I started dabbling in AI as early as July 2023, back when Google still called it “Bard”. It was totally alien to me, and I really wasn’t enthusiastic about it and I wasn’t even sure how it could help my business as a whole.
I am the President and CEO of Big Ideas Philippines. We are a digital and business process outsourcing company based in the Philippines. Our focus now is on BPO, and while we’re not a huge company, we try to be efficient. Internally, my team is under 10 people, but we work with over 120 self-employed freelancers servicing around 30+ clients—mostly in the USA, a couple in the UK, and one in South Korea.
Our AI journey wasn’t easy. It was mostly trial and error. And here’s our story:
Like most SMEs, our systems were managed manually—Excel and Google Workspace being the primary tools we used for day-to-day transactions and record-keeping. Back in 2022, I hired a third-party professional accounting and audit firm as our consultant to assist with finance, accounting, and tax compliance—and we’re 100% grateful for that partnership!
Our “Pain Points” from a business perspective were the following:
- Contracts and closing deals with clients
- Sourcing out applicants for new vacancies
- Screening and vetting applicants
- Invoicing client payments
- Disbursing freelancer fees
- Retention and evaluation of the talent pool
I figured that the first step to integrating AI into my business was to actually LEARN it hands-on. So, with the help of Google, Youtube tutorials, blogs, and online research, I eventually enrolled in free and paid online courses to devour as much information as possible to answer key questions such as:
“What AI tools should we use and why?”
“What is our short term and long-term goal with AI?”
“How can AI make our professional lives easier?”
“How can AI give value to BOTH our clients and freelancer base?”
The answers didn’t come overnight. It was mostly trial and error—learning step-by-step and experimenting with ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and other models.
Our team finally settled on adopting Google Gemini as our main AI tool. Why? Because Big Ideas is fully integrated into the Google Workspace ecosystem. Our business emails operate on Gmail with our own custom domain (@bigideasph.com), and everyone is accustomed to Google Calendar, Google Tasks, and Google Meet (we rarely use Zoom or Teams).
It started with learning to prompt and I would often share videos or content to my team so they could learn prompting in their own time. But nothing beats ACTUAL EXPERIENCE. After prompting, it was time to set up simple agents via Google Gemini Gems as Zapier and N8N seemed daunting to us.
In 2023, Google rebranded “Bard” to Gemini as their core multimodal model brand. Since we are on a Google Workspace Enterprise plan, everyone with a @bigideasph.com account (our internal team) received built-in access to Gemini Pro! This resulted in significant cost savings, as we didn’t need to pay for separate third-party AI subscriptions. Since we’re a paying Google Enterprise business, everyone with the @bigideasph.com account (my internal team) had Gemini Pro built in! This saved us a lot of money since we didn’t have to pay for separate subscriptions for ChatGPT, for example.
After dabbling with Gems and slowly integrating prompting into our workflow, it was time to look into our business processes as a whole. Time to identify the problems and plug in possible solutions.
For talent acquisition, we subscribed to Zoho Recruit—a leading ATS (Applicant Tracking System) with native AI features. We still leverage Gemini alongside our business development team’s custom prompts and workflows to evaluate, rank, and filter applicants efficiently. Tasks that used to take hours or days are now completed in a matter of minutes! Victory Point number one!
For our legal documentation and contracts, we ran existing templates through Gemini, which identified key inconsistencies and missing clauses. As a result, we updated our standard documentation—including BPO contracts, client-approved job descriptions, and hiring engagement forms.
Based on insights from Gemini, we revised our process for reviewing timesheets. Instead of waiting for freelancers to manually check individual sheets, we transitioned to a “Locked FYI Negative Approval” framework. This structural change saved us days in processing time and eliminated disbursement delays since late 2025! Victory Point number two!
Additionally, I tasked our Head of Finance to take the lead on automating payday cash voucher distribution. What used to require manually drafting individual emails to hundreds of freelancers now takes only a few minutes, powered by simple automated checks and a click of a button!
For marketing, Gemini and ChatGPT assist us in generating blog content, social media messaging, and visual ideas on a consistent schedule. It even helped us build a dedicated landing page in under an hour: https://accountantsfromthephilippines.com/. We have also incorporated tools like Google Pomelli to serve as our virtual digital marketing assistant.
Another operational challenge was conducting market research to compare local compensation in the Philippines against equivalent US roles. Demonstrating this comparative data helps potential clients visualize their cost savings when outsourcing to us. Previously, gathering this information required days of manual web scraping and job board analysis. Now, using Google NotebookLM combined with custom Gemini Gems, we can input prompts and instantly generate structured salary insights across Entry, Mid, and Senior tiers.
The next phase was analyzing our broader operational workflows to identify tasks suitable for automation. Through iterative testing, we established semi-automated workflows powered by Gemini for drafting contracts, writing job descriptions, tracking KPIs, managing invoicing, and streamlining payroll.
Payroll was our primary focus since delayed client payments and processing bottlenecks are major sources of cash flow friction in the BPO sector. Reducing processing time from days to hours has enabled us to collect and disburse payments faster and more reliably than ever before.
To close, integrating AI into our operations was never about replacing the human element that makes our business special—it was about augmenting our team’s potential and removing administrative friction so we could focus on driving real value. For other SMEs contemplating their own AI transition, my advice is simple: start small, experiment continuously, and stay curious. You don’t need to overhaul everything overnight; taking that first step to learn and adapt will fundamentally reshape what your team is capable of achieving.
Thank you for your time!
MON MACUTAY
President and CEO
Big Ideas PH
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