Sony Pictures has made the decision to close it F&A shared services centers in Poland and Philippines. Sony's new CFO, who came on board about 15 months ago, is rationalizing the business as other major studios, like Disney and Warner Brothers, have done. The service center in Gdynia will be completed closed by June 2019, and all F&A services will be taken over by CapGemini. Approximately 250 employees in Poland and 400 in Philippines will lose their jobs. CapGemini will be providing these services from bases in India.

“The captive model in Poland and Philippines has been very successful”, said Michal Gryglewski, Director of the Gdynia site. “We've been operating 9 years, and we've developed a strong team of well-trained people. This industry has been consolidating, and this is part of a larger restructuring.”

The choice to outsource these services to CapGemini is most-likely a move to prepare the overall company for a sale or merger with another industry partner.

While Gryglewski is clearly not pleased with the decision, he's also not worried: “Our team should be of strong interest to any other SSC investors expanding in Gdansk/Gdynia”.

Telekom Romania has opened a new BPO centre in Braila. In the new Braila location, Telekom Romania offers business customers a wide range of contact centre services, including sales and telemarketing, back office, customer service and customer retention.

”The contact centre services are essential for companies that need to support their customers in any way. Telekom provides companies that outsource these services a complete solution tailored to the specific needs of each company. The outsourcing of these services offers a number of benefits such as cost optimization, no investment in equipment, partnering with a vendor with industry expertise, immediate availability and operational flexibility. The expertise in call centre services is Telekom’s strength, based on the long tradition and experience we’ve gained by offering this types of services to our own customers. This expertise put us in a good position to expand this type of services and offer it to other companies as well,” said Ovidiu Ghiman, Chief Commercial Officer, Business Segment, Telekom Romania.

The center in Braila is the sixth location where Telekom Romania provides outsourced contact centre services, with five other centres operational in four other cities: three centres in Bucharest, one in Bacau and one Craiova, employing more than 500 people.

London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) today announces that Andreea Stanescu has been appointed General Manager, Romania. Andreea will be reporting to Dee Liyanwela, Head of Business Services Ltd (BSL) Sri Lanka and Romania. In her new role, Andreea will oversee the Group’ s new Business Services centre in Bucharest.

LSEG announced earlier this year that it had selected Bucharest as the location for one of its operational hubs. The new centre will initially employ up to 200 employees across a range of roles within the Group’s Shared Services company, BSL. BSL currently delivers technology, data services and corporate functions across the Group’s operating entities.

Andreea has held a number of senior operational and IT infrastructure roles, most recently at Stefanini, where she was Vice President EMEA Delivery. In her role, she was responsible for managing seven office locations serving global international clients. Andreea has also held roles at Optima Solutions and Services and Vodafone Romania, where she was a member of the Executive Council.

Dee Liyanwela, Head of BSL Sri Lanka and Romania, said:  “I’m delighted to welcome Andreea Stanescu to London Stock Exchange Group in her new role as General Manager, Romania. Andreea brings considerable operational management experience to the role, which will be of great benefit as we establish our new Business Services centre in Bucharest. Andreea will also work closely with the Group’s other operational hubs to deliver technology and data services across LSEG’s global business entities.”

Nominations in 23 Categories for the 7th annual CEE Shared Services Awards open on 23 October – and will be open for a full month, til 23 November. The expanded-format Summit and Awards Gala takes place in Warsaw at the Hotel Intercontinental on 30-31st January 2019.
Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is well-established as a world-class destination for Shared Services centres and BPO investment. With Poland the strongest location in the region, other countries such as Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania, Lithuania and Latvia are important investment destinations. Global shared services firms, business services projects and sector professionals will be presented with awards of acknowledgment – by an independent jury from the industry – for their contribution to the development of the business services sector in CEE for 2018.

In 2019, the organizers expect another sell-out audience of 300+ guests with more than 75 being international firms interested in setting up or expanding their business services centres in central Europe. The Awards Gala will be preceded by 2 Pre-Day Conferences on 30th January: The 3rd annual “HR in SSC Forum” and the 1st annual “CEE RPA/Process Automation Workshop”. The SSC Summit on 31st January includes more than 28 speakers, 12 break-out sessions with deep insights into specific issues driving the sector, and 3 “Site Visits”. All followed by the evening Awards Gala.

Nominations can be submitted here, starting 23 October: http://ceeoutsourcingawards.com/nominations/

Accelerance, the leading consulting firm for software outsourcing strategies and best practices, traveled to Eastern Europe to investigate and validate the technical and business capabilities of top software development companies in the region.
Accelerance team members visited Poland, Ukraine and Croatia on September 9-19. During these trips, Accelerance met with leaders from the best software outsourcing companies in Eastern Europe to review their capabilities, expertise, processes, metrics, as well as their recruiting and training practices. The end goal was to assess each company's readiness as a global software outsourcing provider.
"We went to review software outsourcing in Eastern Europe because the region continues to be a source of quality code, technical expertise, deep pools of talent and affordable cost," says Ryan Shauer, Partner Success Manager at Accelerance. "It's critical for us to visit these companies, verify their capabilities and experience the location and culture just like a customer would. We save our clients a lot of time and risk with this kind of due diligence. When we certify these companies, we ask more questions - the right questions - that most clients don't know to ask."
Croatia, known for tourism on the beautiful Adriatic coast, is gaining reputation as a software development destination. Top software development companies are found in Zagreb, the country's capital. The region is somewhat undiscovered by major corporations which makes it one of the better choices for software outsourcing since big players haven't established operations in the region and scooped up all the top talent (yet.)

Source: http://www.sys-con.com/node/4329536

The Consulate General of Hungary in New York hosted a special event where investment opportunities in Hungary were put into limelight. In the framework of the investment forum "Hungary: Where Innovation Creates Value", this year Péter Szijjártó, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Róbert Ésik, the President of the Hungarian Investment Promotion Agency (HIPA) presented the "Chain Bridge Budapest Award" to BlackRock. The prize, which could be first won last year, went to the US company for its international career events reaching out to Hungarian experts around Europe to invite them home.
Each year the "Chain Bridge Budapest Award" is given to a US-based company that strongly contributes to the economic and social growth of our country. In the first year of its history, in 2017 the prize was granted by a dedicated group of professional entities to IBM, which has been creating high added value jobs in Hungary for long decades.
The New York-based asset management company, which only had eight people at the time of its foundation in 1988, can now boast with approximately 14,000 employees. Being present in 30 countries, its colleagues are responsible for the management of assets totalling almost USD 6,300 billion. January 2017 was a milestone in their history: BlackRock announced the opening of its innovation and technology centre in Budapest. Although the company's decision was largely affected by the government and HIPA's commitment to the successful delivery of the project, the standards of living, the workforce and the modern infrastructure that our capital can offer had also been decisive.
Currently the world's largest asset management company has 430 colleagues in its innovation centre in Budapest, where daily operations include the improvement of different corporate technologies, product development, the restructuring of the distribution channels, alongside their quest for better client data usage and analysis, and innovative and creative marketing solutions. As a consequence of the career events in London and Frankfurt, over 50 Hungarian professionals decided to return to the country to the invitation of BlackRock, armed with a strong command of foreign languages.
Thus in 2018 the "Chain Bridge Budapest Award" goes to BlackRock, which offers a real alternative with its first innovation centre in Europe to motivate and inspire Hungarian citizens living and working abroad to come back to the homeland.