In recent years, Poland has become one of the leading offshore destinations for IT services in Europe. Numerous international corporations choose to offshore their competence centers to Poland and to use the services of Polish IT providers. Bartłomiej Buszczak, BCC President, explains why Polish SAP services market is worth a closer look.
How can a multinational corporation benefit from using SAP services providers from Central and Eastern Europe such as BCC?
Recently offshoring has become particularly important in CEE. Despite the recent unstable situation on the global markets, external capital inflow and large investments in virtually all branches of Polish economy are a fact. Our sector has witnessed a steady growth of multinational corporations cooperation with suppliers from Central and Eastern Europe.
With regard to SAP services, the most frequent form of cooperation between BCC and foreign companies is our support of corporate SAP rollouts to local branches and subsidiaries. BCC has successfully completed dozens of such corporate SAP rollouts, not only in Poland but also in other countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Some corporations perceive the countries of our region as a kind of entity and carry out the implementation projects simultaneously in a number of branches. Antalis, for example, hired BCC to roll out its corporate SAP template to Poland, the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Slovakia in the same time.
Sometimes a client who worked with the provider during a local rollout, commissions them again to do more work in other countries. One of our FMCG sector clients, for example, who initially had subcontracted us to work in the Polish subsidiary, later worked with us in Egypt and Indonesia, where BCC was responsible for rolling out the SAP system to the local branches.
The number of BCC projects involving the creation of the corporate SAP template from scratch increases steadily. We have designed a corporate standard supporting the distribution operations of a large food industry corporation, which is now used as the basis for SAP rollouts to group companies all over the world. Another example is AmRest – a restaurant operator of the KFC and Pizza Hut chains – for whom we created a new SAP solution that is now used by companies in Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
It becomes increasingly popular for the multinational groups to establish their branches in Poland. More and more often corporations choose Poland as the destination for their competence centers which are in charge of ERP systems administration and development for the whole group or its major part. For example, a large international company from FMCG branch has set up an expert team in Cracow and made it responsible for the maintenance and development of the corporate SAP system. BCC and that company share many areas of cooperation, for example we support a project of SAP systems centralization and provide our data migration services in such countries as Belgium, Germany, Jordan, Kuwait or the United Arab Emirates. Additionally, under long-term partnership agreements, our employees are seconded to work for the client’s competence center, acting as internal specialists for SAP CRM, Basis or data migration.
With such multinational clients in mind, we have created a special offering package including the services of ABAP Development Center and Business Intelligence Development Center. The scope of the services can range from small ad hoc tasks to long-term cooperation on large and complex development projects. Data migration is one of the areas in which ABAP DC developers are often involved. The biggest project of this kind implemented by BCC to date was the migration of data from 145 systems supporting the operations of a high-tech sector corporation in 70 countries of the world.
What is your offer addressed to consultancy businesses and other IT providers?
If a client has a global arrangement with another SAP solutions provider, BCC often acts as a partner to such provider. We then assume responsibility for a specific scope of work which the general contractor is not able to do for different reasons, for example due to lack of competence in the Polish legal system or limited consultant resources.
It is worth noting here that not in all countries the largest global SAP consultants have such a strong presence and broad competence as BCC. In Poland, for instance, BCC has a much bigger team of SAP experts than the Polish branches of the world’s leading providers.
Still, we do employ local SAP consultants to ensure conformance of the system with the local legal requirements while doing SAP rollouts in other countries, for example in Indonesia or Hungary.
In fact, the scope of our cooperation with IT companies is much broader. Our offering for suppliers of solutions complementary to SAP focuses on the integration of their applications with SAP NetWeaver technology. We also have extensive experience in migrating solutions of other suppliers to SAP NetWeaver platform. Our cooperation with PROS, an American company and world leader in pricing optimization software, is an excellent example. BCC developed a solution facilitating the integration of their products with the SAP systems of their clients. We are particularly proud of the fact that, as a result of the SAP AG certification process conducted by BCC on behalf of the client, the new solution was awarded the “Powered by SAP NetWeaver” status.
