This year’s report conducted by Jones Lang LaSalle, states that Romania is host of all types of outsourcing services, KPO, BPO/ SSC, R&D, call centers. In early stages, Romania was preferred destination for call center type of investment, but soon after, due to the availability of qualified work force, good command of foreign languages, excellent pool of university graduates, proximity to Western Europe, good air connectivity to rest of Europe, were the key drivers to additional shoring services in Romania.
At the end of 2012, JLL ranked Romania 9th as outsourcing destination by the number of jobs created by foreign investors in Europe. The report mentioned that between 2008 and 2012 a number of 40 outsourcing projects created 11,438 jobs in Romania. JLL mentioned as largest companies Evaluserve, Genpact as KPO centers (knowledge process outsourcing), Adobe, Freescale, IXIA, EA Games, Intel as R&D centers and HP, Endava, Genpact, IBM, Oracle, Wipro, Accenture, WNs as BPO centers. Most players opened at least one center in Romania and with few exceptions, they hire between 100 and 150 specialists, except call center operators that hire even more. In Europe, Romanian outsourcing market competes with countries as Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, Russia and Hungary.
FOLLOW THE STUDENTS: EAGER, SKILLED AND AFFORDABLE
The perfect mix between technology skills, multiple IT&C specialization and the availability of large university centers in Romania magnetize large companies as US outsourcing services provider Computer Generated Solutions (CGS). Besides Bucharest and Cluj, other major hubs in Romania are Timisoara, Iasi, Craiova and Brasov. All mentioned cities are also the selected destinations for BPO centers that have been opened either by large companies or by takes over of local companies. Many of Bucharest-based multinationals opened in the last years service centers around the university hubs in Romania, such as: HP, Wipro, Siemens, Bosch that have expanded in Timisoara, IBM's second center has opened up in Brasov, Capgemini set up offices in Iasi, XL World opened operations in Iasi, Bacau and Oradea. Cluj ranks in 100’s worldwide top destinations for outsourcing, with near 250 IT&C companies and an estimated pool for around 5,000 available software engineers. Since 2010, Cluj’s software market increased by almost 50 percent.
INCREASING PAYROLL OUTSOURCING MARKET
“Payroll outsourcing market in Romania has increased significantly in the last 5 years, starting at around 70.000 processed employees in 2007 and has reached around 150.000 processed employees in 2012. The number continued to grow in 2013, with an estimated 15% compared to last year”, Bogdan Badea, GM of Accace Romania recently said. According to Accace estimations, payroll outsourcing market has reached over 170.000 processed employees, an increase of around 15 percent in 2013 over previous years. In the last five years, this segment more than doubled as volume. The main reasons that led to this increase have been: data confidentiality at company level, cost reduction and the additional benefits offered by companies providing such services in payroll area. At local level, companies from various industries choose to outsource their payroll and personnel administration, but the less interested in such services are: public institutions, constructions and HoReCa.
In the last years, more and more companies have chosen to outsource the payroll operations, in order to reduce costs and minimize the risk associated with this data. However, according to a research conducted by PayOut Payroll Outsourcing, less than 10 percent of the overall Romanian companies outsourced the payroll and Hr services, while the European average exceeds 20 percent. In Belgium and Denmark, this value exceeds 50 percent. Following the company’s calculation, a company with 100 employees can save over EUR 3,500 yearly by outsourcing the payroll operations.
YOUR ROMANIAN SPECIALIST HERE, HOW MAY I HELP YOU?
The mock-up phrase might be heard right now in more than 200 call centers established in Romania, by smaller or larger companies. Among them, the largest is the US-headquartered CGS, with 3,000 employees in Romania and call centers at Bucharest, Sibiu and Brasov. They estimate the call center services market in Romania at EUR 230-240 million for this year, an increase of 20 percent over 2012. The demand for local workforce available and specialized for call center’s “Hello” come especially following the needs of US and Western Europe companies, CGS managers said. The clients come from all around the world but mostly, from US, North America and Middle East. For CGS’s local call center operations, most of their major outsourcing projects come from US. CGS has 7 years local presence in Romania, since 2002, when acquired Romanian company EasyCall.
The annual growth for Romanian call center market is estimated at a pace of 10-15 percent by business consultants of Frost and Sullivan. They also bet on the value of USD 22.5 million for the European contact center market by 2017.
EXPANSIONS AND NEW ENTRIES IN OUTSOURCING
At midyear, Xerox announced the expansion if its BPO services in Romania, following the increasing demand of European clients. The company will hire during this year 400 people to work in Xerox centers from Bucharest and Iasi. They said they would need both inexperienced young people as seniors in fields such as HR services, IT, financial and customer relations services. So far, Xerox expanded its BPO services for two offices based in Iasi, comprising customer care, IT, financial-accounting services, marketing and HR. The company plans to reach 1,500 employees in Iasi by year-end.
At the end of last year, Xerox opened its shared services center in Iasi, where it announced it planned to hire 500 people by the end of 2013. The company has already recruited 200 specialists for the center, and it plans to hire 300 more by the end of the year. At the beginning of this year, Polish call center services provider Telbridge leased 640 sqm of office space in Bucharest, marking its establishment on the Romanian market. The Poland based Telbridge specializes in outsourcing of sales processes in business-to-customer and business-to-business sectors.
