FORECASTING THE FUTURE

Without AI solutions, businesses will not be able to efficiently process and analyze the constantly growing stream of data of various types, collected from all possible channels. This will cause an increase in demand for professional data analysts, big data analysts, and AI experts. This will have a significant impact on the demand for IT specialists, not only in centers specializing in this type of service.

Experts from Grand View Research indicate that we began a more mature phase of development. Modern business services will become one of the most important elements of the Polish economy. Most likely, the sector in Poland will consolidate, but at the same time, it should grow by a third. Poland is still not among the players setting global trends. Much of our decisions are made elsewhere, but the gap that separates us from the global border is narrowing. It is anticipated that service centers can achieve success in line with the household appliances industry. We started with the simplest services competing with cheap labor. Currently, we are in the phase of rapid implementation of the most innovative services. Over the course of several years, Poland may become a country where these services will also be designed and tested (both in the business and technical layer).

WHY POLAND?

Currently, Poland is one of the best locations for companies in the sector in the world. The main advantages are the same time zone as most countries of Western Europe, a relatively large group of young and educated employees with good command of foreign languages, a large number of IT specialists, cultural and cognitive closeness to the clients served, and still lower remuneration rates. The high availability of office space in the business districts of large cities is also important. Poland in 2019 was offering 11 million sqm. It is the largest market in Central and Eastern Europe.

The Polish services market does not differ from the global market in terms of trends. Cloud technologies are clearly growing in importance. Simultaneously, the market need is the implementation of intelligent process automation solutions — robotization and the implementation of AI intelligence solutions. Moreover, the popularity of management dashboards — a tool used to present all important management KPIs in a single place — is growing. General data visualization is gaining popularity, allowing managers and clients to draw conclusions and allowing data to speak.

IT SERVICE CENTERS

There is a growing demand for programmers and a drop in the number of IT graduates. This is a trend since 2006. However, this is not a worrying phenomenon. It seems that more and more people interested in working in IT focus on experience and agile education. Formal education is losing out on practice and employers are clearly starting to accept this trend. Half of the IT specialists have no technical education. These are the conclusions of "Industry Balance of Human Capital in the IT sector" prepared by the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development (PARP) and Jagiellonian University on the basis of a survey conducted among 800 IT entrepreneurs and over 800 fifth-year students from 50 best IT faculties from all over Poland. At the same time, employers receive more and more applications from graduates of alternative schools, including programming boot camps. And as it turns out, the lack of completed technical studies does not prevent their chances of finding a job as an IT specialist. Randstad shows that almost 30% of IT candidates are graduates of various industry courses, including graduates of programming schools. Moreover, 90% of people applying for employment in IT have a university degree, only half (54%) have completed technical faculties, such as, for example, IT, robotics, or automation. Looking at the market demand, this is more of an advantage than a disadvantage. The most desired are IT specialists with soft skills, who will be able to translate the customer's problem into the most effective solution and code it.

We successfully fill the gap in the labor market by recruiting specialists from abroad. "Poland. Business Harbour" is a government program that makes it easier for IT specialists to relocate to Poland. It is estimated that approximately 7% of the entire Belarusian IT sector has already moved to our country. The program was developed by the government in collaboration with over a hundred companies. It also includes facilitation in the migration procedure and relocation of companies. After the successful implementation for Belarus now it is aimed also at citizens of Armenia, Georgia, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine.

In order to show how much potential we are talking about, it is worth pointing out that in 2019, the IT sector was responsible for almost half of the GDP growth in Belarus, and companies associated with only Minsk Hi-Tech Park exported goods and services worth nearly $1.5 billion. 

IN BUSINESS SERVICES CENTERS (BSC) IN POLAND — FACTS:

In recent years, business services have become one of the specializations of the Polish economy.

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 In Q1 2020, over 1,500 centers from the business services sector operated in Poland, employing a total of 338,000 people (10% more than in the previous year).

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According to the ABSL report "Business Services Sector in Poland 2020" foreign centers dominated among new investments (64.2%), while 66% of BSCs belonged to foreign companies.

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Most foreign service centers come from the US (20.1%), Scandinavian countries (9.5%), Germany (7.7%), and the UK (7.6%).

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Regardless of the origin of the capital, investors clearly prefer the most important cities — Warsaw, Kraków, and Wrocław.

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The importance of this sector for the economy is evidenced by the fact that there are 95 Fortune Global 500 companies with BSCs in Poland and the sector employs 5.2% of employees in the total enterprise sector in Poland.

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We have more than 60 BSCs with the employment of at least 1,000 people.

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The most common type of center in the ABSL database is IT (46.5%). Next are SSC/GBS (23.9%) and BPO (15.5%). R&D is 12.5% of the total number. Hybrid centers have the smallest share — 1.7%.

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Although IT business centers dominate in Poland, they employ only 31.2% of people in the sector. Most jobs were created in SSC/GBS centers (35.4%), BPO and R&D are 11.6% and 17.7% respectively.

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The biggest groups of foreigners working in Polish BSCs are Ukrainians, Italians, and Spanish. The proportions of the share of foreigners and individual national groups have not changed for several years.

Przemysław Ruchlicki

Established in 1990, the Polish Chamber of Commerce (KIG) states that it is “the largest independent business organization in Poland.” In KIG, Przemysław Ruchlicki takes part in consultations on draft laws and regulations regarding commercial and tax law.