e-CRM at $6 Per Hour

Growing too fast? You may need the assistance of an outsourcing company like Asia Internet Services, founded by Americans in the Philippines.

by Alex Goldman
Associate Editor, ISP-Planet
[September 29, 2000]

Calvin Cox was running a rapidly growing company, Asia PrePress Technology Inc., a provider of electronic book publishing services, document conversion and data entry services. He decided to outsource to help handle growth, but found the results disappointing. So he founded his own outsource company, Asia Internet Services Inc. (AIS), to handle customer relations and other Internet services.

Both companies were sold to the Internet services company ZiaSun Technologies Inc. (OTC BB:ZSUN) in June, 2000 (as reported by dc.internet.com: "ZiaSun Acquires Two Maryland Companies"), but the CEO remains with the company.

AIS charges $6 per hour per worker for e-mail based CRM.

English spoken here
It can afford to charge low prices because it operates out of the duty-free zone of Subic Bay in the Philippines. Although it is located in the Philippines, AIS focuses on serving US clients.

Subic Bay is a former US naval base that provides quality infrastructure and access to inexpensive English speakers. Vice President Michael Prettyman told us that Calvin Cox looked at low-wage English speaking areas around the world, from Montana and Kentucky to Ireland and India, but settled on the Philippines because it had the highest quality employees.

"Many of our employees have a four-year degree in finance, computers, or engineering," Prettyman told us. Having educated employees allows AIS to tailor its CRM offering to the needs of a company. AIS already does e-CRM such as billing and e-mail help, as well as specialized data entry such as medical transcription. It is adding web design (at about $10 per hour) and will soon have an IP-centric live call center that will be able to offer dedicated T1 lines to high-volume customers.

The company's fees are based on the number of employees dedicated to a particular client. AIS can deal with small businesses that will use the services of only one employee.

AIS' billing service is based on scanning invoices and then processing them with off-the-shelf Microsoft products such as Excel and OfficeWorks.

Rising sun
AIS' first clients are other ZiaSun companies including Momentum Asia, Inc., momentum internet inc. (an incubator with offices in Hong Kong and Manila), swifttrade.com, and partially-owned Asia For Sale.

AOL was an early customer during AOL Philippines' startup phase. Today, AOL has reported that their Philippine operation has reduced e-mail customer service costs by 40%, and they will soon have consolidated all U.S., U.K., Hong Kong, and Australia customer support operations to the Philippines.

With funding for advertising and trade show appearances from the parent company, good relationships with related companies, and prices that can't be beat, AIS is sure to grow.

—End