Since its inception, the Centre on Armed Groups (AGC) has operated as a decentralized organisation with experts based in Asia, Europe, and Africa, supported by a comprehensive back-office in the Philippines.

Like any start-up, the initial years required a high degree of flexibility, with structures, processes, and capacities gradually evolving alongside increasing funding streams and workload. During the first two years, Filipino accountants focused primarily on finance, accounting, grant management, and audit functions. Their services were invoiced on an hourly basis, enabling the Centre to maintain a lean and adaptable back-office structure rather than incurring substantial fixed costs from the outset. Despite its relatively modest operational scale, the Centre chose from the beginning to implement MS Dynamics Business Central, thereby leveraging advanced technology for its management systems.

As the organisation has now reached a more stable operational level, the Centre has transitioned to employing two full-time back-office staff in the Philippines. In addition to finance and accounting, these colleagues support administrative functions, human resources, and project management tasks.

The Centre’s management team highly values the contributions of its two colleagues in the Philippines, particularly their reliability, flexibility, consistently high-quality work, and their ability to adapt to the organisation’s evolving support needs.