Before ePerformax opened in Roxas City, it did something prospective IT-BPM investors should find interesting.
It tested the market.
The company spent more than three years evaluating provincial locations for its third Philippine site. Instead of relying only on statistics, ePerformax conducted recruitment activities and established training centers in promising areas. Qualified candidates were trained, certified, and transferred to its Manila or Cebu operations so the company could measure how they actually performed.
Roxas City eventually stood out.
According to ePerformax, the decision came down to the availability and performance of local talent, supported by factors such as the quality and number of schools and graduates, community and local government support, safety, weather, unemployment, and the level of industry saturation.
In 2018, ePerformax Contact Centers & BPO opened its third Philippine location at Pueblo de Panay TechnoPark in Roxas City, Capiz.
Eight years later, its presence offers a compelling case study for a question that matters far beyond one company:
Can world-class IT-BPM careers thrive outside the Philippines’ traditional outsourcing capitals?
Roxas City is increasingly making the case that they can.
Not the Biggest. Built to Perform.
ePerformax has operated in the Philippines since 2002, making it one of the country’s pioneering contact center companies.
Its philosophy is unusually straightforward. The company describes its ambition not as becoming the biggest, but as becoming the best-performing contact center for its clients.
That philosophy is expressed through PERFORM, its culture built around Passion, Empowerment, Resourcefulness, Flexibility, Optimism, Results-orientation, and Motivation.
In an industry increasingly shaped by automation, artificial intelligence, and rising customer expectations, that focus on performance matters.
Technology can make interactions faster. It can automate repetitive requests. It can route customers more efficiently.
But the harder conversations remain stubbornly human.
A frustrated customer does not always follow a script. A complicated concern may require judgment. Sensitive situations require empathy. Regulated industries require knowledge and accountability.
ePerformax believes the next generation of customer experience will not be built by choosing between humans and AI. Instead, successful operations will combine both, using technology to improve efficiency while preparing people to handle interactions where human judgment creates the greatest value.
That makes talent development increasingly important.
The Academy Behind the Agents
One of ePerformax’s key differentiators is something customers rarely see.
Before frontline employees enter client programs, they pass through the company’s Global Customer Experience & Management Academy (GCXMA).
Established in 2007, the proprietary academy develops and assesses communication, digital, and customer experience capabilities. Even applicants with previous contact center experience must meet ePerformax’s certification requirements before joining a client program.
At its Roxas City site, that model does something particularly significant.
It turns local potential into globally relevant capability.
New hires progress through structured training focused on communication, digital competency, and customer experience. ePerformax also uses proprietary assessment technology to identify skill profiles, customize training plans, and determine program readiness.
For a young professional in Capiz, this changes the equation.
You do not necessarily need to arrive as a finished product.
You need the potential to perform.
From a Job in Roxas City to a Career
Creating employment is important.
Creating upward mobility is more powerful.
ePerformax says more than 90% of its leadership positions are filled through internal promotion. Employees interested in leadership can enter its Leadership Exploration & Advancement Program, or LEAP, which develops the skills required to move into leadership roles and continue progressing afterward.
One employee’s story makes that opportunity tangible.
Before joining ePerformax, Jobelle worked as a cashier at a hotel in Roxas City. She expected hospitality might become her lifelong career until conversations with ePerformax visitors introduced her to another possibility.
She applied.
She trained.
She became a frontline agent.
Eventually, she became one of her account’s top performers. Through LEAP, she developed skills in communication, problem-solving, analytics, and business operations. Today, she works as a Performance Analyst, using data to generate insights that improve customer and business outcomes.
Her story captures one of the most consequential effects of countryside IT-BPM expansion.
A job that once required leaving home can become a career built at home.
Keeping Talent Closer to Home
For decades, talented graduates from provincial cities often faced a familiar choice.
Stay close to family and accept a narrower employment market, or relocate to Metro Manila, Cebu, Iloilo, or another major business center in search of larger career opportunities.
The expansion of IT-BPM into regional cities has begun changing that equation.
At Pueblo de Panay, ePerformax continuously recruits, trains, and develops people for careers in the contact center industry.
The impact extends beyond individual salaries.
ePerformax cites the IT and Business Process Association of the Philippines’ industry roadmap in noting the multiplier effect of IT-BPM employment on surrounding sectors such as retail, hospitality, restaurants, and other services. The company also points to the growth in building and construction it has observed in Roxas City since opening its operation.
This is why a BPO operation should not be viewed simply as another office tenant.
A large workplace creates daily demand.
Employees need housing. They eat nearby. They use transportation. They shop. They seek healthcare. They spend on recreation. They build families and, eventually, invest in the communities where their careers take root.
In a township, that activity becomes part of a larger economic ecosystem.
