Nominations have opened for the prestigious Romanian Business Services Forum & Awards. The 2019 awards will continue to recognize and reinforce the important contribution made by business services professionals and organizations to the Romanian economy growth.

Outsourcing Today, the integrated communication platform of for the business services sector, together with The Diplomat-Bucharest, kick off the autumn series of events on October 18, at Caro Hotel Bucharest, with the fourth edition of People in Shared Services and Outsourcing Forum.

In terms of development of business shared industry in Romania, the industry might face a need of doubling the current pool of employees, estimated now at roughly over 120.000 people, according to number estimations of ABSL- The Association of Business Service Leaders in Romania. The need should be put in the context of 400.000 graduates from the academic institutions.

How to stay relevant in the economy: Fast adjusting to continuous change. The future characteristics of the workforce in the context of digital transformation, automation and data revolution are deeply impacting how companies now operate. Still, for industry companies, it is employees who are most important, because more than three quarters of the players on the market are planning to increase employment on the short term.

The discussions in the panel of this summer's OT Learning and Development's roundtable underlined the necessity of providing the learning and the knowledge transfer when the necessity occurs, customized and applicable on each type of job and professional individuality.

Vivek Bakshi, the General Manager of International Operations (Europe) at Wipro Technologies has spent more than a decade in Romania, heading the Wipro's International Locations/ Delivery Centers Europe from Bucharest.

According to Ciprian Dan, Location Head at Wipro BPS, the language skills have not ceased to remain one of the competitive advantages for our market but to relate to this advantage as the sole plus is risky on the long term.

Currently, according to companies operating in outsourcing and business shared services in Romania, there is an intense discussion regarding the availability of prepared workforce in the industry. Even if the companies in outsourcing are the most dynamic in terms of distribution and growth for the number of employees in the past years, the demand for professionals is high and the current offer of graduates doesn't seem to meet it.

Learn how to ensure the customer experience grows in tandem with your company's products and services

Discover the Millennial travel demands reshaping the industry and building brand loyalty in the process

Discover how artificial intelligence is helping contact centers deliver a more effective and engaging customer experience

Discover the essential building blocks of an effective data analytics implementation

Key Takeaways Speech analytics provides actionable data from voice-based customer interactions that can be used to improve service delivery. Improving the customer experience starts with an analysis of agent performance. Implementing speech analytics with a particular goal in mind, and staying focused on the objective, will increase the likelihood for success

Learn what key factors to consider before introducing chatbots to your customer service strategy

For a long time, the Nintendos, Segas and Sonys of the gaming world were king — but the rise of the smartphone opened the door to a new ruler: mobile games

Learn how fintech companies and traditional financial institutions are using an enhanced customer experience to capture the attention of Generation Z

Discover how cultivating a diverse workforce helps companies enhance their brand, attract top talent and deliver exceptional customer service

Learn four ways to deliver exceptional self-service player support to gamers

Key Takeaways • Google selected TELUS International as a customer support partner because of its strong employee retention, brand commitment and compatible culture. • TELUS International enjoys attrition rates well below industry average, and employee engagement scores exceed 80%. • As Google seeks continual feedback on products, TELUS International shares from its own experience

Key Takeaways

In an era of growing personalization and concierge support services, a European hotel chain is doing away with doormen, concierge, room service and even the little chocolates on your hotel room pillow

At a time when the airline industry has been plagued by one PR disaster after another, it may come as a surprise to learn that airline customer satisfaction has actually reached its highest level ever, according to JD Power

For many fast-growing technology companies, customer experience is at the heart of building a competitive advantage. And in the digital era, digitized customer support channels are absolutely key to delivering service that's comparable to larger and more established industry incumbents

There are just over 190 young tech companies in the world that are valued at more than $1 billion. But achieving ‘unicorn' status doesn't come without challenges. After all, the name describes a mythical and rarely caught creature

Building a corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy that truly impacts the vision and direction of a company can be a vital component of business success in the 21st century

This interview is from Issue 3 of Customers First magazine – sharing global insights on customer strategy and innovation in the travel and hospitality industry

Omnichannel is often described as the Holy Grail of customer service. By providing customers a seamless interaction at all touch points in their journey, contact centers transform from cost centers to revenue drivers, gaining impressive top-line growth and customer loyalty in the process

Whether a company is a start-up, an established brand or somewhere in between, Webit Festival Europe had something for everyone. One of the largest and most influential digital and technology events in Europe, this year's theme was ‘re: Inventing Europe's Future.'

