INFOTE – Session 2

Technological Resource Management

Submitted by: Menwin Alexander L. Manimtim

My company Prople BPO Inc., provides outsourcing services on Finance and

accounting, compensation, benefits management, payroll, timekeeping and IT managed
services. The company’s objective is to be a one stop shop for all back office solution
and provide services leveraging on People, Process and Technologies. We currently have
annual revenue of 150 million pesos with 70% of our revenue coming from domestic or
Philippine clients and 30% from our clients from US, and Singapore. Our company have
grown to 280 headcount with a composition of 70% and 30% for Females and Males
respectively.

With the endeavour of providing high quality back office support, our company
have invested in infrastructure and network to support our operations. Proprietary
software was also developed to improved efficiency and helps us deliver our work. Our
payroll and timekeeping software solutions can be tailor fitted to the need of client
requirements. We also provide workflow management systems and document
repository that is often used in finance and accounting to transmit documents online
and route for approval. Our company maintains a pool of developers, business analyst,
network engineers and project managers to assist and support any changes required in
the system design.

Policies and procedure for network and infrastructure are also in place to ensure
stability and security of all data stored. Annual business continuity plan and testing is
also a requirement for us to internally assess our readiness for disaster recovery. We
also utilize our own proprietary software and tools to manage our employees’ time and
attendance and human resource information. Since we serve clients offsite and
internationally, tools to maintain connection with our employees is essential to our
service delivery to ensure quality output in all of our engagements.

Prople also utilizes online forms/ web portal to get employee feedback to
measure success of internal initiatives and how happy our employees are. Similar tool is
also used to get client feedback that is essential for operations to identify potential
threats that may lead to loss of revenue. Client interaction with the use of online tools
whether to get their feedback or schedule a meeting is also essential for us to build
relationship with our client counter parts.

As the division head for Domestic Finance and Accounting Services, it is essential
that our systems and infrastructure are maintained to efficiently support operations.
Even domestic clients are accessed with online/ web portal that is dependent in the
internet and network. Even most of the accounting software is also connected to the
internet. Any downtime in system, either hardware or software will affect our delivery
of meeting client’s deadline and incur additional manpower cost due to incurred
overtime.

As Finance and Accounting service provider, infrastructure and network

capabilities are essential to the delivery of work. Our client has the preference to use
what accounting system they will use and we have to adjust base on their requirements.
May it be on cloud or on premise; accounting systems require a minimum specification
in order to work optimally. The deadlines and deliverables set and agreed with the
clients also put more pressure on operations to be efficient and effective. Thus,
accounting professional can’t be delayed by system or infrastructure issues.

The IT support however is limited and still restricted to certain limitations such
as, IT manpower, cost benefit, and capital requirements. Our servers and parts of it are
aging and some are already end of life. Purchase of new one is highly dependent on the
prioritization of capital expenditure and potential rate of return on the investment. With
the limited capital, balancing priorities on where to spend hinders the full support on IT
initiatives.

IT professional is most of the time expensive and diversification of several IT

functions forced businesses to hire several IT professionals instead of hiring just one. IT
professional also often have difficulty in communicating with company stakeholders as
most do not understand IT jargons and terminologies. IT professional on the other hand
have limited background on the business requirement and how it will operate. With this
challenge in our IT professionals, additional layer of management is necessary to
efficiently control and manage our IT resources.