| International corporations see Poland as an excellent location for transferring non-production functions of a company, such as the accounting department or call centres. Poland is becoming the European centre of modern Business Process Offshoring (BPO) services. |
Business Process Offshoring is the name given to a service sector in which international companies depute the realization of certain business support operations to foreign companies that offer lower running costs. Since 2005 investors can locate BPO resources in Special Economic Zones, which offer for example tax exemptions. In the near future alongside accountancy and financial services (back-office), the call centres (front-office) are expected to develop dynamically. Poland has the opportunity to be at the forefront of the direct foreign investments inflow to the BPO sector.
The following international corporations have already set up their BPO service centres in Poland:
- ABN AMRO (Warszawa),
- Accenture (£ód¼),
- AFS (Kraków),
- Ahold (Kraków),
- Atos Origin (Bydgoszcz),
- Avon (Warszawa),
- Arvato Services (Poznań),
- Bayer (Kraków),
- Cap Gemini Ernst & Young (Kraków),
- Citi Group (Olsztyn, Warszawa, £ód¼),
- Communication Factory (Kraków),
- CTM Teleperformance (Warszawa),
- Dimar (Warszawa),
- DHL Logistics (D±browa Górnicza)
- Electrolux (Kraków),
- Exult (Kraków),
- Fiat (Bielsko-Bia³a),
- General Electric (£ód¼),
- GlaxoSmithKline (Poznań),
- Hewlett - Packard (Warszawa, Wroc³aw),
- IBM (Kraków),
- Indesit (Kraków),
- KPMG (Kraków, Poznań),
- Lufthansa (Kraków),
- Philip Morris (Kraków),
- Philips (£ód¼),
- QAD (Wroc³aw),
- RR Donnelley (Kraków),
- Sitel (Warszawa),
- Tchibo (Warszawa),
- Teleca (£ód¼),
- Thomson (Warszawa),
- TNT Express (Warszawa)
- Transcom (Warszawa),
- Volvo (Wroc³aw).
Firms providing BPO services in Poland work mainly for big international companies and provide a broad range of services which include amongst others:
- IT systems,
- finance and accountancy,
- research and development,
- storage and warehouse logistics.
For example the Fiat car manufacturing company in Bielsko-Bia³a commissions the Business Solution Polska company to provide administrative and accountancy services. As a result of the need for such services, Business Solution Polska has been able to set up a new department, which now employs 85 people who process data for contractors from Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Belgium.
Polish companies also offer solutions in information and communication technologies. A good example is Biatel’s cooperation with western corporations. Biatel is a local company which has agreements with Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Oracle, Siemens, Dell and Nokia providing them with solutions in the area of: ICT, computer software, building of extensive networks, as well as wireless data transmission.
The launching of BPO centres has a significant impact on the development of the Polish labour market, since one new work place in this sector requires a relatively low outlay. It is estimated that 550 thousand people will find employment in the BPO sector by the end of the year 2010.
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