Aegis and PeopleSupport

Aegis and PeopleSupport merged on October 30, 2008 to create a global business process outsourcing (BPO) leader.

Aegis offers customer lifecycle management and a variety of value-added interactive and back-office services for global enterprise clients. With deep industry expertise, Aegis services more than 30 Fortune 500 companies and other large, complex organizations worldwide in the Banking and Financial Services, Telecom, Insurance, Healthcare, and Travel industries.

To learn more about Aegis, please visit www.aegisglobal.com.

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Aegis Limited

Type	Private (Subsidiary of Essar Group)
Industry	Travel and Hospitality Technology Telecommunications Retail Consumer Products Financial Services
Founded	Delaware, USA (July 2, 1998)[1]
Headquarters	Los Angeles, California, USA
Key people	Lance Rosenzweig, Founder, Chairman & CEO Richard Bledsoe, COO Caroline Rook, CFO Rainerio "Bong" Borja, President, PeopleSupport Philippines
Services	Business Process Outsourcing Customer management Transcription and captioning Accounts receivable management
Revenue	US $110.119 million (2006)
Operating income	US $11.730 million (2006)
Net income	US $14.152 million (2006)
Employees	9,200 (Q1 2007)[2]
Parent	Aegis Limited
Divisions	Aegis USA, Aegis Communications Group
Subsidiaries	Aegis PeopleSupport Philippines PeopleSupport Costa Rica PeopleSupport Properties (Philippines)
Website	http://www.aegisglobal.com

Aegis Limited is a multinational outsourcing company that provides customer lifecycle management services, technology solutions, Finance and HR outsourcing services, transcription and captioning, and back office support. Headquartered in Mumbai, India, the company serves more than 150 clients in a variety of industries such as travel and hospitality, financial services, technology, telecommunications, consumer products, healthcare and insurance, entertainment and education, and law enforcement. Aegis has more than 50,000 employees across 49 global locations and 12 countries.

PeopleSupport—a subsidiary of Aegis—is based in Los Angeles, California, USA, but also holds operations in the Philippines and Costa Rica.

Aegis PeopleSupport Renamed As Aegis

February 29, 2012, 2:33am

 

MANILA, Philippines — Aegis PeopleSupport, one of the leading outsourcing services companies in the Philippines, announced recently the adoption of its corporate identity to its parent organization, Aegis. The new identity, which comes into effect starting February 1, is designed to reflect a global customer experience-centric company, built on a continuing history of innovative ideas and service offerings that meet the needs of businesses.
In 2008, Aegis Limited acquired PeopleSupport, a U.S.-based outsourcing services provider with operations in the Philippines, United States, and Costa Rica, and employing a 7,000-strong workforce. The company assumed the name Aegis PeopleSupport upon completion of its merger with Aegis. Since then, the company has leveraged upon the Aegis’ global reach, financial strength, and reputation as a world-leading outsourcing company, and expanded its operations to include over 12,000 employees across 6 centers in Metro Manila, Cebu, and Baguio.
According to Mr. Aparup Sengupta, Managing Director and Global CEO of Aegis Limited, “The adoption of the Aegis brand in the Philippines is aligned with our corporate strategy of ‘One World, One Aegis’ and will provide consistent standards of excellence in managing, enabling, extending, and enhancing customer experience”. He added, “Our employees at PeopleSupport provided us with strong local capabilities in the Philippines region, when we first established our presence here. Having gone through a strong growth curve during last three years, our people are ready to further upscale their skills by adopting Aegis’ expertise in managing global customer operations and successful business transformations.”

“For many years, we have benefitted from Aegis PeopleSupport’s local strengths – its reputation as an employer of choice, innovative processes in recruitment and employee engagement, and its pioneering status in the Philippine outsourcing industry. What Aegis brings to the table is its globally distributed, diverse workforce of over 55,000 and operations spread in 12 countries. By assuming the new identity of Aegis, these synergies will now automatically accrue to Aegis PeopleSupport,” said Mr. Rajiv Ahuja, President – ASEAN and ANZ of Aegis Limited.

