In a briefing last week, the New York Stock Exchange-listed firm announced that it is in the process of adding more to its 15,000-strong local manpower base, as well as branching out to other technology-related services.

The company offers services currently includes global management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing. Accenture Philippines managing director Beth Lui said the company is also looking at adding more facilities in the Philippines.

The executive said the company has 8 facilities, 7 of which are in the Metro Manila area while 1 is in Cebu.

"We are planning to add more," Lui said, although the executive declined to give an exact timeline on the expansion.Lui also said Accenture does not see any slowdown "in terms of our growth in the Philippines."

In fact, Lui said, Accenture will be implementing more employment related programs in the hopes of attracting more skilled employess to join its fold.

"Attrition remain a challenge. So we have implemented various programs for our employees," Lui said.

Interestingly, Lui said Accenture has most recently introduced employee programs particularly for its women employees, who make up about 50 percent of Accenture’s total local manpower headcount.

The executive said one of the employee programs that Accenture has implemented is a flexible working schedule for its women employees.

"We are positioning Accenture as the best technology company that Filipinas can work for," Lui said.

Kevin Campbell, Accenture’s group chief executive for outsourcing, meanwhile said one of the areas that Accenture will focus on this year is global systems integration.

He said the Manila facility is Accenture’s second largest hub in the world, and that more services will be churned out from the local office.

The executive said Accenture will continue to deliver offshore services including airline reservations, billing, and other outsourced services to its mostly abroad-based clients, from its Philippine offices.

Meanwhile, in a related development, Accenture in a press release, highlighted that its collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Professional Education Programs (PEP) team is paving the way for innovative career development opportunities for the Filipino IT workforce.

Based on Accenture’s application developer curriculum, the program is being offered to employees across all Accenture geographies since mid-2007. As of December 2007, 187 employees have been ASDA-certified, six of whom are IT programmers from the Accenture Delivery Centers in the Philippines.

"Accenture recognizes the need for more certifications due to the global demand for a highly skilled IT workforce, and we are glad to have access to this program. About 2,000 employees in the Philippines have enrolled in the ASDA program, and with the series of certification sessions this year, the number of ASDA-certified Philippine employees will increase significantly," said Winston Cruz, Senior Executive Sponsor for Professional Development Programs.

"People are Accenture’s most important asset and the company’s thrust is to develop employees into even better talents. Whether it’s for the next project, a promotion or general professional development, our trainings are designed to prepare our employees for the next stage in their careers," Cruz stressed.

Employees who successfully complete the program, the first industry-academic collaboration of its kind, are awarded "application developer" or "application designer" certifications by Accenture and MIT PEP, attesting to their software engineering, systems integration and application delivery skills.

Accenture’s two-year collaboration with MIT PEP includes ongoing review of the academy’s educational content, student assessments, and overall program design by several MIT School of Engineering faculty who are experts in related subject areas, including: Java, C++, SAP, host-centric and Microsoft technologies and the software-development lifecycle.

Mimi Perez, Accenture Professional Development Unit Lead, explained that the ASDA program seeks to recognize and enhance the training and job experience components of the employees’ work, so it complements and is integrated into each person’s expected workload.

The ASDA certification certainly boosts the employees’ credentials as the program tracks their progress in meeting the strict standards of this program’s skill and experience requirements. This type of certification should stir closer collaboration between the industry and the academe for the training and job experience program to hone talents out of college," Perez said.

Upon successful completion of the program requirements, candidates are awarded Application Developer and/or Application Designer certification from Accenture and MIT PEP. From there, ongoing development is given through formal instruction, new projects and our intranet-based learning systems.

Continuous learning and development comprise a key element of Accenture’s employee value proposition. Skills and capabilities enhancement are offered to employees through on-the-job experience, formal classroom training, self-initiated study and interactions with experts. In 2007, the company invested approximately 6 million in training for its employees.

"I was very interested in ASDA because MIT and Accenture, two well-respected organizations in the IT industry, are providing this one-of-a-kind training opportunity to build our skills. In a way, it also helps validate that we have a common understanding of the standard processes in the software delivery across Accenture," said Anna Carmine C. Dayot, CIO Application Product Management, one of Accenture Philippines’ ASDA-certified professionals.

To successfully progress through the program, candidates complete specific coursework prescribed by the Solutions Global Curriculum, then apply the knowledge gained through coursework to specific-project experiences and demonstrate mastery of key technology-delivery skills through a series of certification exams.

According to Marie Angel Lyn P. Uy, Team Sub-lead, Designer, Quality Coordinator – Application Outsourcing, another successful ASDA trainee, "Through the trainings, I was able to create better design documents and found ideas on how to optimize our applications better. It also served as a refresher for the Java JCS training that I took, which somehow helped me as well in teaching Java in a major IT university."

Two other ASDA-certified programmers attest to the program’s benefits. "With the ASDA certification, I am now more confident and eager to take on bigger projects that will allow me to apply my learnings from the program. The training program has energized me to perform better and deliver the best I can. During the course of the training, I realized that proper motivation could boost my career to any level I want!," said Heidi L. Santiago, Systems Engineer.