Gary Liew, director and telecommunications industry lead, Asia-Pacific, Convergys
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| Efficiency and output of alternative fuels, power generation systems will find exciting, if not tremendous growth. | ||
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Q: What was the biggest thing that affected your company in 2008?
2008 has been a very exciting year for us. We saw tremendous business growth as we expanded our operations in China and the Philippines, and acquired Shanghai-based BMI Asia to expand our footprint in China. We also set up a joint venture to provide contact center consulting services in Korea and extended contracts with SingTel Group companies, Telkomsel, Optus and Advanced Information Services.
In addition, Convergys expanded operations in the Philippines by nearly 50 percent with the addition of five new integrated contact centers throughout the country earlier in 2008. The five new sites brought the total number of Convergys contact centers in the Philippines to 14. At capacity, the new facilities will employ up to an additional 7,000, bringing Convergys’ total employment in-country to approximately 20,000.
Is the news about the recession going to affect business?
Convergys is based and listed in the United States, so there has been some impact on budgets, a freeze on non-client-related travel and strict guidelines on operating expenses and new hires.
That said, a major part of our business is derived from the Asia-Pacific region, and the markets here have remained somewhat buoyant. Asia continues to be an important growth market for us, and in order to build and maintain our customer relationships our executives continue to travel around the region to attend client meetings, steering committee meetings and maintain the ongoing dialogue with customers. The majority of our business travel is considered necessary travel, so in that area there has been minimal change.
The biggest challenge we faced was that in light of current market conditions investment decisions were generally being delayed as companies underwent management changes and budgets were more closely scrutinized. On the whole we consider this a short-term challenge.
What technology innovation or product are you looking forward to in 2009?
Wireless Internet: going forward, we see the high volume and mass take-up of high speed wireless internet access via PDAs and handphones. In the past, although devices could cater for high speed data access, the footprint and screens were not as user friendly or at a footprint that provided comfortable viewing and surfing, thus the take-up and usage being relatively low.
Now with the Apple's iPhone leading the way and with latest range of PDAs and mobile phones that are in the market, the shift from laptops and desktop for internet surfing will truly gravitate towards the wireless handheld devices. To add to take-up, there are now dozens of new micro notebooks which are at a price range of a top end mobile phone--these will certainly add to the wireless internet usage.
Alternative and solar power: although oil prices have come back down since the global financial crisis, the broad and deep R&D that has been accelerating on solar research has reach new levels. Efficiency and output of alternative fuels, power generation systems will find exciting, if not tremendous growth.
SaaS: Software-as-a-service will continue to drive the growth of cloud computing and other related technologies such as server virtualization and consolidation of applications. The current global financial crisis has made many organizations refocus their energies back into their core business and increasingly, they understand and see the benefits of moving large scale software expenses from the traditional Capex into Opex.
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