With the pandemic affecting businesses all over the world, outsourcing software development continues to be a great option to ensure business continuity and software quality while saving on operational costs.
The Philippines, to date, continues to attract some of the most lucrative software product engineering deals for companies locally. As a backgrounder, the first outsourcing contact center in the Philippines was built in 1992. With the promising opportunity outsourcing brings, the Philippine government established the Philippine Economic Zone Authority or PEZA to support export-oriented manufacturing and service facilities in 1995 that encouraged more outsourcing companies to build operations in the country.
The flourishing outsourcing industry in the Philippines for software development can be attributed to the many benefits the country and its workforce offer. Here are some of the top advantages that make the Philippines the best outsourcing destination for software product engineering:
Cost efficiency
Businesses can save 60% to 80% of operational costs by working with a Filipino third-party software development company made possible by the affordable cost of living in the country. The daily salary of Filipino software developers, software testers, and other IT professionals can amount to only the hourly salary of an employee in Europe or the US.
Culture
The Philippines has strong familiarity and affinity to western culture due largely to its historical past with Spain and the United States. Western culture is still deeply seated in the Filipinos’ everyday lives and remains to be highly adaptable to foreign cultures. In addition, hospitality is an integral part of Filipino culture and tradition. These factors make Filipino software product developers easy to socialize and work with.
Commendable English proficiency
English proficiency is integrated into the education system and is enforced even before Filipinos receive formal education. The Philippines is one of the largest English-speaking countries in the world with seventy percent of its population being fluent in English. With this, seamless communication and collaboration with Filipino software product developers can be expected.
Versatile and highly skilled talent pool
Local universities and colleges produce addition of 500,000+ to the pool of skilled and qualified workers annually and the Philippines is expected to continue to benefit from this young and talented workforce in the coming years. Working with a third-party software product engineering company in the Philippines with such dynamic talents, skills, and knowledge be it .Net, ASP, Java, C# enables you to scale quickly and efficiently without any capital investment or infrastructure requirements. This enables you to expand a team quickly and cost-efficiently. Equally, you can scale down your team if seasonal work is in place or your business takes a turn for the worse. Generally, you can easily arrange agreements with software development companies in the Philippines for customized commitments and very flexible terms.
Focus on emerging technologies
In addition to having a strong economy, the IT sector is one of the fastest-growing and dynamic industries in the Philippines. Many companies specialize in various aspects of software development as well as emerging technologies like blockchain, machine learning, robotic process automation or RPA, and AI.
Proactive government support
The local government provides the outsourcing industry with strong support by way of regulations and incentives that encourage foreign companies to choose the Philippines for their offshore operations. To provide such incentives, the Philippine government established the PEZA and special economic zones (SEZ). The local government further expressed its commitment to supporting the industry via the Philippine IT-BPM Roadmap 2022, a program whose goal is to acquire 1.8 million more jobs for Filipinos and $40 billion in revenues by 2022. With this, you can be assured that the software development companies that you get to work with are fruits of the government's support towards the growing Philippine IT sector.
Political and economic stability
The Philippines has a strong, fast-growing economy. Outsourcing has been a significant driver of the growth in the economy and contributes a substantial chunk of the GDP of the country. This has ensured that the Philippines enjoys its reputation as one of the world’s top outsourcing destinations and strives to maintain the quality of software product engineering services they provide to clients globally .
Rapidly growing IT infrastructure
Due to significant investments and ongoing improvements, the Philippines boasts of similar world-class IT infrastructure as other Asian giants like South Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan. The leading and established ISPs are offering high-speed, dedicated fiber optic internet connections all over the country. Incidentally, the Philippines launched 5G technology in 2019 – making it the first country in Southeast Asia to implement the rollout.
These are just some of the pressing reasons why the Philippines is the go-to destination for building a competent and game-changing virtual software development team.
Know more reasons why the Philippines is one of the top countries to build a robust software product engineering team from. Download a copy of our free ebook, The Ultimate Guide to Building a Virtual Software Product Engineering Team, HERE.