All Roads Lead to … Poland?

In the last three days I’ve seen articles about three different international logistics companies expanding operations (with new routes and delivery centers) in Poland as well as two articles about global supply chain cooperation, one on logistics cooperation between Poland and China, which was discussed at a recent seminar following an MOU with SAIETC, and another on technical / mining cooperation between Poland and India.

While it never made SI’s series on Cultural Differences or Cultural Intelligence, edited by SI’s resident global trade expert Dick Locke, the doctor, a technologist by training (and an enterprise software architect), has been keeping tabs on Poland as he believed it was not only a rising destination for IT offshoring, but one which could soon provide advantages over India. But he never expected Poland, with an outsourcing index of 5.6 and a rank of 16 over on Sourcingline (which tracks 38 global outsourcing destinations), to all of a sudden become so prominent.

After all, it was only in 2010 that Ernst & Young, in their European Attractiveness Survey, identified Poland as the top potential investment destination for their FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) projects. Typically it takes years for recommendations to become reality. However, and this is one thing Poland does have going for it, Poland is pushing for FDI very aggressively. The English translation of the Inwestycje w Polsce site, Invest in Poland, site is quite informative, the GDP growth is stable, the high unemployment rate (given the average education level) suggests lots of room for additional growth, and the fact that FDI has been stable around the 10 B Euro range for the past 4 years leaves room for growth. And when you consider that half of the 2.1 Million Polish students speak fluent English, that’s a globally-prepared well-educated work-force being churned out every year. When Horses for Sources said Poland was more than “just another” BPO location, they were definitely ahead of the curve. And where Poland is concerned, at least with respect to North American and Western Europe, they have a very good chance of competing with the Sourcing Raj.

Poland is definitely Open for Business.

It’s worth checking out … even if they don’t have any yeti.