Comparing financial technology (fintech) companies to legacy financial institutions can invoke an image of David and Goliath. Fintech firms may be small, particularly when compared to the established titans of banking and financial industries, but they're certainly fierce

Technology shapes the way we educate, communicate, conduct business and advance science, all while maintaining significant influence on the global economy. But the way we engage with technology is changing

The third issue of our Customers First magazine is now available! The latest edition is all about travel and hospitality, featuring insights from industry experts and top brands like JetBlue, Turo, Joie de Vivre, Lux* Resorts and Hotels and more. Grab the PDF. Or read it online  Read Full article »

Romania delivers services in 25 languages with more than 100,000 specialists employed in the outsourcing industry and business services, and based on an estimated growth of 15-20 per cent, it is estimated to reach four to five per cent of the country's GDP by 2020. In short, this means that all community activists, educators, employers, parents, and graduates should already be prepared for this dynamic industry, one which is fully

For companies in the travel and hospitality industry, having an omnichannel strategy is becoming critical to compete in a complex market of both traditional and high-tech players

Personalization is no longer a gentle undercurrent for businesses looking to compete in today's fast-paced marketplace; it's more like a rip tide threatening to pull those who are too slow to adapt into an undertow

Modern technology has given us the ability to quantify almost every action, including those taking place in the contact center. By monitoring and measuring business activities, companies have a greater ability to control costs, manage their workforce and ensure an exceptional customer experience in every interaction

Flight delays. Booking or check-in problems. Regional, cultural and linguistic differences. The travel and hospitality business can be a perfect storm for contact centers offering both added challenges and unique opportunities

From airline bookings, to hotel check-out, to the various customer service interactions that take place along the way, few industries have as many customer touch points — and expansive customer data — as the travel and hospitality business

In order to scale business efficiently, fast-growing companies need to be agile and smart with time and resources

Leonardo Inghilleri literally wrote the book on customer service in the hospitality industry - and an international bestseller at that.

With the number of seniors expected to reach 20.9 percent of the population by 2020, call centers are being increasingly confronted with the challenges of serving an aging population.

When properly planned, outsourcing your customer support can bring a boost to your business. It can help expand operations, reduce costs and even improve customer relationships

Success can happen fast in the tech world. Six years ago, Snapchat was just a young start-up that made a time-sensitive messaging platform. Now it's valued at $20 billion

The following contains excerpts from TELUS International's white paper "The workhorse of the contact center: Optimizing email for the modern customer service environment." Download the free paper to find out how to make the most of your email support program

Industry research is apt to say we're on the cusp of a future full of "smart" devices — that is, billions of everyday items embedded with wireless internet connectivity

There's a seemingly infinite number of mobile and desktop fintech applications that have hit the market over the past couple of years, offering platforms that run the gamut of financial services — promising better wealth management, smarter investing, lower interest rates and management fees, easier charitable donations, peer-to-peer payments and more

When you think of contact center outsourcing, what's the first image that comes to mind? Chances are, it's one of those shiny stock photos of smiling agents talking on headset-style phones.

With advancing technology and increasing customer expectations, it's getting harder and harder for traditional banks and financial planners to stand out from the crowd in the minds of consumers

For most of its 60-year history, the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) has been limited to science fiction movies.

Measuring the impact that your social media interactions are having on your business — and your bottom line — can be a tricky endeavor. How can you really identify and quantify whether a particular social media encounter has been successful?

Imagine this common scenario: A dissatisfied customer takes to social media to complain about receiving terrible customer service from a brand

While Asia and Latin America remain strong outsourcing options, Eastern Europe is on the rise as a luring outsourcing region with its attractive combination of infrastructure access, strong connectivity, an educated talent pool and tremendous multilingual capabilities. It's no wonder Bulgaria and Ro

Optima Call's journey started in October 2010 with an enthusiastic and experienced team. Now the Bucharest-based company expanded to Iasi and plans to grow exponentially the personnel figure at their new office, tells Outsourcing Today the general manager of Optima.

The customer relationship has changed considerably over the years thanks to evolving economical, technological and societal influences.

Companies such as Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys and Wipro will move from a strategy-based on high headcount and low costs to one reliant on higher employee costs and flexible services due to automation, writes Financial Times.

Global Remote Services (GRS) will invest into growing its personnel from 400 to 600 people in its business process outsourcing (BPO) and contact centres, says Cosmin Raducu-Efrim, general manager of the company.

