BPO firm expands to service $200M Microsoft deal

Business process outsourcing firm Arvato is set to increase its investment in its Manila operations to support multimillion-dollar BPO programs for some of the world’s leading brands, the company said.

Arvato has already increased its highly skilled workforce in the region by 50 percent in the last six months, and its expansion plans will enable another 50 percent growth in workforce over the next 12 to 18 months and revenue growth from the region of up to 25 percent over the next three years, it added in a statement.

“This supports Arvato’s strategy of providing secure infrastructure, high-quality dedicated client teams and best-practice frameworks for global organizations seeking to align and standardize processes for their global customer base,” it said.

Arvato has developed its Manila operations over the last four years to provide “multilingual, multigeographic,” 24/7 support across a range of services, including revenue processing, query management and customer services.

Client programs serviced from the site include Arvato’s global contract-to-invoice partnership with Microsoft Corp., which processes 90 percent of the company’s global revenue as part of a five-year, $200-million contract with the objective of delivering support services for Microsoft’s partners and customers.

“Arvato’s site in Manila is only Microsoft’s second offsite facility in Asia,” said Microsoft global programs and delivery service director Mark Stanley.

“We consolidated services from multiple sites into Manila, and it was up and running in record time,” he added. “The move has helped provide us with a high-quality, low-cost option while maintaining our complex regulatory compliance requirements.”

According to Business Processing Association of the Philippines senior executive director Gillian Joyce Virata, the IT-BPO industry in the Philippines grew by 24 percent in 2011 to generate $11 billion in revenue and employment of about 640,000 professionals.

Arvato is a global BPO firm serving the private and public sectors in the United Kingdom. It is a subsidiary of Arvato AG, an internationally networked outsourcing provider with more than 60,000 people employed in about 270 subsidiaries across 35 countries worldwide.