Winners 2014

Top Newcomer City - CEE

Lublin

New companies in Lublin during 2013:

• Sii – expected 105 new jobs
• Proama– 50 new jobs in 2013
• Alior Bank – 170 new jobs
• Sollers Consulting – 35 new jobs
• Soft System- 50 new jobs

New airport opened in early 2013 already having a major impact on inward investment, with direct connections to London, Dublin and Milan Malpensa.

Best City of the Year - Poland

Krakow

About 5,000 new jobs created in the sector in 2013. New investors: RWE, Zycko, XTRF, Samsung, Accenture, Deutsche Telekom, Anachron Technology, Amada Group, Lundbeck. Major expansions: ACC Lufthansa, Capita, Heineken, State Street, HSBC, and Motorola. Krakow is actively cooperating with universities, being a kind of intermediary between investors and the academic and scientific units. Krakow Advisory Board, the Agreement with Universities, Science-Business-Residents-Local Government Krakow Forum are examples of the opening of Krakow to initiatives related to the knowledge and technology transfer. It is also worth highlighting the Krakow Scientific Center, which seeks to identify skills demanded by companies operating in the BPO and IT industry and its secondary priority for such branches as energy, passive and energy-efficient buildings, life sciences, the pharmaceutical industry, and creative industries.

Best City of the Year - Rest of CEE

Vilnius

New Investors in 2013: Swedbank and Cowi. Major expansions by: Western Union and NFQ Solutions. All procedures are simplified for new investors; Tax system privileges; High qualification specialists, especially in the IT sector. Vilnius claims to have the most multilingual people in the EU.

Best Shared Services firm of the year

Citi Service Center Poland

In Poland, Citi Services is focused on: monitoring anti-money laundering, handling banking, securities and investment funds, settlement of claims and payments, processing control function and service infrastructure. CSC works with other Citi players from around the world, providing services to over 60 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, both Americas and Australia. Employees use more than 24 languages every day. CSC Poland operates in three locations: Warsaw, Łódź and Olsztyn. In Poland over 400 technology professionals provide critical technology infrastructure support, development and deployment of strategic software applications to Citi entities across the world. Employees projected at December 2014: 3250. Various productivity initiatives during the year which brought over 100 headcount saves. Another worth mentioning initiative is CitiWomen Network Poland which is one of our strongest diversity initiatives. During this year they organized over 20 different events, trainings, workshops and meeting with senior managers to create a pipeline of female talent.

Best BPO firm of the year - Poland

HP Global e-Business Operations

HP BPO Poland provides wide services from F&A, CRM and HRO areas. Employee rotation program; Talent program; Training program focused on accounting and soft skills; ACCA approved employer status; HP University CIMA courses (open to all HP); Training platform for management; Finance Ambassador program.

Best BPO firm of the year - Rest of CEE

Conectys (Romania)

Conectys has a strong Romanian presence. From its Bucharest contact centre, it delivers multicultural business process outsourcing and customer service support in more than 35 languages to more than 45 different global organisations. Conectys expects to employ 450 people by December 2014. The company offers specialist resources and services 24/7, servicing customers in every continent around the world. Conectys has delivery centers in Romania, Belgium and the Philippines. Conectys organises an annual collection amongst its employees, friends and relatives for a local orphanage. Arnold Cobbaert is the founder and CEO.

Best IT firm of the year - Poland

Atos IT Services

Clients include the International Olympic Committee and Renault. Atos is an international IT services company with 76000 employees in 47 countries. In Poland Atos employs nearly 2000 people in four cities Bydgoszcz, Warszawa, Wrocław, Gdańsk. It provides services for managing networks, servers, applications, projects and ITIL processes. Projected employee numbers at December 2014: 2150 - recruiting about 100 new candidates every month. Due to excellent performance and quality of services, the Atos Bydgoszcz branch was awarded as the most effective division within the world-wide Atos Group.

