centres will still need accountants five years from now, but what they do and how they perform their assignments will change. (source: Unsplash )
New employees working in shared service and business service centres will need a different set of skills compared to their predecessors if they are to be successful in the future, experts in the sector have said.
While a decade ago, expert knowledge in a highly specialised field was highly sought, companies in the sector will in future be looking for a combination of soft and hard skills, the latter, for example, in finance or programming.
“This will provide a good base from which an employee can grow,” said Peter Rusiňák, coordinator of the Business Service Center Forum (BSCF) at AmCham Slovakia.
He added that centres will still need accountants five years from now, but what they do and how they perform their assignments, as well as the tools they use, will change going forward.
Jobs of the future
A data science hub at the Bratislava business services centre of insurance provider Swiss Re provides an example of the way ‘future jobs’ – those that will be important and become more prominent in the future – are being created.
“This hub did not exist five years ago, as data science was not very important to businesses at that time,” said Lucia Groneová, head of HR Slovakia at Swiss Re. “Today the work of the hub has a direct business impact.”
Scientists at the hub, which has grown from five employees to the current 50 over the last five years, produce data which is used to calculate the probability of a natural disaster in South America, for example. The data is fed directly into Swiss Re’s models, which are then priced, and used in work with insurance companies.
The hub is not providing just a support service, but is having a direct input into Swiss Re’s business.
Managers at centres admit it is difficult to predict exactly what jobs will be relevant in five years, and are therefore trying to create an environment in which they will be able to quickly meet any need for a new job or requirement from the parent company.
This is the case with battery producer Clarios, which has a business service centre in Slovakia where there has been a merging of IT specialists with, for example finance experts, into so-called business technologists.
“We have a development programme for our employees, within which we are educating suitable employees who then are able to create their own solutions,” said Roman Šustek, IT business partner at Clarios. “These people are then able to adapt much more quickly to new technologies.”
They also look for their employees to get used to constant reprofiling of their roles – something they expect to happen more quickly in future, especially with more extensive use of artificial intelligence.
“This does not mean that if somebody is an accountant, he or she will stop being an accountant, but instead that, with the advent of the new technologies, his or her job will simply change and overlap with others,” said Šustek.
Groneová noted that her company is always on the look-out for employees who, along with Slovak, can speak at least another two world languages, one of which must always be English, and who can also respond and adapt to change.
“We like to employ graduates of maths, physics or any analytical technical field who will then be taught our specific programmes,” she said.
“It is naive to think that if someone masters a certain programme, that just using that will be enough to allow him or her to earn a living for the next five years. He or she will have to have a combination of technical thinking and communication skills and English to be able to respond to new technologies that are being developed.”
Lucia Gogová, country HR partner at IBM in Slovakia, said jobs at IBM’s business centres are being transformed at the moment but that questions are being raised over what expertise employees will need or to what extent they will have to speak other languages given that AI technology already offers highly proficient translations and can provide other expert knowledge.
“Five years ago, we thought what would be important for HR within the next five years would be data analytics,” said Gogová, adding that today these can be carried out by AI. What HR experts need is to comprehend data the system puts out and work with it, she said.
“The situation is changing very dynamically. People would be better to adopt a mindset of looking where technology can help them to perform their current job.”
Cyber security and sustainability
Among the fields most commonly cited as areas for future jobs are cyber security, artificial intelligence, data science, customer experience, and sustainability.
“As a centre, if we don’t take an interest in sustainability, young potential employees will not consider working for us at all,” said Tomáš Polakovič, business analysis actuarial services lead at Zurich Competence Centre in Bratislava, adding that this is a trend the centre has already noticed.
Gogová agreed, adding that cyber security was an area whose importance would only grow in future, leading to the creation of many more jobs in the field.
“Data is already said to be the new currency,” Gogová told The Slovak Spectator. “Ensuring its security will be key.”
New jobs
Shared and business service centres in Slovakia have been creating a number of interesting new positions and looking for talent. Here is a selection:
IBM International Services Centre
Engagement Acceleration Leader: AI Our Client Engagement team creates and orchestrates a system of best-in-class experiences at every client touchpoint to generate a pipeline, attract new clients, and increase loyalty and retention. Innovation studios are focused on moving our clients and ecosystem partners from inspiration to action.
“We provide clients and partners with immersive experiences that help them see the power of IBM technology, explore options that work for their business, and then co-create alongside them,” said Lucia Gogová.
