19.04.2019

Due to the planned exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union, global BPO companies use their Polish firms to attract new customers. As a result, more and more business comes to Poland, to the benefit of the outsourcing industry.

Poland is a country where service centers carrying out advanced business processes on behalf of other companies (business process outsourcing – BPO) are dynamically developing. In the 7N report¹  Poland has been classified in the top three in the nearshoring category, that is a location relatively close to Western Europe. Authors of the study draw attention, inter alia, to a high level of education and skills of Polish employees, knowledge of foreign languages and cultural proximity to the countries of Western Europe. According to ABSL, in 2018 BPO centers in Poland employed over 50,000 persons, which along with shared service centers (SSCs) totalled nearly 280,000 people².

“The situation of the outsourcing industry in the medium and long term will be affected by the final shape and date of Brexit. The volume of services provided in Poland is likely to increase in the long term, although there is still uncertainty resulting from the prolonged negotiations between the UK and the EU, which has recently been reinforced by the agreed postponement of the deadline for leaving European structures,” says Konrad Rochalski, President of ArchiDoc.

Communication between ArchiDoc and its customers shows that companies increase the scale of their operations in Poland or prepare for such a possibility. This is the case, for example, of the financial industry. It results from the fact that market regulators, for instance European Central Bank, take a reluctant approach to the companies which do not carry out actual operations in their subsidiaries located in the European Union.

On the other hand, international BPO companies which ArchiDoc cooperates with treat their operational centers in Poland as an asset. In the case of hard Brexit, they will be able to quickly increase the scale of operations carried out in our country.

“The British market may prove too small for local companies accustomed to operating on a global scale. They will look for a place in the European Union, which Poland is a part of. And there is much room for growth here. Brexit form and date will impact the number of companies increasing their presence in Poland. This should be to the benefit of the outsourcing industry,” concludes Konrad Rochalski, president of ArchiDoc.

¹ Executive Brief 2019 Outsourcing, www.7n.com
² Modern business services sector in Poland, 2018 www.absl.pl