Best IT firm of the year - Rest of CEE

NFQ Solutions (Lithuania)

Based in Kaunas, Lithuania, NFQ Solutions provides E-business and software development with major focus on large scale e-commerce platforms, the travel market and meta search solutions. While NFQ receives around 75% of its revenue from services to foreign customers, the company is considered to be the godfather of Lithuanian e-commerce with more than 300 different projects launched in and around the country in the past 10 years. NFQ Academy, our free three month long series of lectures and workshops for students interested in software development, held its fourth semester last year. It was record breaking - more than 400 students applied for some 50 places at the Academy. A Java class was launched in addition to two PHP groups in Vilnius and Kaunas.

Most unique services provider - Poland

MULTIPOSTING

With offices in San Francisco and Paris, the Poland office is run by Jerome Lafuite. Clients include PWC, Accenture, and Michael Page. Multiposting in Poland gives the possibility to cross-post jobs and internships on 30 job boards and 100 universities. With one click, the companies using Multiposting can cross-post their jobs to more than 500 websites, 1,800 school job boards and the major social networks. It enables them to save precious time and widen their candidate sourcing perimeter (in Poland and abroad). Multiposting also brought innovation in the sourcing by giving its clients the possibility to source candidates with specific skills (IT skills for instance) on forums or Facebook communities (French speaking, for instance).

Most unique services provider - Rest of CEE

MANN+HUMMEL Service (Czech)

Richard Auer is Country Director for MANN+HUMMEL Service located in Nová Ves, Czech Republic, which provides shared services for MANN+HUMMEL Group´s entities worldwide for more than six years. M+H provides not just typical shared services in administration but also very special ones such as: Research&Development (R&D) - having own Research Center and Testing Laboratory, as well as Project Management in OEM development projects for the car and truck industry. We just opened our new test laboratory for fuel and air filtration and intake manifold testing. Over 180 qualified people in Accounting, Finance, IT, R&D, HR, Material Data Management, Project Management, Corporate Purchasing, Quality serving our internal customers in 27 entities in 20 countries in 11 different languages.

Best Employer of the Year - BPO

HP Global e-Business Operations

Benefits include:

• Medical package for Employees and their closest family
• Multisport card
• Life insurance package
• Happy Parenting program including childcare support
• Employee Assistance program – help in a difficult life situation
• Employee Purchase Program – possibility to buy HP product at preferred prices
• Free coffee, tea, sandwiches and fruit
• Modern offices in the city center
• Trainings, opportunity for personal development and advancement within the company
• Wellness Program
• Tickets to cinema and theatre

Also, portfolio Wellness – a series of initiatives for employees focused on financial matters, stress management and physical fitness. Typical events include: office massage, cooking days, health awareness days, sport events and tournaments, healthy snacks at preferred prices and many others.

Best Employer of the Year - Shared Services - Poland

State Street

Employees projected at December 2014: 2100. State Street Poland is now the 2nd largest office in Europe employing almost 2000 employees and providing the full range of investment servicing products including Investment Fund Accounting, Derivatives, Performance & Analytics and Hedge Fund Administration. The Krakow office administers more than USD 1.2 trillion in assets for 7500 investment funds and 200 clients. In addition to all the usual benefits offered in the local market, State Street has an extensive program of additional benefits including anniversary awards to recognise loyalty, additional vacation days with seniority, time off to participate in volunteering activities (CSR – related) and monthly team building lunches. The organisation promotes healthy living including fresh fruit supplies and an offer of Flex work arrangements including part time, work from home and sabbatical leave.
Additionally:

• Sponsored language courses
• Financial support for further education
• Full technical skills training curriculum
• A wide range of soft skills trainings
• Manager Development Programmes
• Mentoring & coaching programmes
• Job rotation programme

Best Employer of the Year - Shared Services - Rest of CEE

Western Union Processing (Lithuania)

Employees at December 2013: 996, including 34 different nationalities supporting 28 foreign languages. Western Union established a European Regional Operations Center (EUROC) in Vilnius in July 2010. It is one of four global operations centers located around the world. The facility, which also serves as a Centre of Excellence, hosts Anti Money Laundering Compliance, Accounting, IT, HR, Marketing and various other functions. Loyalty and engagement: EUROC is extremely proud of having significantly high recommendation and loyalty rates of employees (compared with global benchmark). 89% would recommend Western Union as a great place to work. 73% of EUROC employees would stay at Western Union if they there were offered a comparable position with similar pay and benefits elsewhere.

