BPO industry leads agentic AI adoption in PHL

By Almira Louise S. Martinez, Reporter

THE BUSINESS process outsourcing (BPO) industry is leading the adoption of agentic artificial intelligence (AI) in the Philippines as companies transition from experimentation to application of AI solutions, the International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) said.

“In the Philippines, we have seen in the BPOs a lot of AI usage in call centers in terms of intent analysis or conversation summarizations,” IBM APAC Head of Client Engineering Anup Kumar told BusinessWorld in a virtual interview.

“I will say they are the leaders for sure. They are the ones who have the necessary means to move forward with the piece.”

Agentic AI uses “agents” for specific tasks with minimal human supervision. These systems can work autonomously and make decisions based on data, probability, and patterns learned from interactions.

Unlike traditional AI models, which still require human intervention, agentic AI exhibits “autonomy, goal-driven behavior, and adaptability,” IBM said.

“It started from typical machine learning, to becoming like an AI assistant, to now a bit of an autonomous agent or assistant,” Mr. Kumar said.

While many industries are already using agentic AI solutions in their operations, some sectors find it harder to tap these technologies, he said.

“I think the biggest challenge at the moment is the organizational challenge itself,” Mr. Kumar said. “An organization has to start thinking about how the agent will help and also how to start trusting it.”

The cost of deploying agentic AI is another hurdle, he added.

“A lot of the way people are building it is through LLMs (large language models) hosted on cloud providers, and the bigger you’re using, the bigger it costs. So, that is also preventing a lot of customers from going mainstream.”

As agentic AI continues to evolve, organizations need to be able to adapt so that they can leverage the potential of these technologies, he said.

“While I will say that some part of agentic AI, like in terms of workflow automation by using tools, is doing multiple agent orchestration, I will say there’s a need for a bit more maturity in terms of the technology,” he added.

In 2024, the BPO industry employed around 1.4 million in the Philippines. It has also generated about $38 billion in revenue, making it a vital part of the country’s economy.

The 2025 Work Trend Index report by Microsoft revealed that 60% of Philippine leaders are extremely familiar with AI agents, while only 42% of employees are familiar with the technology.

It added that about 89% of Philippine leaders said they are confident about having AI agents as digital team members to expand their workforce capacity in the next 12 to 18 months.