Accent on jobs

Accenture, an international consulting company, is currently recruiting people to work in in its Business Process Offshoring (BPO) center that has been operating in Warsaw since March.

"We are looking at hiring several hundred people by August 2007 and based on client demand we will be able to accommodate over 1,000 seats in the center," Paweł Łobejko, Accenture's Warsaw BPO delivery center lead, told the WBJ. The Polish branch of Accenture currently employs 600 people around the country.

"Our experiences from the previous centers - those in Bratislava, Riga or Prague - show that the number of employees sometimes rises quicker than one could expect," Łobejko said.

However, he was reluctant to reveal the value of the company's investment in Warsaw.

"We don't reveal that kind of information. For us it's hard competitive data - both when it comes to costs and methods. It's for a reason that such centers aren't opened every day. But these of course are investments worth tens of millions of dollars," Łobejko says.

According to market speculation, the investment could be worth some zł.10 million in the first phase of development.

The center will render financial, accounting and HR services to Accenture's global customers.

"At the moment, all our clients are foreign companies but I believe that in the longer term, demand from Polish firms may also appear. This, of course, will be more difficult for us as we'll have to offer more competitive prices," Łobejko explained.