Poland is the world’s second most popular location for companies to establish service centres, behind only India, a report by consulting firm Deloitte has found.
The consultancy surveyed companies in six industries – retail, energy, technology, healthcare, financial services and public services – about service centres, which are used by global firms to outsource tasks such as accounting, human resources and IT.
India and Poland were the most popular locations among respondents, followed by Mexico, the United States and Malaysia. The only other European countries in the top ten were Spain and Portugal, in 9th and 10th respectively.
Source: Deloitte’s “2023 Global Shared Services and Outsourcing Survey” report
Poland, along with Bulgaria, Ireland, Mexico and Malaysia, also noted some of the biggest percentage increases in terms of customer preferences compared to the 2021 edition of the survey, when Poland ranked third overall, said Deloitte.
Although the English version of the latest report was published in July, the Polish version, with additional commentary, was only released last week.
“Commonly, Poland’s advantages as a [service centre] location are considered to be: access to qualified experts, positive customer experiences, and being a member of the European Union, which gives comfort from the existing regulations on information security, cyber security and others,” writes Deloitte.
While cost reduction still remains a priority for companies looking into developing service centres, their role is changing, found Deloitte. “They are no longer just a back office for cost-effective transaction processing, but are gaining the status of business partners,” says the consultancy.
Visa has announced the creation of a global technology and product hub – its fifth such facility in the world – in Poland, creating 1,500 specialist jobs.
"Poland has highly qualified employees and a thriving IT sector,” says the firm https://t.co/1KjngNP7tU
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) May 23, 2023
Poland’s educated workforce, combined with wages that remain lower than in western Europe, has attracted a number of global companies in recent years.
Earlier this year, American payment giant Visa announced that it will create a technology and product hub in Poland that will employ 1,500 specialists.
Microsoft is investing $1 billion to locate its first data centre in the region in Warsaw and Google has pledged to make the city the “cloud capital of Europe” by establishing its biggest cloud technology development on the continent there.
Poland ranked fifth globally for the value of completely new foreign investments announced last year
With $24.3 billion of such greenfield projects announced, Poland was behind only the US, UK, China and Germany, according to @UNCTAD data https://t.co/XwlZgnZbNc
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) June 24, 2021
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Main image credit: Adrian Grycuk / Wikimedia (under CC BY-SA 3.0 PL DEED)
Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.