The term ‘IT offshoring’ brings up immediate associations with India. How can Polish companies compete with this leading services offshoring destination?
Until recently, Poland has not been associated with advanced know-how. Currently, the stereotype is changing as about 30% of young Poles are getting their university degrees. This is one of our greatest assets: availability of highly qualified IT specialists who speak foreign languages. A vast majority of the highly educated young people are extremely mobile and keen to develop their careers in any part of the world.
Cultural and geographic proximity remains very important in business contacts. Many of our partners from Western Europe prefer to work with us, simply because the same cultural framework creates a common ground and facilitates communication. A flight from London to Warsaw or Poznań takes 2-3 hours. For managers from Europe, a business meeting in India means many hours spent on an airplane, travelling across a number of time zones and, consequently, a couple of business days lost for the whole trip. Proximity is a very important advantage, particularly in case of complex IT services which from time to time, despite various technological conveniences such as remote access or teleconferencing, still require personal interactions.
Proximity is certainly a big asset but it is value-for-money that puts Poland firmly on the IT services offshoring map. Our operating and labor costs continue to be much lower when compared to Western Europe and, together with high quality services, they make our country one of the most attractive IT offshoring destinations in the world and the number one in Europe.
BCC often emphasizes it being of Poznań origin. What is the reason for such strong local patriotism?
Poznań – one of the five biggest Polish cities – is a good place for business. Poznanians are famous for their historically rooted work ethos, diligence and reliability. ‘A job well done’ has always been greatly appreciated here and the same is true of our company.
Geographical location – A2 highway connects Poznań with Western Europe – facilitates business growth. Rapidly expanding Poznań airport offers a constantly growing number of direct international and domestic flights. In fact, we are closer to Berlin than to Warsaw. Dynamic local authorities approach potential investors, offering them attractive land for new investments and high-standard office space.
The improving infrastructure of Poznań, however, is not the only reason for the city’s speedy development. Poznań is a powerful academic center with several universities and colleges, including the prestigious Poznań University of Technology and Poznań University of Economics. Over 140,000 college students constitute the much desired ‘human resources’ for companies from all branches of the economy. A number of multinational corporations, e.g. GlaxoSmithKline, Carlsberg, Volkswagen or Herlitz, saw the city’s potential and chose Poznań for the location for their branches and competence centers.
How does BCC use this potential to build its position?
We have been present on the SAP solutions market since 1995, i.e. from the moment SAP came to Poland. We started from building our brand and our experience on the Polish market, from the very beginning laying emphasis on the standards of our performance. The ISO 9001 quality assurance system was implemented in BCC already in 1998.
We are currently the biggest SAP partner in Poland and one of the largest SAP services providers in Central and Eastern Europe. BCC has successfully implemented a few hundred SAP projects for over 200 clients from several countries in the world. In the last five years, we have seen a double-digit growth of sales revenues on the year-on-year basis, both in Poland and in other countries. In 2008, export sales accounted for 40% of our total turnover.
The true potential of consultancy businesses lies in their human resources. BCC employs over 200 SAP consultants which is an impressive number, especially considering the fact that, according to our estimates, all of the remaining consulting companies in Poland employ about 800 SAP consultants altogether.
The majority of our consultants are holders of SAP certificates and our Project Managers upgrade their skills and are certified in the Project Management Institute, an international organization specializing in the promotion of good project management practices. We have experience in virtually all business sectors.
The potential of BCC is evidenced by numerous SAP statuses and certificates. We are recognized as SAP Services Partner and SAP Expert Partner in many areas. It is worth pointing out that we also have a Gold Partner status under SAP Partner Edge program, which means we are authorized to sell SAP software licenses to clients from various countries on very attractive terms.
