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Why Romania needs to be on your outsourcing (BPO) list
Perhaps most famous as the home of Dracula, Romania is much more than fictional characters and ancient architecture. In addition to a rich history, the country has a growing reputation as an ideal outsourcing destination.
Thanks to the country’s abundance of professional, multilingual and highly-skilled labor as well as its cultural proximity to Western Europe, Romania has been climbing the ranks of preferred outsourcing hubs for European and North American companies in recent years. But let’s take a closer look as to what makes it such a great business process outsourcing (BPO) destination.
Why Romania?
A few quick reasons:
- Geographical (1-2 hour flights) and cultural (business ethics) proximity to Western Europe facilitating close relationships with clients compared to offshore locations
- Strong aptitude for multilingual skills
- A growing population of IT professionals
- Knowledgeable and experienced IT workforce
- Academic readiness to support talent pool continuity
- EU member state, reducing legal and financial concerns
- Political and economic stability
The right price-quality ratio
Although it is not the lowest cost destination, Romania’s very capable labor force combined, with its technical and soft skills proficiency, make the country very cost competitive. Investors have even labeled Romania as an “outsourcing valley” for BPO, IT oursourcing (ITO), software development, research programs, knowledge process outsourcing operations and shared services. It’s no wonder that the volume of foreign investment and the presence of tech giants has quadrupled in the country over the last decade, according to Romania-Insider.com.
Large multilingual talent pool
The country’s sizable and multilingual labor force and student body are among the main lures for international companies looking to outsource their customer experience (CX) operations.
The labor force employed in Romania’s outsourcing sector has increased from 15,000 employees recorded in 2007 to over 131,000 employees today. In fact, the industry employs 1.5% of Romania’s population, according to the annual report of the Romanian Business Service Leaders’ Association (ABSL). And it is expected to continue growing — thanks to the approximately 300 companies operating in the sector and a flow of university graduates from over 40 technical universities.
The diverse linguistic profile also makes Romania especially attractive for organizations that have a global reach. Romanians are known internationally for their strong aptitude for speaking European languages, primarily English, followed by French, Italian, Spanish and German. It’s estimated that one in five Romanians speak multiple languages. Then there’s technical languages — due to the prominence of outsourcing in IT support, fintech and web development, fluency in JavaScript, Java and PHP is common.
IT experience
When it comes to ITO, Romania has become a flourishing technology hub.
The diverse linguistic profile makes it especially attractive for BPO operations that require interaction with customers, while the large pool of IT professionals ensures best-in-class ITO engagements. According to Relevant Software, the IT industry in Romania has an annual growth rate of 14.3%, a number that is expected to double by 2025. This growth is supported by the country’s education system, which sees 7,500 new engineering and computer science professionals graduate each year (per N-iX).
Additionally, more than 70% of the IT outsourcing industry is currently controlled by significant foreign investors, which gives Romania a considerable advantage when it comes to reliability of its labor market, according to an ANIS (Employers’ Association of the Software and Services Industry) report on the Software and IT industry in Romania.
When you consider the emergence of Romania’s first high-tech unicorn, UiPath, and the successful presence of global high-tech companies such as Microsoft, IBM, P&G, HP, Oracle, Wipro, S&T, Accenture, WNS, Intel, as well as Luxoft, Ubisoft and Amazon, it is clear that Romania has a burgeoning IT community brimming with potential.
A preferred outsourcing hub
In summary, Romania holds its position as a home to more offshore and nearshore centers than any other Southeastern Europe country, thanks to its cost-quality balance, flourishing technology hub, and abundance of professional, multilingual talent.