Shared Services & Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)
Lithuania offers excellent conditions for establishing and developing shared services, business process outsourcing and call centres. This sector of the country's economy has a truly significant potential for further growth.
Call centres in Lithuania provide Customer Relations Management (CRM) solutions for companies in a wide range of industry sectors and services and business information on a country-specific or international basis in a variety of languages.
The Lithuanian shared services and outsourcing market has significantly strengthened its global position in recent years. According to A.T. Kearney Global Services Location Index 2011, Lithuania has climbed up by seven levels to the 14th place globally, and is rated better than UK (16th), the US (18th), Hungary (31st), the Czech Republic (35th) and the neighboring Poland (24th).
With major multinational companies - Barclays Bank (UK), Western Union and Computer Sciences Corporation (US), Mirror Accounting (Norway), Ideal Invent Technologies (India), etc. - providing services in English, German, Russian, Polish and Scandinavian languages for the entire European market, Lithuania has emerged as the Northern European Service Hub.
Lithuania offers one of Europe’s most educated talent pool and a world's leading shared services infrastructure – the world’s second fastest upload Internet, one of the best-developed fiber broad-bands and fully implemented 4G mobile WiMAX technology, great supply of modern office space, etc.
Market observers forecast a further rapid growth in the sector - by 2015 the share of services exports should make approximately one third of Lithuania’s total exports. Similarly, it is expected that by 2012 a half of the total FDI in Lithuania will settle down in the services sector.
The sector's key companies include Barclays, Western Union, CITCO Group, MIRROR, Transcom, Storebrand, etc. For related success stories click here.
BARCLAYS – Barclays Bank (UK) established a Technical Support Centre in 2010 in the city of Vilnius. The company has already created almost 600 jobs. Barclays is a major global financial services provider engaged in retail banking, credit cards, corporate and investment banking and wealth management with an extensive international presence in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. With over 300 years of history and expertise in banking, Barclays operates in over 50 countries and employs 147,500 people worldwide.
The Western Union Company (NYSE: WU) – In May 2010 Colorado-based Western Union Financial Services (subsidiary of First Data), a payment transfer firm invested in the city of Vilnius and opened its Global Operations Center of Excellence in Lithuania. The centre in Vilnius is the third Global Operations Centre in the world. Within the first 6 months the company has already created 350 workplaces and is planning further expansion. Western Union has more than 410,000 agent locations in over 200 countries and territories around the world.