BCC also stands out on the Polish market because of its broad outsourcing offering …
Outsourcing services account for nearly 25% of our total sales in Poland. BCC Outsourcing Center provides regular services to over 80 clients, including multinational groups such as ABB, Metro Group or Valeo.
Our outsourcing offer includes application services, most often involving support to SAP key users and administration of our clients’ SAP systems. We also provide data processing center services, among them IT systems hosting.
We take great pride in our modern Data Center, but the advantage of the BCC Outsourcing Center lies not so much in the capacity of the servers, as in the strength of our organization. In 2006, the company implemented the Information Security Management System which was one of the first systems in Poland to receive the ISO/IEC 27001 certificate. We work in conformance with the most rigorous standards described in the code of good practices of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL), as confirmed by the ISO/IEC 20000-1 certificate. Furthermore, we have also been given the status of SAP Hosting Partner. All of the above confirm the highest quality of outsourcing services provided by BCC. We are prepared to satisfy the needs, both technological and organizational, of even the most demanding clients.
BCC offers a full range of SAP-related services, but there are probably some areas in which the company feels particularly strong…
IT technology is changing rapidly and our goal is to maintain the leading position as far as the competence and knowledge of our consultants are concerned.
We try to achieve this goal not only by gaining new experience while working on the projects, but also by taking an active role in the SAP professionals community. BCC consultants are recognized and highly appreciated for their contribution to SAP Developer Network platform. They publish articles and books in specialist SAP periodicals and participate in educational programs and initiatives aimed at the development and improvement of SAP tools.
Our competence and experience in state-of-the-art technologies, such as SAP PI (formerly known as SAP XI), SAP NetWeaver Portal or RFID, distinguishes BCC against other SAP partners worldwide.
Knowledge of the latest solutions and tools enables us to initiate and support pioneering projects, for example a project supported by BCC in one of the global corporations involving a pilot launch of SAP MDM tool.
BCC Group comprises two other companies apart from BCC. What is their offering?
In recent years, two new daughter companies were established within the framework of BCC Group which complement and expand the range of services offered by BCC.
7milowy specializes in implementing SAP solutions in medium-size companies. A product called SPRINT offered by 7Milowy is a ready-made SAP system which goes along the lines of the global initiative called SAP Business All-in-One. This solution can also be of interest to international corporations with small local divisions or branch offices in cases when the rollout of the corporate template would be too expensive. With SPRINT, the local company can work and report in the SAP technology and the cost of the system launch is significantly lower than of a rollout. A short period of time needed for the implementation work is an additional advantage. In some cases, it would be possible to use the SAP production system in just one month after the contract was signed. The other BCC Group company is called External Services. It specializes in Business Process Outsourcing and provides HR and payroll services to companies based on the SAP system. Its offer is addressed to large and medium-size Polish enterprises and local divisions of multinational groups. According to McKinsey & Company’s analyses, over the next few years Poland is bound to become the European BPO center. External Services aspire to becoming one of the leaders on the new market.
Why do you believe BCC is a good SAP partner for international corporations?
I think the reasons are the same as when you choose any partner for cooperation, especially because we offer superb value-for-money to our customers. The quality of our services results from our experience, evidenced by the list of reference projects covering a full range of SAP services in numerous companies and countries in the world. We have been present on the SAP market for many years and have become the best-in-class company in the region of Central and Eastern Europe. The quality of BCC work is reflected in the wide range of competences, dedication, involvement and numerous certificates. With regard to prices, as I had already mentioned, Polish companies are still less expensive than their counterparties in Western Europe due to lower labor and operating costs. Also, it is easy to communicate with us, because we are neighbors, not only in geographical but also cultural sense.
And one more thing… A few years ago, one of our international clients summed up his experience with BCC and our consultants by saying ”They are very energetic”. I think it is a nice way of putting it. We know everything about SAP there is to know and we work with passion and commitment.
Interview by Mirosława Huk, BCC Group