Entrepreneur Of The Year Philippines 2004

ICT Entrepreneur

The business of creating value

ERNEST CU
Director, President & CEO
SPI Technologies Inc.
Chairman
eTelecare International, Inc.


Ernest Cu is credited for transforming an entrepreneurial "mom and pop" business into one of the continent's largest outsourcing service providers.

The way he steered the business into its current market leadership has been phenomenal.

In 1980, SPI Technologies Inc. (SPI) started as a simple data entry service company. By 1991, the company was listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange and has consistently outperformed other stocks in the last 10 years.

However, SPI's core business depended on contracts that were basically project-based, making revenues not quite consistent.

In 1997, Mr. Cu joined SPI as president and chief operating officer. He resettled in the Philippines, giving up his post as vice-president and chief financial officer of Crestec Los Angeles, Inc. -- a US-based document-engineering firm.

At SPI, his initial accomplishment was the acquisition of an American operation that was effectively SPI's first direct sales and marketing organization in the United States.

Mr. Cu then paved the way for SPI to render a suite of other services in business process outsourcing (BPO), customer relationship management (CRM) and information technology (IT). The company's services expanded to content conversion, litigation support, book and journal publishing, software maintenance and development, and health care documentation.

"As an entrepreneur, I started creating businesses for SPI that have not been done before and I had been willing to take the risks in order to create something of more value to the business and its customers," recalls Mr. Cu on the shift of SPI's services.

In late 1999, SPI launched eTelecare International, the first call center in the Philippines focused on US outsourcing. The call center provides a wide range of voice and web-based CRM services such as inbound customer service, technical help desk, sales and market research.

eTelecare is recognized as having superior quality in the outsourcing industry compared with US and other offshore competitors.

Today, SPI is a market leader as Asia's largest independent BPO provider, with sales and marketing offices in Europe and the US, and production facilities in the Philippines, India, China, and Vietnam.

SPI caters to the Global 1000 companies and leading government and academic institutions in the US and Europe. SPI achieved its leadership position in the market because of its top-quality processes. It is the first company of its kind to be awarded an ISO 9001:2000 quality management certification.

Mr. Cu places greatest value on his people as the primary resource and asset of the company. He follows Alan Fraser's people care initiatives -- the lasting legacy of SPI's founder. "It can be in the simple things like giving them a nice, decent office that could help give them the feeling of working in a world-class environment," he said.

He added that the biggest social responsibility is being aware that 6,000 people and their families make a living as part of the SPI team.

In sum, Mr. Cu credits his successful strategy for transforming SPI to a business model that focuses on aggressive marketing outside the Philippines, diversifying its portfolio to attain recurring revenue streams, and placing emphasis on quality as the main driver of SPI's business.

Under his leadership, SPI has differentiated its position, carved its niche and is now acknowledged as a dependable global provider that Mr. Cu says, "Just happens to be a Filipino company."