Nearshore and offshore activities are nothing new for Europe, according to Dana Stiffer, research director, Services and Outsourcing, AMR Research. But what's new is that "nearshoring is now starting to be internal to the EU with lots of delivery centers in Ireland and Spain, for example." Of particular note is the accelerated growth of nearshoring in Eastern Europe that has continued for several years for a number of reasons.
For example, according to the Everest Research Institute's analysis, 10 leading outsourcing suppliers set up about 20 new delivery centers in Eastern Europe over the last three years.
Lately, according to Stiffer, buyers are interested in outsourcing to geographies outside of India because there are a lot of difficulties in India right now such as high attrition rates and wage inflation; so there's an economic risk in doing business there.
Services are not as cheap in Eastern Europe as in India, but this region offers other advantages. According to Stiffer, customers can offset some risks in dealing with Asia-Pacific companies by dealing with European Union countries because of benefits of legislation that's in place, labor laws, taxation, ease of doing business, and ease of movement through the European Union.
Source: Outsourcing Journal, http://www.outsourcing-journal.com