Philippines Online (Part 1 of 2)

The Internet powers the globalization of Philippine businesses in the 21st century. With its immense capacity for research, collaboration, networking, and “on-demand” information and communications, it has marginalized traditional limitations to business expansion. Available for a fraction of a consultant’s salary, it can reengineer Philippine business quickly, the sooner to capitalize on Global market trends, as I suggested last June 9.

Digital Playtime

17 million Filipino users are logging on in 2008, from 2007’s 14 million. Unfortunately, Filipinos incline towards online leisure activities, like Social networking, rather than business. Filipinos comprise 12 million of Friendster.com’s over 50 million subscribers, and 2.8 million of Multiply.com’s (which ABS-CBN recently purchased 5% for $5 million) 12 million subscribers.

This threatens to trivialize the 21st century’s most important revolutionary business expansion tool, its impact equivalent to the 16th Century Galleon, and the 18th Century steam engine.

We can harness the Internet’s potentials, like what Filipino Internet entrepreneur Enrique Gonzalez did. He established online ventures like EDSAmail, a local email provider, and eventually founded IT and BPO IPVG Corp. 30-year old Ian del Carmen credits his P500,000 monthly earnings, selling e-books, software, and membership sites online, to his “positive” Internet addiction: eight-hour daily researching rather than gaming or Friendster, “which are not…the Internet’s [main] benefits,” he says.

There are potentially 16,999,998 other Internet opportunities waiting to happen.

Sky’s the Limit

The Internet is about borderless, realtime collaboration. People can plan, share ideas and resources on any project instantaneously, virtually, and for free.

“Cloud computing” refers to working outside the office, enabled by having applications, information, data storage, and email, available online, like Google Docs. Already, 69% of US Internet users (including 79% of WiFi users) use this technology. Microsoft correspondingly adds 35,000 new data servers monthly, to house such applications.

Thusly, the most unlikely spaces – Starbucks or Robinson’s malls – become working areas, lowering fixed costs and increasing multi-tasking.

Crowd Control

Heightened collaboration delivers innovative financing and products. “Crowdfinancing” finds investors through the Internet. Slicethepie.com gathers investors for up-and-coming bands, marketing them by posting their songs online. If the music sells, investors receive sales profit “slices”.

Unlocking the Internet’s marketing capability for Philippine entrepreneurs would welcome them to the world. LinkedIn.com connects professionals, products and services, business forums, and potential partners. Through it, the Filipino entrepreneur has a 30 million subscriber, 150,000 company database a mouseclick away.

For instance, a designer clothing line could search LinkedIn for fellow designers, or forums for fashion entrepreneurial advice. Combined with other sites, productivity can improve. The designer could host a virtual catalog on Blogger.com, accessible to Friendster’s and Multiply’s 62 million Filipinos. By stating company financials and promised rates of return, potential “crowdfinaciers” could be found.

The US subprime crisis could further boost our BPO industry. With US banks foreclosing 2 million houses, asset consolidation and assessment, from an individual standpoint is necessary. Through peer-to-peer networks, local Special Purpose Vehicles could help reconfigure toxic subprime assets – like mortgaged securities – for interested, cash-rich entities.

Expats Online

Craigslist.org’s network can become a recruitment site, locating qualified individuals worldwide to supplement our overwhelmed BPO industry and its burgeoning shortage of language-fluent contact agents.

Filipino deployment entrepreneurs with POEA could treble foreign deployments, marketing employable Filipino “knowledge entrepreneurs,” via websites. Following Ross Perot’s Perot Systems business model, instead of deploying individual workers – say, doctors and nurses – entrepreneurs could send entire hospital management requirements, including Hospital Administrators, Accountants, and Technicians. The company’s top management would be composed of host country employees (say 20%). The 80% balance would be Filipinos.

The Philippine entity could handle paperwork, social benefits, and guaranteed replacements through say Philguarantee (should the odd sociopath within the group go “TNT”). Addressing the host countries’ fear of overstaying visitors, hiring would increase. Consequently, revenues (and remittances) would be larger than individual, piecemeal profits.

Harvesting Possibilities

The DTI can launch regional and provincial websites, even TV advisories featuring updated commodity market prices, seller information, and volumes for sale, enacted via online bidding, connecting farmers and buyers (eliminating middlemen) for a more dynamic food security program that can deliver premiums to the countryside. Accessible through cellphones, they would link our 1,495 towns. Municipal development officers would have the tool to consolidate individual agribusiness and aquacultures’ small production volumes to command better prices, or strategically allocate it to meet spikes in foreign demand, as in, for example, foreign festivals. Farmers therefore earn more, are incentivized for surplus production, and buyers benefit from better cost-effectivity.

The Philippines’ recent inclusion in PayPal’s payment service, combined with FedEx or UPS, addresses sales, collection, and distribution of products purchased online, fully enabling us for e-commerce. It’s defined globalized business. By innovating new approaches, we will reap its benefits.

The next article explores strategies for increasing Philippine Internet penetration, boosting Filipino productivity.

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