By ; WIKTOR DOKTÓR
BPO EXPERT, CEO OF PRO PROGRESSIO AND ONE OF THE MOST EXPERIENCED
OUTSOURCING PERSONALITY IN POLAND.
A week ago (June 4th, 2019) I was in Berlin at the conference
organized by the German Outsourcing Association (Deutscher Outsourcing
Verband). This is one of the few conferences in Germany, where both
the recipients of services from Germany and suppliers of such services
from different countries, meet in an intimate group of about 100
people.
I attend this conference every year and I have to tell you that every
time I find out there interesting things and meet no less interesting
people. Besides, I'm not the only one from Poland. Our country is
accompanied by a certain group of representatives, which this year
gathered both IT companies, BPO centers, and even the public sector.
But I will not write about it today. I will mention Egypt, who is
hungry for providing outsourcing services not only to Germany, but
also to other countries in Europe. Egypt, specifically ITIDA
(Information Technology Industry Development Agency) from Cairo, was
one of the main partners of this year's event in the German capital. I
had the opportunity to talk to Rolana Rashwan and Noha Tarek Shaaban,
who represented the Egyptian agency at a conference in Berlin.
Basically, the meeting like many others, I have the pleasure of
running during various events in the outsourcing industry, but here I
learned a few new things. In fact, these last months taught me a lot
about the perception of the size of the BSS industry in the world.
With some of the topics I agree, with some I discuss, and at the sight
of some data I smile a bit.
Okay, but let's get back to Egypt.
Did you know that from an outsourcing perspective, according to IDC
estimates, in Egypt the employment in the BSS sector is already at the
level of 212,000 people, and 2020 will bring 240,000 employees? Going
further and quoting the financial data from payscale.com - the average
annual salary of the software developer position in Egypt is 7,500 USD
- in comparison, in Poland, the amount of such remuneration is
estimated at around USD 24,000 per year.
Going further - there are now over 100 other countries served from
Egypt, and the service takes place in over 20 languages. In the number
of over 500,000 university graduates each year, up to 270,000
graduates completing courses related to modern business services and
IT services. Well, the scale is not surprising, in the end Egypt has a
population of over 100 million inhabitants.
The presence of Egypt's representatives in Berlin was not accidental.
Unlike outsourcing service providers from the CEE and SEE regions, the
Egyptians did not focus only on potential clients from Germany. Their
goal was also to focus on companies from Poland, Bulgaria, Romania and
our other neighbours, for whom Egyptian companies could be
subcontractors.
The same time zone, more than half lower costs, aggressive sales to
Western European countries ... well, it gives us things to be thought
over. There is always a question about quality, transfer of knowledge,
copyrights, international law, etc., etc., but it made me think a bit.
Will we work with Egyptian outsourcing companies? Perhaps. In the end,
we are already working with entities from India, the Philippines,
China and Ukraine
