AT&T TAPS SKILLED WORKFORCE IN SLOVAKIA
ONE of the world’s largest communication companies, AT&T, began its operations in Slovakia in 2002 with the objective of supporting a range of global customers across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Slovakia turned to be capable of providing the right economic and regulatory environment and was open to direct foreign investment.
“Slovakia also has a well-educated, highly skilled, highly motivated and flexible workforce,” AT&T Global Network Services Slovakia General Manager Gabriel Galgóci told The Slovak Spectator. “This has provided a stable environment for AT&T to develop its business.”
The company formerly known as the American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation was founded in 1875. Currently it offers voice coverage in more than 225 countries, data roaming in more than 210 countries with 3G in more than 170 countries, according to its webpage. It employs around 242,000 people, Forbes Slovakia reported in mid 2013.
AT&T opened three centres in Bratislava and one in Košice focused on sales, service management, service delivery, and service assurance. The centres in Bratislava have evolved to be part of AT&T’s Worldwide Customer Service Centre, which is a network of centres in locations such as Singapore, the UK, Australia, and Japan, as well as the United States. The Košice centre, which was subject of company’s latest expansion in Slovakia in 2013, specialises in router configuration, network engineering and supply management.
The company started operations in Bratislava with a small team of a dozen employees 13 years ago, and expanded gradually, added new types of work. In 2014, AT&T had a workforce of more than 3,000 people in Slovakia helping to support its global clients, according to Galgóci.
“The scope of our business requires a well–educated, motivated and skilled workforce,” Galgóci said, adding that AT&T employees in Slovakia specialise in project management, network design and engineering, supply management and finance, providing added value services and complex solutions for global clients.
IBM IN BRATISLAVA BY COINCIDENCE
The American multinational technology and consulting corporation IBM has been actively operating in Slovakia since 1990. In 2003, it opened its shared service centre in Bratislava partially because of its close geographical position to Vienna.
“Locality persuaded the IBM leadership because Bratislava was very close to the IBM managerial centre in Vienna,” Branislav Kohl, the head of the marketing department at IBM in Slovakia told The Slovak Spectator. “Therefore, the fact that Bratislava got a shared service centre of IBM was partially caused by luck.”
IBM was incorporated in the state of New York on June 16, 1911 as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R). In 2013 its revenues reached $99.7 billion with its net income $16.4 billion. IBM employed 431,212 people worldwide in 2013, according to its webpage.
Since 2003 Bratislava has improved in the eyes of IBM, and provides good conditions for further development while whole country improved the quality of employees and became more attractive when Slovakia adopted the euro.
“This means that in comparison with the past, there is significantly more difficult and sophisticated work with added value done in shared service centre of IBM in Slovakia,” Kohl said. “This trend should continue in future.”
In 2007, IBM established a delivery centre in Košice with the aim to further support clients in Europe and opened new branch office of this centre in March 2014, according to the SITA newswire.
“We found great conditions for further growth in the Slovak market in Košice,” Martin Murgáč, the general manager of IBM Slovakia said as quoted by SITA in March 2014. “The city is interesting for us thanks to the sufficient amount of labour force, the structure of its colleges as well as its improving infrastructure.”
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