Innovation Studio professionals do this by working closely with the different IBM go-to-market teams like sales, client engineering, client success managers along with marketing, as well as leveraging IBM’s experts in the product management as well as IBM research and development teams.
Professionals within Innovation Studios have a mix of skills, from engagement leaders who design the experience to the engagement consultants who lead the actual engagement and co-creation.
“We also leverage technical skills to build proofs of concept that become the catalysts for new engagements,” said Gogová.
DXC Technology Slovakia s.r.o.
Internship hiring: “We have piloted an internship programme, where we engage students for a defined time to get in touch with the daily challenges of the IT market, with the vision of adjusting their studies with the technological domains in demand on the market and allowing them to graduate with relevant skills,” said Peter Mrázik, Slovakia Delivery Director.
Lenovo Slovakia & Lenovo Global Technology Slovakia
The ESG Audit & Due Diligence Engineer is responsible for globally managing Lenovo’s corporate level ESG (Environmental, Social & Governance) audits program, and acts as the Global ESG team’s subject matter expert on supply chain due diligence requirements.
This role requires strong project management skills and a close collaboration with internal stakeholders and outside partners to ensure Lenovo’s strong response to customer ESG audit requests.
The role works closely with teams within our international sales organisation and infrastructure solutions group to understand customer audit requirements, and help ensure that Lenovo can support a positive result for the customer or other ESG audits. The role works closely with Supply Chain, Ethics and Compliance, and other teams to support strong supply chain due diligence programs, and assist in responding to customer and media inquiries on the topic.
Deutsche Telekom Services Europe Slovakia
AIS Scrum Master drives value creation by fostering agile collaboration, ensures project and team productivity, develops new use cases together with our customers and increases their AI awareness, specified Ján Jászberényi, Head of Marketing and Communication SK & CZ
Clarios Slovakia spol. s.r.o.
Account Financial Manager - Finance - Operations EMEA - This position supports operating earnings (OE) business in the EU.
“It is an expansion of our Hannover headquarter finance team,” said Juraj Barus, Global Director, Clarios Business Centers.
Main responsibilities and scope are to manage customer contracts with automotive industry, pricing analysis, sales support, financial analysis and profitability for EMEA OE business which is more than 25 percent of their sales.
Deutsche Telekom Systems Solutions Slovakia s.r.o. (IT Solutions, KE)
Lead Architect for EU IT Transformation - A unique job opportunity has emerged in 2023 for a Lead Architect in the field of EU IT, offering a chance to spearhead a transformative project.
The role involves overseeing the entire project, unifying business processes across the EU using cutting-edge technologies to provide customers with top-notch services. The primary objective is to establish a unified base of systems and processes, and streamlining the deployment of new products. The position requires expertise in standardising the current segment and portfolio.
Henkel Slovensko spol. s.r.o. - Global Business Solutions+ Bratislava
Supply Chain Analyst – Investment projects controlling
“The position is for an experienced professional with a complex, versatile skillset who effectively partner with our key stakeholders in steering financial and business performance, contributing to driving growth in Henkel,” said Zuzana Kaňuchová, head of corporate communications/spokesperson/crisis manager Central-East Europe cluster SK/CZ/HU.
The Business Controlling team support both business units of the company – Adhesive Technologies and Consumer Brands – at the global as well as regional level. In line with GBS+ global strategy, they also play a key role in streamlining business processes and establishing digital, self-service reporting solutions for an enhanced user experience, actively driving digital transformation across the organisation.
In this position, an employee regularly conducts exchanges with the Henkel Global Supply Chain team, based in Amsterdam, and cooperates with several stakeholders at regional level. They are primarily responsible for the provision of regular reporting and analysis of financial and business performance, in the areas of Investment and Productivity Controlling. This role allows to gain a full involvement in the management of major investment and productivity saving projects, playing a key role in the project gatekeeping and approval flows, cost/benefit calculations and post implementation audit reviews.
Accenture Advanced Technology Center and Intelligent Operations Center
We have dozens of positions open for various SAP experts and consultants, but we are also looking for experienced programmers and software engineers, or DevOps specialists and cloud engineers.
From Slovakia, we work with the latest technologies for leading local and global companies. We work with almost all major technology platforms such as SAP (including S/4HANA), Microsoft, Salesforce, ServiceNow or Oracle. We provide innovation to clients on more than 100 projects, with an emphasis on cloud technologies (AWS, Google Cloud Platform, MS Azure). We also work with the latest technologies such as GenAI, blockchain, biometrics, video analytics, or augmented reality, have nearly 70 top technical architects, and leverage Agile and DevOps.
