Cebu firms eyeing IT services market in Korea
By Lawrence Casiraya
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 17:45:00 05/15/2008
MANILA, Philippines -- A team of Cebu-based companies are looking at a potential market for IT services in South Korea following a visit to country’s version of Silicon Valley.
Organized by the Cebu Business Chamber of Commerce, a delegation of 18 companies visited South Korea last month. Among other places, the group visited Daedok Innopolis in the city of Daejon, dubbed the Silicon Valley of Korea.
Daedok is home to around 800 "incubatees" or start-up tech companies funded either by the government or privately, according to Bonifacio Belen, executive director of the Cebu Education Development Foundation (CEDF-IT).
"A lot of the companies there want to go global but they feel restricted due to lack of English skills," Belen told INQUIRER.net via phone.
He cited as an example Korean software firm Hansoft, which he referred to as the "Microsoft of Korea" offering the same kind of products but at lower costs.
According to Belen, Hansoft's goal is to become a cheaper alternative to Microsoft and has plans of selling its English-language software worldwide. Hansoft, he said, offers the same desktop tools priced around 60 percent lower.
"But their biggest stumbling block is that they cannot offer technical support services in English," said Belen, who also represented Cebu-based software firm SIMON during the visit.
He said his group was able to network with Korean counterparts and discuss prospects of outsourcing technical support services to the Philippines.
Belen is counting on the Philippines becoming a much more familiar destination to South Korean businesses due to a large population of migrants and tourists here. In Cebu alone, he said there are no less than 5, 000 Koreans, some of them already operating businesses.
"The biggest challenge, though, is that unlike Japan, Koreans are not used to outsourcing," said Belen. "We need to sell our services and convince them that outsourcing is doable."
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