For Bong Borja, President of Aegis Philippines, the transition from Aegis PeopleSupport to Aegis is an indication of the company’s readiness to create new opportunities for expansion not only in the Philippines but in the region and a chance to further attract talented people to join one of the fastest growing outsourcing services companies globally. “We are both looking back and moving forward. We are looking back at what we have achieved when we were still PeopleSupport; what we have learned from those experiences, we are bringing it to Aegis. When we started our operations in Philippines as PeopleSupport, we served American customers. Today, our employees are servicing clients all over the world. Under the Aegis brand, we have created more job opportunities for talented Filipinos, who are globally recognized for their excellent communication skills and customer service orientation. As one of the founders of PeopleSupport, I feel overwhelmed and elated to see our local talent getting its recognition in the global market,” he said.




GLOBAL LOCATIONSLeveraging 38 global locations and more than 39,000 employees, Aegis services more than 30 Fortune 500 companies worldwide

The Philippines

Aegis in the Philippines

The Philippines is a market leader in South East Asia and one of the top Asian countries providing outsourcing and offshoring services globally.  The country receives strong industry support through the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP) and the Contact Center Association of the Philippines (CCAP), both of which aim to promote and strengthen the Philippines’ position as an outsourcing destination of choice for BPO and contact center processes.

An attractive business destination, it also offers competitive labor costs, world-class telecommunications infrastructure, time zone compatibility with North America, and has one of the highest literacy rates in the world.

Aegis PeopleSupport

Our brand in the Philippines market, Aegis PeopleSupport (APS) was formed in 2008 when Aegis entered into a definitive merger with PeopleSupport, a leading BPO company in the country.

APS has over 10 years of experience providing a broad range of customer life cycle management solutions to the local and international markets and is considered to be one of the pioneers in the Philippines outsourcing industry.

Our solutions

APS offers the following solutions:

• Customer care
• Reservations
• Inbound sales
• Technical support
• Roadside assistance management
• Outbound support
• Collections
• Case management
• Back office support
• Web hosting
• Project management and implementation management

We also offer multi-lingual support for our clients across the globe in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Scandic, Arabic, Mandarin, and Fookien.

Verticals we support
We support Fortune 500 and many fast-growing companies in the following industries:

• Banking and financial services
• Energy and utilities
• Healthcare
• Insurance
• Publishing and media
• Retail
• Technology
• Telecommunications
• Travel and hospitality 

Archive for the ‘People Support’ Category

PeopleSupport – Customer Service Representative

Mar 1, 2010 Author: ninja | Filed under: People Support

Customer Service Representative (Banking/Sales Manila)
RESPONSIBILITIES:
* eReps are the dynamic and highly-driven customer service representatives of Aegis PeopleSupport. These bright and energetic professionals work the phones with enthusiasm and accuracy and go beyond satisfying customer queries and concerns.
REQUIREMENTS:
* At least two (2) years of college education
* Excellent English communication skills
* Strong customer service and sales skills
* Problem solving and analytical skills
* Willing to work in shifts
* Applicants should be Filipino citizens or hold relevant residence status.
* Fresh graduates are encouraged to apply
* Full-time positions available
* Required language(s): English.

Our locations
APS has six best-in-class facilities in Metro Manila, Metro Cebu, and Baguio and is responsible for the growth and professional development of over 12,000 employees across these locations.

