CB Richard Ellis (CBRE) Philippines Asset Services Group recently obtained the prestigious International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Certification 9001:2000 from Certification International Philippines, Inc.

According to CBRE Chairman Rick M. Santos, the company undertook the intense process required to achieve the certification to demonstrate its commitment to delivering superior real estate services to clients and ensure a high level of customer satisfaction.

“We’re very proud of our team and of achieving this industry benchmark, which validates our global mission to deliver superior results by always putting clients first,” Santos said.  “It reinforces our core values of Respect, Integrity, Service and Excellence by enabling us to guarantee a very high level of service in every instance.” Obtaining the certification involved an audit of CBRE services delivered to all its property end users to confirm compliance with ISO standards.

ISO standardization involves procedures, documentation, policies, communications, personnel and infrastructure, and is meant to ensure efficient and orderly execution of business processes.

According to Quality Management Systems Manager James Escano, standardization of business processes has helped CBRE’s teams in Property Management, Facilities Management, Technical Services, Asset Management, and Project Management reduce costs by eliminating redundancy and errors. “These processes reinforce and ensure CBRE’s trademark attention to detail and commitment to excellence,” said Escano. “Even new employees will are finding that ISO standardization facilitates learning and delivery of the ‘CBRE brand’ of service.”

CBRE’s Asset Services Group is also undertaking ISO certification, and is working towards obtaining the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Certification 18001:1999. The Group expects to undergo a third-party audit in the second quarter of 2009.

StarTek provides customer care, sales support, complex order processing, accounts receivable management, technical, and industry-specific services, and also specializes in high-value, non-voice customer care and provisioning services. The StarTek facility in Makati is the company’s first facility outside the United States and Canada. It has 19 sites in North America.

The formal launch of the StarTek facility followed projections by the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPA/P) and independent analysts that 2009 will see significant growth in the Philippine BPO industry despite a general global economic downturn. A recent survey conducted by BPA/P and Outsource2Philippines revealed that 70% of BPO executive respondents in the Philippines believe that the global financial crisis will have either a neutral or positive impact on their Philippine operations.

In 2008, the Philippine BPO industry generated approximately US$7 billion in revenue according to the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT). CICT expects 2009 industry revenues to increase by as much as 35%. Firms looking for ways to lower costs and increase service quality achieve those objectives by outsourcing services to providers in countries such as the Philippines. By 2010, a BPA/P forecast projects industry revenues of between $12 billion and $13 billion.

Much of that growth will be in high value-added services such as those provided by StarTek. “The complex support services we provide our clients are integral to our clients’ operations and their relationships with their customers. Our proven capability to deliver high-quality, high-value services has consistently made us the number one services provider for our clients; but more importantly among our clients’ clients,” said Jones.

There were 81 speakers including keynote speakers Tad Waddington, director for Performance Measure of Accenture, president and principal Lynne Morton of Performance Improvement (PI) Solutions, Inc., and Deepak Malkani, Talent and Organization Performance partner of Accenture India in the three plenary sessions.

Prof. Noel Tichy ran the workshop “Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls and its Impact on HR in one day. Some of the key topics were “The Return on Investment in Talent Development,” “Tough Times for Talent,” “Getting it Right! Using the Power of Data and Analytics to Boost your Return on Talent Investment,” “Managing Talent to Build the Leadership Brand,” and “Managing Talent in a Difficult Economy.” The event had six master classes and 17 concurrent sessions.

Aside from the sessions, three awards were presented at the night of each event date—Recruiting and Staffing Best in Class Awards (RASBIC) (February 5), Global HR Excellence Awards (February 6), and Employer Branding Awards (February 7).

HR Congress is a not-to-be missed event as it will address the hottest issues, strategies and ideas in the HR arena in the region across all industries. It is especially designed for HR professionals whom international dimension represent a new element in their work.

Visit: www.marcusevans.com for more information.

“With the growth of itSMF, Service Management now has a home in Malaysia,” said Michael Kum president and founder of itSMF Malaysia. The objective, he added is to bring best practice guidance and international know-how to the ‘local’ vendors and users.

This will be delivered through general awareness programs and events organization, among others. Last October, itSMF conducted its ‘inaugural annual conference’ which circled around the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL). The event got the attention of about 170 visitors, 11 regional VIPs and two guests from itSMF United Kingdom. Members from Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Japan, South Korea and the Netherlands were also present.

One of the conference highlights is the open panel discussion which tackled “life before and after ITIL”, which featured local subject matter experts.

itSMF believes that the IT Service Management, which has been around in Malaysia for the last seven years, has a huge potential. This, however, remained untapped due to the deficiency in awareness campaign initiatives.

