Bucharest, Romania

Once known as 'Little Paris', Bucharest's talent pool has made it the 'almost' perfect land for outsourcing. Praiseworthy resources backed with not so praiseworthy government policies makes this city 'almost perfect.'

Proficiency in English, French and German, excellent IT skills, job commitment, low absent rate coupled with low costs has ensured buyers prefer Romanian workforce. On the export front,  this city embraces strong hold in R&D outsourcing, security and embedded software development and mechanical engineering outsourcing.

Bucharest houses Genpact, Wipro and Teleperformance's - three of the largest outsourcers-  largest operations in central and eastern Europe.

The downside of this city is that the Romanian state does not recognize outsourcing activity as a distinct business. The absence of separate recognition spells that outsourcing activities have to fit in with other activities recognised by the government.

Dubai, UAE

Perceived as a trading hub and shopping paradise, Dubai is slowly but swiftly establishing its foothold in the global outsourcing market. This development has been characterized by copious government initiatives. One such initiative being Dubai Outsourcing Zone (DOZ)  – the first free zone in the world-which is aiming at making this destination the perfect base for outsourcing operations. 

Recently, DOZ, a member of TECOM Investments, announced a partnership with the Arab Outsourcing Forum for the second consecutive year. DOZ and Arab Outsourcing Forum have joined hands to support the business requisites of Middle East region.

Despite strong support from Dubai's authorities, buyers find labor costs expensive. However, in order to ensure higher costs do not play show stopper, the Dubai government offers benefits such as 100 percent tax-free environment for 50 years, no corporate tax, no income tax, no custom duty, 100percent  foreign ownership, no restriction on profit or capital repatriation and reduced real estate cost.

Cape Town, South Africa

Economic center of the Western Cape Province, Cape Town has over the years established itself as a preferred outsourcing destination.

BPeSA Western Cape was founded in 2001 to promote and develop the IT-enabled services industry in Cape Town, with a strong initial focus on contact centres. It operates both as a specialist investment promotion agency for business process outsourcing (including call centres) and as a regional trade association and networking body for the industry.

Several big names like TeleTech and Royal Dutch Shell have their call canters here.

The allure of Cape Town, South Africa's capital, is strong government support, state backed incentives – start-up and expansion grants and discounted telecommunication prices, time zone compatability with Europe and a favourabe exchange rate. In addition, English is the primary language for over one million residents of the capital. Thus, there are little issues with accent for customers in UK.  However, the labor costs of  English speaking workforce are double in comparison to Philippines and India.

Glasgow,UK

Glasgow city boasts of having the largest economy in Scotland with the third largest GDP per capita in UK, after  London and Edinburgh. The call center industry started mushrooming here since the 1990s. Today, a large percentage of Scotland’s call center employees are employed in Glasgow.

One of the attractions of Scotland, is its proximity to London. Also, there is a pool of educated human resource as the city is a major center of higher education and academic research. The city has four universities- the University of Glasgow, Strathclyde University, Glasgow Caledonian University and University of the West of Scotland.

The Customer Contact Association (CCA), the professional body for the Call Center, Contact Center, and Customer Service Industry in the UK, is headquartered in Glasgow.
Dell’s second largest business center outside the US is based at Glasgow’s City Park. Diversified power management company Eaton has had its shared service center operations in Glasgow since 1997 because of its reputation as a financial services center with a skilled and multilingual workforce.