Work Is Better When Life Is Nearby
The ePerformax employee experience also extends beyond the production floor.
Its Community Centers serve as hubs where employees can eat, rest, spend time with colleagues, attend learning sessions, or participate in company activities. Concierge teams assist employees with practical needs ranging from parcels and money transfers to medical appointments and housing information. Health clinics are staffed by nurses around the clock, with physician availability during the week.
Outside, employees have access to a park and basketball court.
Then there is the wider township.
Pueblo de Panay brings workplaces into proximity with dining, retail, education, residential communities, transportation, recreation, government services, and other everyday needs.
That matters more than it might appear on a site-selection spreadsheet.
For an industry operating across different shifts and serving global markets, employee experience is inseparable from operational resilience.
Talent may initially choose a company because of compensation or career opportunity.
People build lives around what exists beyond the office.
The AI Question Is Really a Talent Question
Few topics dominate IT-BPM conversations today as much as artificial intelligence.
Will AI eliminate contact center jobs?
ePerformax offers a more nuanced view.
Routine interactions are increasingly handled through conversational AI, intelligent routing, and self-service. Yet as simpler transactions become automated, the interactions reaching human agents can become more complex.
Those conversations demand judgment, empathy, problem-solving, regulatory understanding, and communication skills.
In that environment, the competitive advantage of a contact center may increasingly depend not on how many people it employs, but on how capable those people are when technology hands the conversation to them.
ePerformax’s approach combines trained customer experience professionals with AI tools intended to reduce unnecessary effort and allow teams to focus on higher-value interactions.
For regional IT-BPM destinations, this creates an important opportunity.
The future may belong not simply to cities with the largest labor pools, but to locations capable of developing adaptable talent at scale.
Roxas City has already had a chance to prove that potential.
What ePerformax Proved About Roxas City
The most interesting part of the ePerformax story may be what happened before the first workstation went live.
The company did not choose Roxas City because someone told it the talent was good.
It tested the talent.
Candidates from potential provincial locations were recruited, trained, certified, transferred to existing operations, and measured against real performance expectations. Roxas City ultimately earned the investment.
That distinction matters for companies now evaluating countryside expansion.
Site-selection presentations can tell investors about demographics, graduate numbers, real estate costs, infrastructure, and incentives.
An operating IT-BPM company provides something else:
evidence.
ePerformax has been operating in Pueblo de Panay since 2018. It describes itself as one of the pioneer companies in the township’s development and says it intends to continue building rewarding careers for people who want to remain close to their families and communities.
For Pueblo de Panay’s mission to be a meaningful catalyst and a source of pride in the communities where it does business, this is what the idea looks like when translated into employment.
People do not simply find work.
They gain another reason to build their future here.
Pueblo de Panay TechnoPark: The Next IT-BPM Location?
ePerformax may be the proof point.
The larger opportunity is Pueblo de Panay TechnoPark.
The TechnoPark is a 7.4-hectare PEZA-accredited Information Technology Park within Pueblo de Panay Township. It was formally designated as an IT Park through Presidential Proclamation No. 1034 in 2015.
Pueblo de Panay describes it as the first and only PEZA-accredited IT-BPM park in Northern Panay, with infrastructure intended for contact centers, software development, animation, game development, and other technology-enabled businesses.
The Department of Information and Communications Technology’s Digital Cities materials likewise identify Pueblo de Panay TechnoPark as a PEZA-accredited IT Park equipped with fiber-optic connectivity from two major telecommunications providers. The same government material highlights Roxas City’s tertiary education base and its experience supporting IT-BPM employment.
And the park is being built with expansion in mind.
Pueblo de Panay launched its second IT-BPM building as part of a longer-term plan for multiple IT-BPM facilities within the TechnoPark.
That does not automatically make Roxas City the next Manila, Cebu, or Iloilo.
Nor should it try to be.
The more compelling proposition is different.
For IT-BPM companies seeking diversification, countryside expansion, access to a less saturated talent market, PEZA-accredited infrastructure, and a community where employees can build lives around their careers, Roxas City deserves a closer look.
ePerformax already did that homework.
It spent three years looking.
Then it chose Pueblo de Panay.
Perhaps the Next Career and the Next IT-BPM Investment Can Start Here
For a fresh graduate in Capiz, the ePerformax story offers a simple possibility.
A globally relevant career does not always require a one-way ticket out of the province.
For an IT-BPM executive evaluating the next expansion site, the story raises a different possibility.
Perhaps the next location worth studying is not the one everyone has already chosen.
Perhaps it is the one where talent has already been tested, infrastructure is being built, and an industry ecosystem still has room to grow.
Eight years ago, ePerformax made that bet on Roxas City.
Today, the people building careers inside its Pueblo de Panay operation are helping make the case for what could come next.