39 top American companies have been "Short-Listed" as finalists in 10 Awards categories for the 3rd annual USA-Europe Business Services Summit & Awards. Set for 19 September in New York, US companies will be distinguished for their operational excellence with Europe-based business services delivery centres. US Investors are 50% of the overall investment in Business Services in CEE. We expect more than 120 top executives from 75+ companies to attend. The full-day Summit is an integral part of the program, full of top US BSC executives disclosing lessons learned, case-studies, and operating insights.
Short-Listed Companies:

Top US Financial Services Investor in CEE:

• Citi Europe
• BNY Mellon
• NASDAQ
• Moodys
• Western Union

Top US BSC Investor in Poland:

• 3M
• Citi
• Herbalife
• Jacobs/CH2M HILL
• QVC Global Business Services

Top US BSC Investor in Hungary

• Citi
• Corning
• Arconic Global Business Services (GBS) (Alcoa)
• Avis Budget Group Business Support Center
• Celanese BBSC

Top US BSC Investor in Baltics

• Moodys
• NASDAQ
• Uber
• Western Union

Top US BSC Investor in Romania

• Molson Coors GBS
• Amazon
• Goodyear
• Honeywell International Services
• Schlumberger (Shared Services)
• Monsanto

Top US BSC Investor in Czech Republic or Slovakia

• Newell Group (Jarden Business Services)
• MSD IT Global Innovation Center
• JNJ Global Business Services
• Mondelez European Business Services Centre

Top Digital Solutions Provider from across CEE (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Ukraine, Bulgaria)

• Genpact
• Talent Alpha
  
• TCS (Tata)
• Top Robotics/RPA Implementation in CEE
• Groupon
  
• PWC
• CapGemini

Top Global BPO/ITO Investor in CEE

• Cognizant
• Conduent
• Luxoft (DXC)
• Stefanini
• TCS (Tata)
  

Top CSR Initiative of the Year in CEE

• Groupon
• State Street
• Western Union

www.SharedServicesEurope.com

AmerisourceBergen, a global healthcare solutions and commercialization leader, has announced plans to expand operations in Vilnius, where it already has a team and facility dedicated to specialty logistics through World Courier. AmerisourceBergen’s new office, which will open in January of 2020, will have responsibilities for a wide range of functions, including Finance, Treasury and Accounting, Digital Business Solutions, Customer Care, and Human Resources.

As a pharmaceutical wholesale distributor, AmerisourceBergen provides healthcare products, value-driving services and business solutions that improve access to care. Its Lithuania office will offer essential support across the expansive portfolio of AmerisourceBergen businesses. The company intends to recruit 200 positions in this location and invest up to 30 million euros over the next five years.

“AmerisourceBergen is always evaluating ways to maximize our impact, fuel growth, move markets and enable access to care for millions of people each day. Expanding our global footprint is a big piece of that work,” said Doug Cook, President of Commercialization Services & Animal Health at AmerisourceBergen. “We’ve had the opportunity to witness the local talent, infrastructure and accessibility of Vilnius through World Courier. With Invest Lithuania, the Ministry of Economy and other local institutions ready to help us, building an office there felt like a logical next step.

This expansion for AmerisourceBergen comes less than a year after World Courier successfully opened its transport facility. AmerisourceBergen, which was just ranked 10th on the Fortune 500 list, will be located in the new Quadrum facility in the center of Vilnius at Konstitucijos Ave. 21.

Applying the latest in machine learning, data automation and cloud-based technologies, Beyond Analysis has developed several well-known products such as Spendographics, ensuring its position as a UK leader in data analytics. The company currently serves the financial services, telecommunications, e-commerce, and utility sectors in Europe. The company’s new Lithuanian office is set to become a central part of company’s development strategy in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Its Vilnius team is expected to grow to 25 employees.

Beyond Analysis offers customer insight, data tracking, predictive modeling, website development, project management, marketing strategy development, and implementation services. The company’s clients include such global brands as Kingfisher PLC, Virgin Flight Centre and Visa Inc. Within a few short years of its collaboration with Beyond Analysis, Visa Inc. became a minority shareholder in the company as part of a deal to monetise the billions of anonymous debit and credit transactions taking place across the continent.
The company has already developed groundbreaking applications and world firsts using big data such as the Vitality Index, Spendographics, Attrition Models, and Travel Competitive Insights products. Lithuanian office is a central part of company’s strategy and capability in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Analytics Application development. Chief Data Officer William Beresford says that the company tested other areas across the globe including Sri Lanka and India, but Lithuania in many ways an easy choice for the company.

“A number of key priorities for us included: the availability of the right talent; proximity to our clients’ businesses and a strong cultural and linguistic, fit as much of our work is carried out face-to-face. It goes without saying that Lithuania ticks all of these in a heart-beat”, explains William Beresford.

Invest in Pomerania spoke to the directors of several Pomerania-based shared service centers: MacGregor, Ocean Network Express, Unifeeder, Maersk Drilling and DNV GL. Each of them provided great examples of modernization and digitization in the maritime industry in Pomerania that will shape the future of the local BSS sector.

The maritime industry is one of the most dynamically developing sectors of the Pomeranian economy. Over the years, the Tricity shipyards have specialized in production of niche products, such as cable layers, heavy lift jack-up, LNG-powered vessels, wind towers and arctic container ships.

Tricity is also home to around 60 design offices, two R&D centers and classification societies such as DNV GL, Lloyds Register and American Bureau of Shipping. Advanced design projects are often carried out in local shipyards, demonstrating the sector’s vertical integration and maturity.

