German pharmaceutical firm Boehringer Ingelheim said it will expand its workforce and operations in its shared services center in the Philippines by 20 percent starting next year.
Andrea Jakob, the company’s vice president and head of global business service center network, said the company is planning to grow its operations in the country to capture its other markets, such as Japan and a part of the United States market.
“But we will also add additional services. So service extensions in the area of HR [human resources] with, for example, learning services. We will support from the center here, our activities in the countries for the employees there to organize trainings. So also for all countries, we will support the administration of benefits on the local side, and also travel and expense, which is also a new service for us and the big service,” Jakob told reporters in an interview.
Five years ago, the company put up a center in Alabang, Muntinlupa that will serve as a regional service hub providing crucial transactional services, including HR, finance and master data to Boehringer Ingelheim’s branches in the Asia Pacific, and select services to North America.
Since then, the Philippines has become a crucial component in the global business operations of Boehringer Ingelheim and is growing beyond its original design of a back office.
Its office in Alabang, which started at employing 50 people, now has about 500 workers and more than 400 terminals. The company said it will start headhunting next year to bring up its total local employees to 600.
“I personally believe that there’s growth beyond that. There are countries that we still need to include in our geographic portfolio like Japan, but also, mainland China that we’re already serving,” Jose Jamil Zaide, the company’s managing director and head of the Manila center, said.
Andreas Hilf, the company’s senior vice president, said one of Boehringer Ingelheim’s long-term goals is to become a 25-billion euro company.
“And we will have by that year 2028, we will have our entire company on one common platform. By then we will have harmonized processes, and we do have services covering the important things of our company, and you know, all accounts payable will be managed out of our organization, all accounts receivable, and the entire order management.”