First Mover, Teletech moves in!

It’s final. TeleTech Holdings Inc., one of the biggest customer management service providers operating in the country, has finally signed a memorandum of agreement with the city of Dumaguete as the first company to avail of the first mover incentive, a local ordinance specifically favoring the call center industry.

TeleTech Executive Director Craig Reines signed the agreement on behalf of TeleTech with Mayor Agustin Perdices signing for the City of Dumaguete. The MOA signing was held yesterday, November 14 at the City Hall in the presence of Governor George Arnaiz, the E-Services Council, city government and other officials from various national government agencies.

As it is, the call center industry has now become one of the country’s biggest providers of outsourced services, that is why the Province of Oriental Negros and the City of Dumaguete have pushed for call centers to invest here in the last two years.

The agreement allows the company three years of operation with no competition from other companies with businesses of similar nature. Teletech will initially hold office at the second and third floors of the DCDB Bldg., located along Dr. V. Locsin and Cervantes Streets, this city.

Marketing Technology Ideas - ONIA Workshop

The Oriental Negros Innovation Awards (ONIA) through the Department of Trade & Industry conducted last November 5, 2005, a workshop on “Marketing Technology Ideas” at the Blue Audio Visual Room of Foundation University’s IT Building. Guest speaker was Mr. Federico Gonzales, the Executive Director of the Philippine Center for Entrepreneurship (PCE) and Director for Business Plans of the Philippine Emerging Start Ups Open (PESO).

Other than the workshop theme, Mr. Gonzales also talked on the thrusts and directions of PCE as well as his experience in running PESO, the history of the program, its challenges and opportunities. Mr. Gonzales gave his audience, which comprised mostly of business and entrepreneurship students and faculty from the city’s universities and colleges, a perspective of running and being a part of a scheme that launches future business magnates and empires. He also acknowledged ONIA and Dumaguete’s being the pioneer in business plan competitions in the country and challenged the students to take this opportunity and come up with unique and high impact business plans.

ONIA is now on its semi-final stage and has trimmed down to 10, the number of teams that have qualified for this level. The workshop is only the second in a series given to teams that reach the semi-finals.

Following is the schedule of workshops for the next two weeks to be held at the AVR, IT Bldg., FU main campus: Nov. 12 - “Financial Aspect of a Business Plan” with Atty. Doram Dumalagan; Nov. 19 – “Creating a Winning Business Plan” with Mr. Francisco Bernardo.

For more on ONIA, visit its website at http://www.innovationawards.kom.ph.