IBM said that to be able to cover more markets while introducing new services, they will enhance language potentials of its BPO operations in the country. In an announcement, there will be a seven-year outsourcing contract with consumer products business Sara Lee Corporation.

A part of Sara Lee's North American and European finance and applications expansion and maintenance requirements will be managed by IBM. According to IBM, its global delivery center located in Manila has been chosen as one of the spots that will cater the finance and accounting services. IBM also added that it will boost the capabilities of its delivery center here in order to offer multilingual services using German, French, and Spanish, and English languages. It will also include local dialects.This will be the result of the agreement.

James Velasquez, IBM Philippines country general manager said that this deal will allow them to advance the growth of their local F&A (finance and accounting) business process services. At the same time, they will be able to kick off new supply chain management services locally. Among the Sara Lee manufacture consumer and household brands included are Ambi Pur, BallPark, Douwe Egberts, Hillshire Farm, Jimmy Dean, Kiwi, Sanex, Sara Lee and Senseo. More than 44,000 employees worldwide are employed by the company. There were more than 7,000 workforce being employed by IBM in business units in the Philippines. A large part of the workforce comprises of call center and business process outsourcing operations. [via]