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Guest: Frederic Joye
Presenter: Henry Acosta
Guest Bio: Fred has many years of experience in growing international businesses. Fred has been leading the sales, marketing and business development arms of Arcanys from day one. Fred has a passion for innovation and entrepreneurship, enabling to solve global issues at an unprecedented scale, through technology. Working with, and being part of startups that one day will change the way people live and do business is the reason behind the creation of Arcanys Labs (the investment arm of thé Arcanys Group).

Segment overview: Arcanys is one of the most respected software development companies not only in the Philippines but also by the startups it supports in Europe, the US and Australia. Their mission is to help businesses to do more with less money and help them generate revenue quicker. Their vision is to keep on helping those companies, but also for start-ups. They have recently launched a venture capital back program where they invest technology and money for equity in these start-ups. Arcanys staff goes through a training program where they are taught how to work with clients following the company’s specific methodology. What they are looking for are experienced developers that are also fast learners that is why they are looking at their abilities to grow over time because the projects they work on are usually pretty challenging.

Address: 7th Floor, CFI Builing, Capitol Compound,, Cebu City, 6000 Cebu

Contact Number: (032) 416 5414

Website: https://www.arcanys.com/

To know more about Arcanys, listen to the podcast below.

The interview will start at the 26:30 mark of the podcast.

Transcript

Henry Acosta:  Hi, it’s the Outsourcing and Offshoring in the Philippines Podcast and this is your host for today Henry Acosta. Today we have Frederic Joye, Fred has many years of experience in growing international businesses. Fred has been leading the sales, marketing and business development arms of Arcanys from Day 1. Arcanys is one of the most respected software development companies not only in the Philippines but also by the start-ups it supports in Europe, the US and Australia. Fred has a passion for innovation and entrepreneurship enabling to solve global issues at an unprecedented scale through technology, working with and being part of start-ups that one day will change the way people live and do business. He is the reason behind creation of Arcanys Labs, the investment arm of Arcanys Group. Welcome to the show Fred and it’s a pleasure having you here.

Frederic Joye:  Hi Henry, thank for having me.

Henry:  For our first question, can you give us a quick introduction about who you are and what you do for Arcanys?

Frederic:  Yes sure, so I’m Frederic Joye. I’m the co-founder of Arcanys and I’m in charge of sales and marketing for the company.

Henry:  So what gave you the inspiration of having the idea of building an outsourcing business specifically here in the Philippines?

Frederic:  So I moved with my business partner in 2010 to Cebu, we purchased a company that was active in online games and from there we noticed that the skills of not only the customer agents that we needed for this commerce business but also programmers, the skills were very good in Cebu. So that when we first started to hire a few developers in our own for our needs and then a lot of our entrepreneur friends from abroad, Europe and the US started asking us to help them out with software development so this is when we created Arcanys and started focusing exclusively on this.

Henry:  What do you think makes the Philippines different compared to other countries that service offshore outsourcing? And what are the main benefits of outsourcing here?

Frederic:  So I would say mostly the people. The skills are good, the English level of the Filipinos is the best you can find in Asia and also they’re very friendly and easy to work with. So I think that’s one of the key points. I don’t think there is anywhere on this planet where people are a nicer to work with and also of course the wages are lower than in many other countries.

Henry:  Were there any cultural barriers that you faced during your transition period here in the Philippines?

Frederic:  Some but much less than when I moved to Hong Kong, surprisingly. There were a few adjustments we needed to make, notably their relationship with time but other than that I think we were pretty close culturally speaking and of course the language barrier didn’t really exist since their English is so good.

Henry:  How has been the experience of your clients and can you give us any testimonials from them?

Frederic:  Yeah, I mean mostly it’s been great for our clients and I got a testimonial yesterday from a client, the last one I got, and I can read it to you. So they wrote: “Together with Arcanys we developed an innovative mobile … platform for android and iOS. The management and team of Arcanys is extremely professional, responsive and flexible to all our projects’ needs. They’re indeed one of the best development teams we have worked with in South-east Asia.” So this was written by Maik Fulemann the co-founder of Quiz Biz.