Aegis PeopleSupport CenterAyala Ave. cor. Sen. Gil Puyat Avenue,
Makati City – 1200
Philippines

Aegis PeopleSupport Jaka
6th – 8th and 11th – 12th floors
6780 Ayala Avenue
Makati City 1200
Philippines

Aegis PeopleSupport Rockwell
2nd – 6th floors,
Tower 2, Rockwell Business Center,
Ortigas Avenue
Pasig City 1600
Philippines

Aegis PeopleSupport eOffice One
Modules 6 and 9-11
eOffice One
Asiatown IT Park
Apas, Lahug, Cebu City 6000
Philippines

Aegis PeopleSupport Skyrise Plaza2nd – 7th floors
Skyrise Plaza
Asiatown IT Park
Apas, Lahug, Cebu City 6000
Philippines

Aegis PeopleSupport Baguio
SM Fiesta Strip
Harrison Road
Baguio City 2600
Philippines

Contact us
Please feel free to contact us for any query or for more information:
Phone: +63(2)-885-8000
Email: info@aegisglobal.com

A New Capital of Call Centers

Jes Aznar for The New York Times

People Support workers in Makati City, near Manila. About 400,000 Filipinos work in call centers, roughly 50,000 more than in India.

MANILA — Americans calling the customer service lines of their airlines, phone companies and banks are now more likely to speak to Mark in Manila than Bharat in Bangalore.

Enlarge This Image

Jes Aznar for The New York Times

Filipinos like these at People Support are more familiar with American culture than Indians are.

Enlarge This Image

Jes Aznar for The New York Times

A light moment inside the People Support office. AT&T, JPMorgan Chase and Expedia use Philippine call centers.

Readers’ Comments

Readers shared their thoughts on this article.

