That could be one of the reasons for the newly emerged trend of outsourcing in Eastern Europe and target countries are Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. They offer cost efficiencies compared to the United States or Western Europe but at the same time are closer in culture, have high adult literacy levels, traditions in software and hardware development and up to 3 hours distance inside the European Union.
Out of these countries particularly attractive for business is Bulgaria. Time for setting up a business is approximately 18 days at maximum and the corporate tax is as low as 10%. It is politically stable, offers competitive pricing and has highly educated and extremely well qualified work force.
The country has roots in technology education and mathematics as well as a long history of world significant achievements in software and hardware development. Due to the emphasis on education, the World Bank and the Economist rank it fifth for sciences and eleventh in mathematics.
According to SourcingLine the Bulgarian IT specialists are especially good at the areas of CAD/CAM/CAE systems, operation systems, custom software, service and support of computer equipment, text processing text editors, telecommunication services and system integration databases.
For 2010 Bulgaria is ranked fourth in terms of best outsourcing locations in the world (the first three are Asian countries). The ranking takes into account cost competitiveness, resources and skills and business and economic environment. That effectively means that the best places place for technology and IT outsourcing in Europe is namely Bulgaria.
It has to be taken into consideration that the IT sphere is one of the best job sectors in Bulgaria and the salaries are higher than the average for most other positions. However, companies are cutting on expenses from other departments such as administration and support.
A number of studies suggest that this is just the beginning for nearshore outsourcing as the interest from western companies is growing. We will follow the trends for you and keep you posted.