While Deutsche Bank's tech division came to town, local companies fear it for its ability to drag in new employment, sources say. And its exponential growth will continue, confirms Marian V. Popa, head of DB Global Technology, Bucharest.

While Bosch sells equipment and electronics, it also developed a BPO center in Timisoara, an R&D center in Cluj and production units in Cluj and Blaj. Last year's investments reached about 40 million Euro, about 50% larger than 2014's levels, says Mihai Boldijar, Bosch's chief of operations for Romania.

ABSL's newest Business Mixer in Cluj will take place on June 2, further details below.

For the eleventh consecutive year, Accenture has been named to the 2016 Global Outsourcing 100 list by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP). The Global Outsourcing 100 is an annual listing of the world's best outsourcing service providers.

After spending 18 months in Romania, Philippe Garcet, CEO of local Société Générale European Business Services (SG EBS) visited "extraordinary landscapes and extremely friendly people," he tells OT.

Time. Money. Energy. When you're investing significant resources into your Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) relationship, you want to ensure you're getting the most value from that partnership.

Stefanini Romania, local subsidiary of the Brazilian company Stefanini – one of the leading global players in the outsourcing of IT services, has opened a new support center in Targu Mures, which is the third in Romania, after those in Bucharest and Sibiu.

New industry standards change the corporate service mentality from being proactive to being predictive. And growing 15-20 per cent each year may mean expanding local activity to a smaller city as well, Liam Coffey, Ericsson's vice president and head of Global Services Support Center Romania tells Outsourcing Today.

"The business process outsourcing and shared services industry benefits from the fastest growing trend that Romania ever witnessed", says Shibu Nambiar, COO Europe, Latin America and Africa.

Romania's business services industry has more than 80,000 employees and contractors, while Iasi is estimated to employ more than 8,000 people, Florin Grama, the president of the Association of Business Service Leaders (ABSL) in Romania, stated during the first conference dedicated to the services branch in Iasi, "Iasi Business Mixer: The Northern Star of Business Services," quoted by the

How to best measure customer satisfaction remains a hot topic in the field of customer relationship management, writes Gregoire Vigroux, marketing director Europe, Telus International.

If you're a Swiss private bank client, or a premium car phone and PC system user, most likely your account is managed through Luxoft's Romanian team of expert's designed applications.

SCC Services Romania started activity in 2006, with a team of just 24 people. Now it has about 1,000 and by 2018 about 30% more will join its team.

Société Générale European Business Services (the business outsourcing division) expanded its HQs in H2 building of West Gate business park, owned by Genesis Development, and plans to grow its personnel by about 60% by year-end.

In 2015, the volume of office rental transactions except the Capital rose to a total area of 49,661 sqm, 32% more than in 2014, an Esop release reveals.

Romania ranks as third most attractive country to outsource to, according to A.T. Kearney's Service Location Index quoted by Telus.

Global Remote Services (GRS) will invest into growing its personnel from 400 to 600 people into its business process outsourcing (BPO) and contact center, Cosmin Raducu-Efrim, general manager of GRS, told Outsourcing Today.

IDC, one of the biggest such research firms, was early in identifying the shift to what it calls the "third platform". The first platform for IT was the mainframe computer—a big, centralised processor with lots of dumb terminals connected to it.

Xerox is relocating its current customer care center to a larger a facility and will recruit about 40 agents by the end of 2016.

French group Webhelp expands its local activities with its sixth customer center in Iasi with an investment that will get up to 800,000 euro by year-end.

After naming former TCS veteran Abidali Neemuchwala as its new chief executive officer (CEO), India's third largest software exporter Wipro has appointed Bhanumurthy BM as its new chief operating officer.

As traditional software outsourcing evolves, cloud service management brings new challenges for organizations.

About 22% of business process services (BPS) managers think that automation will completely transform their business, while 41% of them say it will "make a big difference," says a study.

About 52% of managers see the providers of business services as "a great vehicle to drive down costs and improve efficiencies," and only 28% see them as " a vital partner that plugs critical gaps in term of skills, global scale, domain knowledge and technology," according to a new HfS study.

There are several BPO providers who have come to realise the value of being able to mine out useful information from the huge volumes of transactional data they handle every day. In the long run, the quality of services provided by a BPO can be greatly differentiated using predictive analysis.

The amazing less than 1% real unemployment rate in Timisoara is owed to foreign direct but also local investments.

