Post financial crisis, there is a resurgence of interest in Central & Eastern Europe (CEE) by Western European businesses. With nearshoring you are offshoring close to home. Interest in CEE is stimulated not only by cost advantages relative to Western European economies and the close alignment of timezones, but also by the capabilities of CEE countries which offer the major European languages as well as an educated skills base able to successfully incorporate “next-generation” offshoring models.
Contact-intensive processes are more customer oriented than traditional transactional outsourcing and offshoring (O&O) functions. They require different skills: languages, cultural understanding, and importantly time-zones closer to where the customer is.
There is evidence that CEE is becoming popular as international enterprises pool new multi-lingual functions and adopt increasingly global service models. 30% of the top 100 global outsourcing companies are already in the CEE region, suggesting growth potential for the rest. CEE is also ranked ahead of other globally competitive O&O regions according to the World Bank’s ‘Ease of Doing Business’ rankings (Colliers International).
In order to evolve with our international customers, we have expanded our SIP Trunking services – Colt VoIP Access – beyond the 13 western European countries in which we currently operate into Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Luxembourg, Norway, Finland….and now Japan. For more than 40 years, North American and European studios have maintained offshore video production facilities in countries like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan. Now Japanese companies are also starting to outsource to China, where large numbers of Japanese speakers can be found – so this is another area we will watch closely.
Businesses are exploring how to unlock this potential while achieving cost efficiency through integrating their voice infrastructure around a centralised IP Telephony architecture. Colt VoIP Access enables disaster recovery, fraud management and voice security over multiple connectivity options, while allowing businesses to seamlessly transition from legacy telephony to VoIP with services that include porting in all countries as well as a comprehensive feature set.
The ability to consolidate the service delivery physically and remove the need to manage multiple remote suppliers considerably reduces the costs of procurement and provisioning. Moreover, by easily deploying an application in a portfolio of integrated communication services – teams in far flung countries suddenly come together to work and collaborate.
SIP Trunking is inherently beneficial for enterprises to provide optimal flexibility and maximum availability compared to the lock-in of legacy systems. Customers can enjoy native IP applications seamlessly without additional investments in hardware platforms and peripheral equipment. But the most compelling benefits come to international businesses with offices located in multiple countries. The opportunity to centralize voice on a global scale both in terms of infrastructure and procurement achieves the greatest possible cost savings and business flexibility – and isn’t that what we are all seeking?
Make Do
25 April 2016
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