Business Centre Manager of the Year - BPO

CPL Integrated Services

John Paul McGonigle, Site Manager.
Provides service desk and end user support to HP’s multinational customers. John Paul demonstrates a track record of business improvement in areas such as SLA delivery, recruitment efficiency and cost saving. John Paul's major achievements include the following: the SLA compliance figures increased by 10% from 2011 to 2013:

• SLA compliancy 97% based on the last quarter’s result
• 260 SLA targets to deliver upon across the business
• 2011 SLA compliancy result was 86.94%, the current performance means a 10% increase

CPL IS took over the service from HP in Hungary. During the transition the Centre manager faced the following challenges:

• The legal succession of 145 HP Employees
• The transition of approx. 420 agency contractors from 3 separate agencies into CPL Integrated Services permanent employees with the loss of just one contractor during the mobilisation phase
• Seamless transition into the new model
• Ensure supply of necessary resources can be maintained by a single partner and reduce the time to hire
• Bring stability to an operations which had multiple Client Escalations ongoing and unstable SLA delivery
• Ensure no spike in attrition during transition and a positive trend going forward

Business Centre Manager of the Year - Shared Services

CBRE Corporate Outsourcing

Barbara Huss-Kaniewska
Barbara Huss-Kaniewska has worked with GCS for many years leading and building Warsaw’s Shared Service Centre into what it is today: a highly efficient platform that has supported growth of the Portfolio Services and Facilities Management businesses. Barbara was the first employee in Warsaw Shared Service Center and her strong leadership ultimately helped grow the team to 254 highly-motivated professionals with a reputation for high-quality work and client satisfaction.
This year Barbara Huss-Kaniewska has been appointed Senior Managing Director, Global Leader of GCS Real Estate Accounting Services.
CBRE Corporate Outsourcing is a Shared Service Centre based in Warsaw and part of the CBRE Global Corporation. The Company provides outsourced financial and data management services to corporations, for which property is not their core business. CBRE Corporate Outsourcing services include: 1. Portfolio Services Data Management Department - lease documents data management and lease abstraction i.e. extracting key lease terms for proactive management of lease events through reporting and general communications. 2. Portfolio Services Client Accounting Department – consists of four teams: Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Service Charge Analysts and Client Accountants.

Best Recruitment Firm of the Year

Hays Poland and Hays Hungary

With over 15 years’ experience of the CEE market, Hays know the growing importance of the Shared Service Centres and Business Process Outsourcing model across Central and Eastern Europe and the difficulties such organizations may face in recruiting the best talent. Hays has a specialist Business Services team employing over 40 multi-lingual consultants based in 11 offices throughout CEE. In 2013, Hays helped to find over 2000 employees for 80 centres including the start-ups of Euroclear, Perkin Elmer, Kemira, Qatar Airways, Systemax and Exxon.

Best New Office development for BPO/SSC Sectors

Green Day (Wroclaw)

Skanska's new office development is of approximately 16 000 sqm, and the office space is fully leased to Credit Suisse (Center of Excellence). Thanks to an extensive floor plate (2300 sqm), it can be easily arranged according to the tenants’ preferences and current needs. According to Skanska research, one of the crucial factors for business service centers are flexible office space and an attractive location, close to public transport stops. Green Day fulfills both of the requirements. The building has also solutions increasing the comfort of bike riders, like lock rooms and showers, which is especially appreciated by young employees. The building was adapted to the specific needs of Credit Suisse regarding uninterrupted business activity. Two independent power feeds and two power generators ensure business continuity in case of power outrage. Green Day is LEED Gold pre-certified.