The conference served as a ‘trigger’ to jumpstart the collaboration among concerned sectors to create an international community that particularly caters to ITSM. “Malaysia truly likes ITSM, and hopes to impart its brand for the use of domestic Government-linked companies, SMEs and propose to assist like-minded countries around the region.”

Kum added the goal of Service Management is to design, deliver, and maintain services and operations; whether it’s IT or Business Alignment, at an agreed level of Quality, in support of Customer activity. “The people who share this passion – all are in the itSMF Malaysia Chapter,” he noted.
As part of its goal, the chapter will also recognize individuals and organizations who are making significant contributions to the advancement of best practice, standards and professionalism in the IT Service Management field.

“Like all other NPO International societies, we want to grow and have the best minds from both vendors and users – to create awareness, and de-mystify the current conception of ITIL; so that we have win-win for all,” Kum said.

Outsourcing Malaysia (OM) signed a Memorandum of Agreement with India-based Value Notes on market intelligence and Asia eUniversity – a local multinational educational institution – on human resource.
The sign offs were part of the association’s initiatives to grow the outsourcing and shared services industry in the country. Malaysia is currently the largest exporter of semiconductors and consumer electronics, thus, an ideal location for both trade and investments.

It also offers a seamless business environment through a ‘pro-business’ government and IP protection, data security and information privacy. The OMC 2008 conference featured a pre-Conference Workshop on Outsourcing, which served as a primer for participants. The workshop fostered experience-sharing more than information download, with the eventual aim of making participants more informed, proactive and effective with their contribution to corporate sourcing activities.

Conducted by renowned Outsourcing expert Bobby Varanasi who has over 15 years of experience in consulting and management across IT, Business Process services and building offshore operations, it garnered an overwhelming response. The conference, on the other hand, featured a notable roster of speakers such as David Wong Nan Fay, PIKOM chairman and SnT Global Group chief executive officer; Larry Yap, Sunway Group – Shared Services Centre and Group Human Resources executive director; Gerry Clark, TPI – Southeast Asia and Hong Kong partner and director; Avinash Vashistha, Tholons chairman and chief executive officer; Adrian Holland, Cyber Shared Services Engineering managing director; Edge Zarella, KPMG Global Partner in Charge and IT Advisory, among others.

The conference shed a light on various industry issues encompassing markets and best practices, the social benefits of outsourcing, human capital challenges, government initiatives, pace and impact of commoditization and others.

Four decades ago, sending packages from one place to another was impossibly slow. One day delivery and a definite time of arrival do not exist yet. At that time, in the city of San Francisco, California, three gentlemen pioneered express delivery and established a small firm which we now know as DHL. Adrian Dalsey, Larry Hillblom, and Robert Lynn started to move around San Francisco to Honolulu to ship documents personally by airplane in a limited 2387 miles (3841 kilometers or 2074 nautical miles) distance in 1969.

While more miles were adding to their express network, they were likewise slowly gaining the trust of more companies. Two years after opening the business, DHL started servicing the Far East and the Pacific Rim.

The non-stop expansion of DHL reached Middle East, Latin America, and Africa by 1976 up to 1978. The significant growth at that time signed the huge number of officea around the globe today. DHL Express alone has more than 220 while DHL Logistics has 150 in its Global Forwarding, 59 in Exel Supply Chain, and more than 30 in Freight in current market worldwide.

With the growth of its branches worldwide, the company needed a strong and capable workforce to complement its wide range area of delivery service. Currently, DHL has more than 124,000 employees for its Express division and more than 162,500 for its Logistics service. When DHL opened its first office in London, United Kingdom in 1974, there were only 314 staffs.

The Express service was easily embraced in different continents and has set off the successful operations in each region. DHL opened its first German office in Frankfurt in 1977. It became the first air Express forwarder to operate in Eastern European countries by the year 1983. In 1986, DHL was the first firm active in Express service in China. It was the first company which re-opened its business in Kuwait after the Gulf War.

Ten years ago, Deutsche Post World Net was just a shareholder. But in New Year’s Day of 2002, it became a major shareholder. And by the end of the said year, it already held 100% share and it became the parent company of DHL.

The change of DHL corporate color from white and red to yellow and red happened after more than three decades of existence and the quality service remained the same, if not, improved to continuously satisfy its customers.

And being known as one of the leading Express and Logistics companies to date, DHL also keeps its hands full when it comes to reaching out to the community, especially during the tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia some recent years ago.

