame, break it into pieces, dahil hindi mo iyan magagawa overnight.”
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