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Over the last several years, a quiet revolution has been reshaping the call center business: the rise of the Philippines, a former United States colony that has a large population of young people who speak lightly accented English and, unlike many Indians, are steeped in American culture.
More Filipinos — about 400,000 — than Indians now spend their nights talking to mostly American consumers, industry officials said, as companies like AT&T, JPMorgan Chase and Expedia have hired call centers here, or built their own. The jobs have come from the United States, Europe and, to some extent, India as outsourcers followed their clients to the Philippines.
India, where offshore call centers first took off in a big way, fields as many as 350,000 call center agents, according to some industry estimates. The Philippines, which has a population one-tenth as big as India’s, overtook India this year, according to Jojo Uligan, executive director of the Contact Center Association of the Philippines.
The growing preference for the Philippines reflects in part the maturation of the outsourcing business and in part a preference for American English. In the early days, the industry focused simply on finding and setting up shop in countries with large English-speaking populations and low labor costs, which mostly led them to India. But executives say they are now increasingly identifying places best suited for specific tasks. India remains the biggest destination by far for software outsourcing, for instance.
Executives say the growth was not motivated by wage considerations. Filipino call center agents typically earn more than their Indian counterparts ($300 a month, rather than $250, at the entry level), but executives say they are worth the extra cost because American customers find them easier to understand than they do Indian agents, who speak British-style English and use unfamiliar idioms. Indians, for example, might say, “I will revert on the same,” rather than, “I will follow up on that.”
It helps that Filipinos learn American English in the first grade, eat hamburgers, follow the N.B.A. and watch the TV show “Friends” long before they enter a call center. In India, by contrast, public schools introduce British English in the third grade, only the urban elite eat American fast food, cricket is the national pastime and “Friends” is a teaching aid for Indian call center trainers. English is an official language in both countries.
The Philippines has “a unique combination of Eastern, attentive hospitality and attitude of care and compassion mixed with what I call Americanization,” said Aparup Sengupta, chief executive of Aegis Global, an outsourcing firm based in Mumbai, India, that acquired Manila-based People Support in 2008 and now employs nearly 13,000 Filipinos. American companies are reluctant to discuss their outsourcing strategies, but privately some executives acknowledged that early on, they focused primarily on saving money. But as they gained experience in different countries, they realized that was not the best strategy.
“Certain phrases people use and idioms are important,” said an executive at a large American company that handles service calls through the Philippines. He spoke on the condition that he and his firm not be identified. “We are getting better at it, but of course it is still a hot button.”
Analysts said call centers in the Philippines appeared to have helped American businesses respond to complaints from consumers who said they could not understand Indian agents. But it is unlikely to satisfy critics who say outsourcing is sending too many jobs abroad as millions of Americans struggle to find work.
This year, for instance, US Airways stopped outsourcing customer service to Manila and hired 400 agents in Arizona, California and North Carolina as part of an agreement with the Communications Workers of America union.
Some American companies like Delta Airlines have said they moved call centers back to the United States to appease angry customers who wanted better English. Entry-level American call center agents earn about $20,000 a year, about five times as much as similar agents in the Philippines and six times as much as Indian agents.
Nevertheless, the financial benefits of outsourcing remain strong enough that the call center business is growing at 25 to 30 percent a year here in the Philippines, compared to 10 to 15 percent in India, according to Salil Dani, research director at the Everest Group, a firm that tracks the market.
American outsourcing or back-end companies like I.B.M., Accenture and Convergys along with Indian firms like Aegis, Infosys and Tech Mahindra have thousands of employees working from gleaming glass towers and even inside malls, which executives say young workers prefer so they can be close to shops and restaurants.
In addition to language skills, the Philippines has better utility infrastructure than India — so companies spend little on generators and diesel fuel. Also, cities here are safer and have better public transportation, so employers do not have to bus employees to and from work as they do in India.
Many of the workers are like Mark, 26, who answers tech support calls from employees of an American chemical company. He studied engineering but dropped out of college to support his parents and two younger siblings. He now makes 26,000 pesos ($600) a month, about the same as his father, who has a small school-bus business. (The average Filipino family earns 17,000 pesos a month.)
He spoke on the condition that his full name and the name of his employer were not revealed because he was not authorized to talk to reporters. His office is in a new development known as Eastwood City, east of Manila that, locals said, used to be fields a few years ago. Now, it is home to companies like I.B.M. and Dell, and has McDonald’s, Starbucks and bars where happy hour starts at 6 a.m. for call center workers who want a beer after their shift.
Mark is trim and has sharp features. He wears stylish canvas shoes and a striped shirt. His accent is more middle America than eastern Manila. He said his parents made him watch American movies and TV shows, read English books and speak the language starting at age 5. Still, he said he was fired from his first call center job after just two weeks because customers said they could not understand him.
“Sometimes, they would insist on being transferred to an American agent,” he said. “After a year, I was able to speak in an accent that they would like to hear.”
But now he is tiring of answering phones and is thinking about trying his hand at acting because he has a little money in the bank and his siblings have college degrees and are working.
The call center boom has also benefitted his country, previously a laggard among Southeast Asia’s tiger economies — its most popular exports were nurses. Last year, revenue from outsourcing, which also includes things like health insurance processing, animation development and software programming, totaled $9 billion, or 4.5 percent of the Philippine gross domestic product, up from virtually nothing in 2000. The government has tried to support the industry with tax breaks and subsidies.
In spite of its recent growth, the Philippines is a much smaller destination for outsourcing more broadly — India earns about 10 times as much revenue from outsourcing. That is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future given India’s 1.2 billion people, 31 percent of whom are 14 years old or younger. (The Philippines has 93 million people, about 35 percent of them 14 or younger.)
Executives expect the Philippines to continue growing at a fast pace and move up to higher-value services like accounting or the processing of insurance claims. But, like India, companies are grappling with higher costs and losing their best workers because of high domestic inflation and a shortage of skilled professionals. In the last two years, the Philippine peso climbed nearly 10 percent against the dollar, to 42.14, before weakening recently.
If the peso appreciates to 35 to the dollar, many of the call centers in the Philippines will not survive, said Narasimha Murthy, president of HGS USA, the American arm of an Indian outsourcing company that employs 4,000 people here. But things look upbeat for now, and Mr. Murthy was recently in Manila with a prospective American client.
Five years ago, he said, many clients would ask him if customer calls could be handled in the Philippines. “From that,” he said, “it has gone to ‘How well will you do it?’ ”