BRATISLAVA remains attractive for shared services centres. This is confirmed by Deutsche Telekom’s plan to extend its existing shared services centre (SSC).
“It is definitively approved that the shared services centre we have here will grow,” Sven Erdmann, general director of Deutsche Telekom SSC said at HNkonferencie, an event organised by the Hospodárske Noviny economic daily.
Deutsche Telekom SSC, which is part of the group Deutsche Telekom, already employs about 350 people in Bratislava. Deutsche Telekom is the majority owner of one of the major telecom companies in Slovakia, Slovak Telekom.
“The current plans count on an increase to over 500 employees,” said Erdmann, as cited by Hospodárske Noviny on October 27. The recruitment of new employees will gradually start from the beginning of 2015.
According to Andrej Révay, the president of the Slovak Association of Finance and Treasury, Slovakia is interesting for several reasons.
“For example, for the quality labour force, locality, the euro, sound language skills and, last but not least, also for lower costs,” said Révay.
Contrary to IBM, which has obtained a subsidy of €1.6 million to build its shared services centre in Košice and employ 150 people here, the German company has not asked for governmental assistance. Regardless, as most shared services centres are in Bratislava, the state supports development outside Bratislava.
Shared services centres are one of the pillars of the trend of moving the economy towards services.
“We lost about 75,000 work positions in industry between 2008 and 2013; however, within services we added 47,000,” said Boris Fojtík, an analyst with Tatra Banka.