BPO / SSC sector is growing. Warsaw is catching up with Cracow

22 December 2016

Among the 40 locations in Poland, where the BPO / SSC sector is developing, Warsaw has the largest number of modern business services centers. According to the latest data from the Polish Agency for Information and Foreign Investment, 160 shared service centers are currently operating on the Warsaw market. They employ 36 664 people. This gives the capital the first place in terms of the number of centers and the second, after Cracow, when it comes to the employment in this segment of the Polish market.

Warsaw is a globally recognized location, which continues to become more popular among the international companies form the modern business services sector. Wiktor Doktór, CEO of Pro Progressio foundation which is engaging in the development and promotion of the outsourcing sector in Poland, admits that Warsaw has always been and will continue to be on the list of preferred locations for BPO / SSC sector in the region of Central and Eastern Europe.

- Our capital has proved in the last two decades to be a large academic center, a city with great transport, full of modern office space, and all these factors are taken into account by investors in the sector of modern business services when planning and developing operating centers - explains Wiktor Doktór.

Warsaw's position is growing

Pro Progressio’s CEO emphasizes that Warsaw has long been one of the three Polish cities (apart from Cracow and Wroclaw) present on Tholons TOP 100 BPO locations. - Warsaw's position in the ranking is constantly growing. This year, the city was on the 25th place, on the fourth position among all the countries of the CEE region and the second place in Poland. And these are not just recommendations, because every year we can see great international organizations opening their offices in Warsaw - notes Wiktor Doktór.

Doktór admits that BPO / SSC sector is constantly growing and evolving. - On one hand we are witnessing a massive development of process automation, on the other hand the growing demand of companies to use more and more advanced processes, for example, analytical and financial services, which require work of experienced and properly trained personnel. It’s the latter that causes Warsaw to be more attractive in terms of investing. The city provides access to qualified human resources, which are the backbone of any operation center. Additionally, Warsaw has many office areas. The city in the past few years has built at least three areas where modern business services centers are developing, causing urban diversification of logistics and positive impact on the further development of sectors such as BPO, SSC, ITO, R & D, and even Call Contact Center – concludes Wiktor Doktór.

Servicing the largest financial institutions

Warsaw with the largest in the country access to qualified personnel and more than 5 million square meters of modern office space has the greatest capacity to attract new investors and tenants. Its advantage when it comes to the number of university graduates in Poland is a particularly important asset for companies from the modern business services sector. The agglomeration is an attractive location for foreign companies, mainly from the USA, UK, France, Germany, Scandinavia. Also, Swiss companies have recently begun to show more interest in our capital city.

In 2015 and at the beginning of this year such companies as Bain & Company, DLA Piper, F5 Networks, Groupon, KMD, Raya Contact Center, William Demant invested in Warsaw. Whereas Swiss bank Credit Suisse and Luxoft opted for reinvestment. US giant Goldman Sachs, who launched the facility in Warsaw in 2011 is currently redeveloping their Warsaw headquarters.

A significant number of the world's largest financial institutions and banks including, among others, UBS, ING, BNP Paribas, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Citibank, RBS, UniCredit, Santander and Nordea are getting their service in our country.

Such companies as Cola Poland Services, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Oriflame, Avon Global Shared Services, Pandora Jewelry Shared Services, Procter & Gamble, Roche Global IT Solutions Center, Schneider Electric, Siemens, and Xerox located their service centers in Warsaw.

Dedicated office projects

Bartłomiej Zagrodnik, CEO of Walter Herz observes that Warsaw real estate market benefits from the development of the modern business services sector. He gives an example of one of the largest office space lease agreements concluded by the company from BPO / SSC sector, signed last year by Samsung for approx. 22 thousand sq m in Warsaw Spire. -  Last year, Warsaw office market saw concluded leases for a record number of more than 830 thousand sq m of space, which was leased mainly by companies in the broadly defined service sector, IT, communication industry and banking - says Bartłomiej Zagrodnik.

- Forecasts saying that Warsaw will include more and more BPO / SSC projects enable a lot of investments currently under construction to be directed to tenants from this sector. Today Warsaw market offers a large selection of modern office space.  Around 700 thousand sq m offices is currently under construction in the agglomeration – says Walter Herz CEO.

PAIIZ report also confirms that the Masovian province attracts the largest number of foreign investors. The agency acknowledged Masovia as a national leader in terms of investment appeal of provinces in 2015. It is largely thanks to Warsaw, with its central location, good transportation in the country and with Europe, due to the airport operating half of the passenger traffic in Poland, and also the highest GDP per capita in the country, high performance and numerous universities and research centers. PAIIZ also chose the so called sectors of high opportunities, pointing to the food industry, construction sector and modern business services sector BPO, as the most promising.

A global leader in outsourcing 

According to ABSL, foreign service centers operating in Poland increased employment in 2015 by 25 per cent. Not only savings have been the incentive to seek outsourcing providers in our country. International companies are now mainly looking on the Polish market for partners, who are holders of high competence and extensive knowledge, who can suggest the best solution. Polish specialty has become a service for companies in the financial services and accounting as well as IT outsourcing.

If we manage to attract further projects to our county and take over the advanced processes which are provided mainly for financial institutions and international investment funds, Poland would become a global provider of outsourcing, especially in the field of accounting and financial controlling.

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