Currently the BSS in Tricity employs over 26,500 people and includes Shared Serve Centres for ‘in-house’ services, Business Processing Operations primarily servicing external clients, IT centers and R&D centers that include software development. The processes supported span from IT, compliance, finance, financial crime to HR and recruitment. Increasingly, global corporations in the maritime sector are opening their support centers in Pomerania.
“We can talk about a growing trend”, said Marcin Grzegory, deputy director at Invest in Pomerania, which supported Maersk Drilling’s recent new investment in Gdańsk. “Tricity naturally offers access to a big pool of maritime faculties’ graduates, but also traditionally numerous different pools of technologies, logistics, supply chain, engineering and others potentially useful for the constantly evolving maritime business. As an investment agency we are aware of the opportunities and are able to match expectations and demand of our investors or even prepare custom-made offers for maritime companies.”

The centers in Tricity support back office operations but also highly specialized maritime-specific processes. MacGregor’s local branch, for example, offers solutions and services for handling marine cargoes, vessel operations, offshore loads, crude or LNG transfer and offshore mooring. Their expert team in Gdańsk answers customer inquiries from the company’s 45 sales offices around the world and supports them in negotiations with clients - shipowners, ports and terminals.
“For MacGregor, implementing the philosophy of shared service centers means changing the center of gravity from the product (product-driven model) to functions (function-based model). After implementing the BSS philosophy, the organization structure was based on functions and functional teams responsible for one process, one task, which is then passed to another team”, says Martin Due, Managing Director at MacGregor Denmark.

The Ocean Network Express (ONE) is yet another example. The result of a merger of three Japanese sea carriers (Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines and Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha), ONE is now the world's sixth biggest container shipping company. As part of the ongoing improvement process, the ONE’s office in Gdańsk assesses the quality of the group’s internal processes, detects best practices and optimizes the logistics flow. Specifically, it coordinates the information flow between ships and sea ports, serving more than 10 ports - from Hamburg to Amsterdam. Additionally, the team in Gdańsk also supports container maintenance and repair processes.

DNV GL is a Norwegian classification company with a professional service center located in Gdynia. The company’s training system has benefited significantly since the implementation of the BSS model. The trainings cover various business areas supported by the company: oil and gas, business assurance, energy and digital solutions.

Further digitalization and automation of the maritime industry is inevitable. In Pomerania, the industry is increasingly relying on space technologies that allow detailed port monitoring amongst other security measures. The BSS sector opens opportunities for the marine industry related to automation, artificial intelligence and blockchain technology, while integrated backoffice processes enhance transparency and efficiency. Some of these solutions are already being implemented by Unifeeder in Gdynia and MacGregor in Gdańsk. While no longer a major center for large scale shipbuilding, Pomerania is home to significant technical and design expertise, as well as medium-sized boatbuilding and component supply.

Hundreds of jobs at the East Africa Breweries Limited hang in the balance after parent company Diageo moved its consultancy and key functions out of Kenya.
The British multinational has outsourced all its financial, accounting and analytical work to Bangalore, India and Budapest, Hungary. The services are undertaken by Diageo Africa Business Service Centre which has announced a review and reorganisation that will significantly alter its structure. The Nairobi-based centre is one of five Diageo global shared service centres and the only one in Africa. It runs back-office processes for the firm's finance, supply, human resources, sales and marketing teams.According to insiders, EABL is to lay off about 150 employees in human resource and finance shared services in December and March 2020.
EABL said in early August that business services requirements and processes across Diageo Africa are changing and as such, Diageo will be conducting a review of the centre to determine where best to locate technical services roles for Africa in either Europe or Asia.
“This will lead to the transition of roles to other service centres. The review and change process will take place over a six-month period and conclude in March 2020,” the management said. “EABL is directly talking with all its employees in the ABSC who may be affected and will be providing regular updates through the review process over the coming months,” it added.
According to the management, the move is a Diageo global business services process which does not affect EABL core functions.

“Visma has three subsidiaries in Latvia – Visma Labs, Visma Enterprise and Visma Consulting. Two years ago, all of the Visma companies in Latvia chose Place Eleven as their home base, but as we are continuing to grow, all of our available work space will be occupied by the end of this year. The fastest growing of the three companies is Visma Labs, which provides programming, finance, human resources, digital marketing and customer service support to the other Visma Group companies in the Nordic countries. Visma Labs already has 202 employees and is growing steadily,” says Iveta Bukane, the CEO of Visma Labs. The new office space is to be designed by Coppa. CBRE advised Vastint in the transaction, while Colliers represented Visma.

Global leading BPO and customer experience company Webhelp has confirmed the acquisition of the majority stake of IQ-to-Link, a leading multilingual nearshore firm located in Kosovo.

“The acquisition of IQ-to-Link allows to significantly expand our nearshoring capabilities and gives us access to a pool of highly qualified and talented employees with great multilingual skills. Of specific interest for the Swiss market is the ability to produce high-quality Swiss German services at a South-Eastern European location”, says Daniel Deckert, CEO Webhelp Switzerland.

Jens Reichenbach, the founder and co-chairman of IQ-to-Link, attributes the success of IQ-to-Link to the attitude and mentality of the Kosovars: “Adding to their high educational level and multilingual skills, Kosovars have a strong service mentality, sales skills and are eager to learn and work”.

The management team around Jens Reichenbach and Joachim Hofsähs will continue to manage the operations and drive the company to leadership in the region.

Teams competing include: Citi, Dentons, CBRE Corporate Outsourcing, Zoetis, SBD, Groupon, Amadeus, TMF, PS-BPO, and RBS. We have 2 remaining spaces for Corporate Teams.

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