IT-BPM Drives Inclusive Economic Growth (Part 3) Although the role of institutes of higher education is indispensable in turning out the talents needed by the new types of skills being demanded by more and more complex forms of IT-BPM services (such as those in data analytics), even more important in the coming five to ten years are short, non-degree courses that will upskill, reskill and retool the 1.4 million workers already employed in the industry and others who have graduated from formal education programs but are either still unemployed or underemployed. As pointed out by the Everest Group Study conducted for the BPAP, as the usage of alternate channels such as social media, mobile, web, and chat proliferates and experiences enabled by data and analytics becomes the norm, contact centers are taking up the role of customer experience hubs. Furthermore, the traditional contact center model has changed drastically, in the face of COVID-19, accelerating several pre-existing trends with a reinforced push for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation, a preference for cloud-based /modernized infrastructure, and an accelerated shift toward the use of self-service solutions such as conversational IVAs and messaging platforms. As a result, increasingly in the near future, many CC and BP companies in the Philippines believe that the larger share of volume in traditional call centers will come from complex transactions covering the entire extent of service-to-sales activities.