Corporate Sustainability is becoming a key driver in making business and economic decisions; decisions both on the part of the corporations themselves and on the part of the public, the market, and on investors and shareholders. All these stakeholders expect, or soon will expect, to see CSR and CSM embedded in the fabric of all aspects of a corporation’s business operations.

A consistent, reliable, credible, and transparent reporting mechanism is a critical element in the process of communicating a corporation’s efforts to be more sustainable. To provide that mechanism for corporations in Indonesia, an NGO called the National Center for Sustainability Reporting (NCSR) was established in 2005. Five prominent organizations, the Indonesian Institute of Management Accountants (IAMI), Indonesia-Netherlands Association (INA), National Committee on Governance (NCG), Forum for Corporate Governance in Indonesia (FCGI), and   The Association of Indonesian Publicly Listed Companies (AEI), pooled their talents and resources to create the NCSR.

They saw the Center’s mandate as providing five main programs intended to:

• Elevate CSR reporting consciousness.
• Promote and disseminate sustainability or  CSR reporting guideline
• Conduct CSR education and certification training
• Organize the Indonesia Sustainability Reporting Awards (ISRA).
• Maintain  mutually beneficial relationships with stakeholders

The purpose of those programs is to strive to achieve the overall targets of the NCSR, specifically that:

• All Indonesian publicly-listed companies will report their CSR activities in their annual reports by 2010, and 20% of them will produce stand-alone Sustainability or CSR Reports, separate from the annual reports.
• Stand-alone Sustainability or CSR reports for organizations with high social or environmental impact become compulsory in Indonesia by 2013.

Despite the fact that the NCSR has neither sought nor received any governmental funding, all five of the programs envisioned are currently underway and showing remarkable success in moving toward the center’s goals.
The NCSR is a lean and efficient organization, using premises and volunteer staff provided by the INA, an interest-free loan for operating capital from the IAMI, and even personal donations of cash for salaries from the executive director, who is not compensated.

Other funding is raised by the center through sponsorship and fees for its events and its training and educational programs. In 2009 the NCSR expects that its track record and therefore, its credibility will allow for accessing external funding sources.

The NCSR, moreover, has an enviable track record for such a recently established organization. In 2005, the year the NCSR was established, there was only one Sustainability Report published. In 2006, that number had increased to four reports, then in 2007 it jumped to 12 reports, and in 2008 16 stand-alone Sustainability or CSR Reports were published. Each year, the center hosts an awards ceremony where corporations are recognized for the quality of their reports.

Since the establishment of the NCSR, the Indonesian government has passed Article 66 of the Limited Liability Company Law (No. 40, 2007) making CSR reporting mandatory. Not only did the center endorse the law, but it has been appointed to the Special Task Force established to create the ancillary regulations which will be the meat in the legal sandwich.

While business players are trying really hard to put out the fire and counter  the downturn by throwing in a bucket-full of measures from simple ones such as cost-cutting and diversification of services to extreme ones like laying-off workers, there is this one nagging question: Is there still a room for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)?

The battle today goes beyond corporate buoyancy and the ability to break the surface. Most companies today assert success comes as well in the fulfillment of social responsibilities.

Asian Quality conducted a survey among Philippine-based companies last October to identify how social accountability is affected by the bottom line as dictated by the current global economic situation. As they say, CSR does not come in cheap.

The objective of the survey is to know the degree of involvement of companies in CSR, the purpose that lies behind each undertaking and their perception on the importance of having CSR embedded in their corporate culture.

Respondents’ Demographics
Based on a response rate of 24%, this report will present some of the findings that would attempt to paint a picture depicting the current practice of CSR among Philippine-based companies. The 120 respondents represented various industries, majority of which came from the services industries including logistics and transportation, hospitality, insurance, real estate, oil and gas (55%); manufacturing industries like electronics and semiconductors and automotives (25%); and Information Technology / Software services industry (15%). There were also a number of respondents from not-for-profit organizations.

In terms of job title or designation, most of the respondents were senior managers or head of various divisions / departments (31.9%), followed by top-level executives like CEOs, COOs, VPs, managing directors, executive directors, presidents and general managers (23.2%). It was also notable how a fraction of respondents was concentrated on one very aggressive populace in the corporate setting – the Human Resource Managers (18.8%). Other respondents included business development officers, marketing and corporate communication officers (14.5%), consultants (5.8%) and the CSR / Sustainability managers themselves (4.3%).

Asian Quality formulated its questions in such a way that direct answers would be provided – if they have existing CSR programs, if this is included in the annual budget of the company, how much effort is the top management throwing in to realize their objectives and how successful these CSR programs are.

This conference will discuss on best practices in Learning and Development that could bring significant changes to the organization.