Philippine businesses are taking a more optimistic and proactive view of IT investments despite the current weak economic condition, a study commissioned by technology firm EMC said.

In a statement, EMC said the report conducted by research firm IDC, indicated that compared with the global trend which projects a more cautious business overview, “Philippine businesses show a more upbeat outlook.”

“Businesses in the Philippines see these challenging times as an opportunity to focus their priorities on improving customer service levels and employing technology to deliver value to the bottom line,” Ronnie Latinazo, country manager of EMC Philippines said.

The executive said “by leveraging and investing in technologies, companies will gain a competitive edge once the economy is on the upswing as they will be ready to manage the surge in customers and better equipped to meet more stringent customer demands.”

EMC said the study conducted by IDC involved a survey of 405 IT executives across India, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Thailand.

The study revealed that improving customer service levels continues to be the key challenge amongst businesses in the last six months and over the next two years.

Companies place emphasis on customer service as a critical component that could provide enterprises with a competitive advantage and differentiator.

“Technology is no longer meant for such basic operations as streamlining processes or facilitating information management as it has now been elevated to play a critical role in enhancing customer service levels to boost business growth,” Latinazo said.

The study further said the common challenges amongst the five Asian countries surveyed over the next two years are enhancing customer service, keeping IT costs in check and expanding into other markets.

“Companies are under tremendous pressures to achieve higher levels of efficiency with the existing technology they have now because IT budgets are oftentimes reduced or unchanged despite an increase in demand for constant upgrades. IT departments are often mandated to do more with less and companies that do implement new technologies must justify the business value and ROI of the IT budget,” Latinazo said.

While companies see customer service as a key challenge, it is also seen as a competitive advantage and product differentiator. As a result, companies from the five countries indicated that they intend to deploy technology products and services in more innovative and strategic ways.

“Within the Philippines telecoms industry, the challenge is now about which telco can offer the most value-added and creative content in order to expand consumer offerings that provide end-to-end solutions on the go,” Latinazo said, adding that “as such, telcos require highly available, high performance and secure information infrastructures that are both manageable and efficient.”

Latinazo noted that deployment of technology products and services in more strategic and creative ways will also enable enterprises to derive more value from the investment. Companies that make improvements to the robustness of its IT infrastructures will be able to maximize data protection and storage applications as well as consolidate and streamline storage hardware and applications to better optimize its existing information infrastructure.

The IDC study also revealed that minimizing costs, a perennial concern for businesses, is even more important in these challenging times as companies prepare for the economic upturn, and the public sector is no more immune to this than private enterprises.

“In the Philippines, the government is curbing spending by establishing an electronic procurement system which provides more transparency and stricter controls on the purchasing process,” Latinazo said.

The Philippines is one of 10 countries proposed for the piloting of the Electronic Government Procurement (e-GP) program by the World Bank in collaboration with the Asian Development Bank.
“Additionally, electronic procurement strengthens procurement efficiency by facilitating public access to the procurement information, and expediting public services in a cost-effective manner,” says Latinazo.