The outsourcing industry has been one of the most rapidly developing sectors of the Bulgarian economy over the past years, which grew by 16 percent over the first 6 months of 2014. The near future looks bright as well. The outsourcing industry generates some 3 percent of this country’s GDP and branch data says that within 3 years it will mark a turnover of EUR 1 billion. Right now the scale is more modest and the 15 largest outsourcing companies, as ranked by the Capital Daily had a turnover of more than EUR 240 million last year, as their incomes grew by 13 percent. Nearly 11,000 people worked for that Top 15, out of all the 20,000 employed in the sector across the state.

Outsourcing means transferring of some activities of a company to another one – most often these are financial or accounting services, any HR, customer relations or software development. In a number of cases we are talking of the so-called call centers, providing international phone services, no matter the location. If a Spanish client of the US giant HP wants to ask a certain question on the products or services of the company, he may be actually calling its Sofia-based call center. There are dozens of such examples now, not only in Sofia, but also across other major cities and towns – Plovdiv, Veliko Tarnovo, Varna…

Global companies like Concentrix Corporation, IBM, TeleTech, Coca Cola, Adecco and many others have their outsourcing presence in Bulgaria. That is why the country is ranked among top outsourcing destinations globally. The prestigious AT Kearney consultant company ranks this country 9^th in the world and the only European state that makes it into Top 10. Bulgaria is one of the leading destinations in the region of Central and East Europe, with greatest potential to attract investors in the outsourcing of business processes. Sofia, Varna, Belgrade, Bucharest and the major Polish regional centers are among the top players on the market in this area and are perfect locations for the construction of new outsourcing centers, Colliers International, another famous analyst points out.

The reasons why the big ones in the branch opt for Bulgaria on the development of their business and high-tech services are different, varying from the superfast Internet to the modern and inexpensive offices, from human resources and low labor expenses to the country’s EU membership. CEOs say that the language skills of the Bulgarian employees are a major attracting force – services for external clients on dozens of foreign languages are covered from this country.

Outsourcing has a big growth potential here over the coming decade. If we succeed to present Bulgaria in the best way, we will manage to prove that our employees are really skilled and that we have the proper investment climate, the economy ministry points out. This is also confirmed by data, saying that less than 1/3 of the leading global companies in the sector are presented in the region for the moment and the main efforts for their attraction are yet to be seen…

English version: Zhivko Stanchev