Introduction of Netmarks Philippines

Magandang araw! This is Philip and Raymond of Netmarks Philippines.

Netmarks Philippines was established in Manila in 2001 by having a joint investment made by Philippine’s entrepreneur and NETMARKS Japan (Currently, UNIADEX, Ltd.).

In comparison to other NETMARKS in other countries, Netmarks Philippines has a higher rate of system engineers as we focus more on offering software related services. As we provide a substantial number of educational trainings on the various products we service, our employees are highly motived to learn many different skills. Thus, we have a lower job turnover rate when compared to our competitors.

Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic restriction phase, we had to have an entry pass be checked whenever we moved across a district. Since the checking procedure took 30 to 90 minutes, it took 4 hours one way from our office to the site. However, since we had employees living in outside of Metro Manila, we were able to provide fast services and assurance to our clients. We also have been rated highly of providing our engineers to work on behalf of the clients when they got infected with the virus and couldn’t go to the site.

Since the beginning of Netmarks Philippines’ establishment, we have offered a brand service called NET911 focusing more on providing the “after services”. Not only the Japan Originated Companies, but also the large domestic companies in Philippines take advantage of this service. I also introduced this service during an interview for NexTalk web magazine of UNIADEX, Ltd. Netmarks Philippines provides Japanese style and level of services to ensure its quality. Nowadays, it is not rare to have some customers switching from other company’s service to NET911 Support Service.

Netmarks Indonesia is handling digital marketing, but I also find Netmarks Philippines’ digital marketing to be quite unique. 

Before COVID-19, our sales representatives visited 4 to 5 different customers during a day. But COVID-19 had changed the situation. So, we decided to host a game event called Bidawone every Friday from 12:00 to 12:20 to share some time with our customers. This event originally started when the remote work began during the pandemic to avoid losing the communications over our employees. But now, it has turned into a fun fighting game of Netmarks Philippines versus the customers. This event will be held for the 100th time on October 14th, 2022.

Bidawone gives simple quizzes on various topics. When you win a game, a point will be added. You can then choose a gift from a catalog such as food or gift vouchers. Netmarks Philippines succeeded in keeping the habit of visiting our customers by offering this kind of gamification.

We used to have a face-to-face meeting with the customer over having a cup of coffee before, but now the meeting is held online.
We therefore made some drip-bag coffee named NetGrounds. We named each bag with IT related brand names & made 10 bags as one package. We sent these coffees to our customers every 3 months as a subscription so we can have online coffee meetings. By doing so, we are keeping our communication with our customers on a regular basis even when we cannot visit them in person.

Before COVID-19, security measures such as firewall and anti-virus solutions covering the internal security issues within a company were mostly sold to our clients. As the work style shifted to remote work during the pandemic period, more clients (re)considered the use of the endpoint security solutions. People are now particularly nervous about ransomware. Thus, Netmarks Philippines has recently sold more solutions such as Falcon’s CrowdStrike, SilverSky, and Trend Micro’s Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR).

So, what would be the reason for not attaining much improvement of the communication environment in Philippines? In the 1990’s, there were about 30 telecom companies in Philippines. However, due to mergers and acquisitions, there were only 2 companies that remained: Global Telecom and PLDT. Due to the lack of healthy competitions for a long time, the communication related environment did not see much improvement. After 2020, there are now new telecom companies such as DITO and NOW Telecom; however, it may still take some time before seeing much improvement to be on the same level as Singapore’s 5G environment.

Mobile Payments such as GCash are now often seen at shops in Philippines. More people are using mobile payments as they are easy to apply online and the screening is not as strict as the banks’.

Filipinos also love parties. Birthday parties are big events for us. Netmarks Philippines hosts a joint birthday party for the employees every 3 months. Christmas party is also a big event.

Although the event has been suspended now due to COVID-19, Netmarks Philippines Team consisting of 5 employees used to participate in a marathon race in Manila every year. The average age of our employees are around 30 years old & we picked running the marathon since it was a sport everyone around this age could do.

Because of the traffic jam we have in Manila, the actual arrival time often gets delayed than expected. But, whenever any delay is expected, our employees are trained to contact the customer and let them know. Otherwise, the customer may feel some anxiety for not having us show up as scheduled. On top of that, we focus heavily on providing documentations that are thorough since many of our Japan Originated Companies require submission of many document deliverables.

I hope you enjoyed reading how Netmarks Philippines is like. Netmarks Philippines will continue to strive making new challenges. Please feel free to contact us for anything.

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