In the 1990s, the industry used different buzzwords than it does today, and this language shift reflects the changing priorities for outsourcing pros. Today, enterprises are shifting away from thinking about outsourcing as a purely financial decision and increasingly considering it to be part of a business strategy critical to their success.

Romania's North-East business process services (BPS) and the IT sector will grow about 10% each year, from 8,000 employees today to 30,000 employees in 2030, says a study by API (Aceess Process Investment) for Euronest. Iasi is the largest city, with 6,000 employees in 40 office buildings.

BP has revamped its outsourcing strategy and expanded the multi-million dollar contract with Wipro, sources close to the industry told The Economic Times India.

Timisoara is very close to Western Europe and has an important, unsaturated talent pool, say leaders of the Association of Business Services Leaders (ABSL).

The fact that businesses require increasingly globalized outsourcing solutions is beyond question. These days, some companies are "born global", others achieve globalism or have globalism thrust upon them.

Romanian and international business services leaders say automation is only here to help, to upscale the human work and to ensure progress. As most of the industry's repetitive processes will be replaced by top-shelf software programs, called either robots or 'cobots', the face of the industry as we know it will change, Bogdan Tudorache writes for Outsourcing Today

As Jacek Levernes, president of the board of the Association of Business Services Leaders (ABSL) and leader of the organization in Poland and other business services industry leaders promoted Romania in their recent business tour to New York, major investors with assets worth billions of dollars talked about their Central and Eastern Europe positive experiences.

The share of services offered by CEE (dubbed by Everest “nearshore Europe”) in the outsourced services segment is “definitely increasing” says Rupert Hunte, client director, Everest Group.

A shining star or not, Romanian outsourced services industry starts to grip in the developed cities: there’s no more talent to hire.

Company: Our client is a global technology company that have developed online products and sewrvices for the corporate and consumer markets.

Players engaged in business process outsourcing (BPO) in healthcare sector in India are facing stiff competition from their Filipino counterparts, according to a recent joint study.

Poland is not only limited to Warsaw or Cracow when the locations for middle sized BPO and SSC centers is considered. Among many attractive locations, the town of Czestochowa is ready to support the business services sector in further growth in Poland, writes outsourcingportal.pl.

As the business services industry seems to be racing with double-digit growth year on year, BPO players try not get left behind. New entries show up, young companies expand their business in second- and third-tier cities, planning to hire hundreds of people, while veterans shift the focus towards more complex services. Alexandra Lopotaru interviewed BPO leaders to see how far they want to go

Within a developing yet solid market where the necessary factors are on the table - investors, strong academic life, work force, skills and private companies operating countrywide - it seems that the evolution

DCA Romania, the company's top five largest debt brokers in the country, opened in October its first call center outside Bucharest, the company announced in a press release.

Telekom Romania announces the opening in Braila of BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) centre dedicated to companies that need such services and which prefer to rely on a professional and experienced provider

Stefanini Romania increased its net turnover by 13.5 per cent last year, to 38.8 million Euro. The company has also seen an important 12 per cent growth at EMEA level last year, where it registered revenues of

During the 6th annual TELUS Days of Giving in Romania, 250 TELUS International team members volunteered with their hearts and hands, in partnership for the first time with Habitat for Humanity, to build the Buf

The Business Service Leaders Association (ABSL) organizes on May 24, 2018, at Ramada Hotel in Iasi, the conference "How HR Practices evolve in a period of major changes in outsourcing Industry". The third editi

After the acquisition, mid-2017, and the successful integration of B2S (now Comdata France), the Comdata group signed, yesterday, an agreement on the acquisition of CCA International, the company says.

Amazon and Amazon Web Services (AWS) today officially opened a new Corporate Office and Technology Development Centre in Bucharest and announced the creation of more than 650 permanent, technology-focused and c

Scottish-based contact centre management provider Ascensos said it opened a new customer contact centre in Romania's capital Bucharest.

The merger between Velocity Partners, an innovative software development company with a strong presence in Latin America, and Endava, a global technology company with a sustained consistent growth and offices a

Nominations have opened for the prestigious Romanian Business Services Forum & Awards. The 2019 awards will continue to recognize and reinforce the important contribution made by business services professionals

Report by Association of International Certified Professional Accountants and Oracle shows that almost 90 per cent of finance teams do not have the skills to support digital transformation.

Bucharest is among the top cities boasting the most experts in the high-tech innovative industry, with over 70,000 current employees, next to London, Dublin, Madrid or Budapest, reads a study conducted by CBRE