Henry:  What makes Arcanys different from other outsourcing agencies here in the Philippines?

Frederic:  I think it’s because we have such a long track record of building companies. One of which was selling close to a hundred million dollars in sales per year with more than 350 people working for us. And I think we also understand the needs of the companies that want to innovate through software tools, I mean that’s what we’ve been doing through the last ten years and I think we can really help them with this difficult but I think at the end very rewarding process.

Henry:  What is the main vision and mission of your company?

Frederic:  Yes, so our mission is to help businesses to do more with less money and help them generate revenue quicker – that’s really our core mission. And I would say for the vision is to keep on helping those companies, but also for start-ups, We have recently launched a venture capital back program where we invest technology and money for equity in these start-ups.

Henry:  How is your process for recruiting clients or how do you get clients to get interested in Arcanys?

Frederic:  I would say it’s mostly through our network and referral from other clients but we also create content, reach out to companies that we know have certain needs and this is also interesting flow of clients for us.

Henry:  For any interested employees out there, what are the processes that they have to go through and what do you look for in hiring employees?

Frederic:  So mostly we hire people through our staff referrals that’s the best working. We also advertise of course but mostly through our staff and so once we decide to interview a candidate when we’ve looked at his resume, the candidate goes through a series of personal interviews and technical tests so we can assess their skills and most of the time after being hired, our staff goes through a I would say training program where we teach them how to work with our clients following our specific methodology. What we’re looking also for iss that we’re looking at experienced developers that are also fast learners. So we were looking at their abilities to grow over time because the projects they work on are usually pretty challenging.

Henry:  Can you say that the businesses of your clients have grown considerably since they started working with Arcanys?

Frederic:  Yes. Most of our clients have and what is nice is that we grow with them so the reason is that they can simply do so much more with the same financial resources since we’re 2 – 3 times cheaper than what they could get in their own countries and at the same level of quality.

Henry:  What are the common misconceptions that you usually face about outsourcing here in the Philippines?

Frederic:  I think most of the time it revolves around the cultural issues, they’re afraid of that but there are much less cultural problems than with other Asian countries. I’ve been working in India and in China and the Philippines is not that complicated. And also I think some prospects are asking us about the internet and other infrastructure questions and although these used to be a problem years ago, I must say this has gotten so much better in recent years and it’s not a problem anymore.

Henry:  Do you have any memorable experiences that you can share with us ever since you started staying here in the Philippines?

Frederic:  Every day is a memorable experience because when we’re interacting with Filipinos it’s just great, they’re always nice and friendly. And other than that I mean the Philippines has so much to offer in terms of nature so like swimming with the whale sharks or diving is always pretty incredible.

Henry:  And for our last question how can anyone who’s interested in Arcanys get in touch with you, either potential clients or even employees?

Frederic:  So for clients they can get in touch via our website, arcanys.com or by email directly to me so [email protected] also through LinkedIn. And for employees, the best is to go through the career’s page where we always have our open jobs. They’re listed there and they can apply for specific jobs, we’re currently looking to hire about 20 people.

Henry:  Thanks for being on the show Fred. It’s been great having you here.

Frederic:  You’re welcome Henry, thanks for having me.

Henry:  Again that was Frederic Joye, one of the founders of Arcanys helping push and innovate our world with technology while solving one global issue at a time. Arcanys is one of the most respected software development companies not only in the Philippines but also in Europe, USA and Australia. It’s Henry Acosta and you’ve been listening to the Outsourcing and Offshoring in the Philippines Podcast. Thank you for listening to us, if you’ve missed this interview or want to listen to it again an audio file is available on SoundCloud and iTunes. Transcripts and archive are available at offshoring.com.ph.