Best Professional Advisory Services Firm of the Year

PwC Poland

Team is led by Romek Lubaczewski, SSC/BPO leader for Central and Eastern Europe.
Companies that PWC has worked with: Multinationals, including: Amway (Russia), Kemira (various European countries), Metsa Group (various European countries), UPM (various European countries), Metinvest (Ukraine), Becton Dickinson (Poland), Akzo Nobel (BPO), Voxpro (Ireland) and BBH (Poland). PWC have also led the projects to design and build solution for PwC's CEE internal Shared Service Centers. During 2012 – 2013 PWC extended client base with over 15 SSC/BPO-related projects with new clients. Testimonial: “I feel that without PwC team playing the key role the project would not have been a success it is. If we elect to build another SSC (even outside Eastern Europe) I would not hesitate to engage PwC again, and I can recommend the team of Aleksandra Stelmach-Gryszka, Anna Wojt and Szymon Kogut to any other organization that is looking to build a Shared Services organization” - Ireneusz Truszkowski, SSC Director, Metsa Group.

Best Real Estate Advisory Services Firm of the Year

Jones Lang LaSalle

With a nearly 40% market share for the BPO/SSC sector nationwide, JLL's key assignments in 2013 included Deutsche Bank, IBM, and Credit Suisse. From June 2012 Jones Lang LaSalle has advised BPO/SSC companies in real estate projects totalling ca. 178,000 sq m across CEE. Currently it is assisting companies from modern business services sector totaling further 180,000 sq m (including projects at preliminary stage with selected CEE countries on the shortlist). In period June 2012 – December 2013 Jones Lang LaSalle in CEE provided strategic advisory to key global companies from the BPO/SSC sector, including: Bayer, BNY Mellon, Cisco, Credit Suisse, Euroclear, IBM, ING, Samsung, UBS, WNS, and Itella Information in Toruń.

Top CSR initiative of the Year

Poland Business Run 2013

(UBS, MAN Accounting, CapGemini, Beyond Horizons Foundation)

A joint initiative of UBS, MAN Accounting, CapGemini, and Jasiek Mela Beyond Horizons Foundation. The Poland Business Run idea is to integrate business and the community for a charitable cause while promoting a healthy life style. The business charity run in the form of a relay was organized for the first time in September 2012 - on Krakow's market square.. It was initiated, co-organized and co-sponsored by UBS Krakow. The goal was to collect funds for prosthesis for the beneficiaries of Jasiek Melas Beyond Horizons Foundation. Others supporting the concept include City of Krakow, Radisson Blu hotel, and Luxoft.

Top Public Sector Outsourcing initiative of the Year

SSC model for Voivodship administration

(Ministry of Administration and Digitalization and PwC Poland)

In the first quarter of 2013 the Ministry of Administration and Digitization and PwC started a project to validate the concept of establishing Shared Service Centres on a regional level, which would provide support to government authorities. The main goal was to create and analyse the SSC concept for central administration on the regional level, present its benefits, analyse risks and build a high-level transition roadmap. The scope of the SSC would include: F&A; HR; Procurement; Real Estate and asset management; Registry and archive related services; IT services; Health, safety and fire regulations; Legal services. Implementation of the project would impact 1,380 jobs countrywide and is expected to reduce operating costs by 32 million PLN. The result of this work was evaluating the most important opportunities and risks of establishing 16 SSCentres serving Poland's public administration.

Best University-Business cooperation of the Year

Post-graduate studies "Modern Business Services" at Kazimierz Pulaski University of Technology and Humanities in Radom

An initiative led by Łukasz Fijałkowski/PwC Academy, Rafał Grzeszczyk/The City of Radom, Magdalena Jelonkiewicz-Bałdys/AIG Lincoln, and Jadwiga Naduk/Hays.
The post-graduate studies program in Modern Business Services is a joint venture of the public sector: University of Technology and Humanities; The City of Radom; and the private sector: AIG Lincoln; PwC; Hays, and ASPIRE.
The project's goal is twofold: 1) To establish a pipeline of fully trained professionals to fulfill leadership positions within Radom’s growing BPO industry. 2) To attract potential investors to Radom. 80 students currently enrolled in the program.