Hungarian Investment Promotion Agency

Organised for the sixth time in 2018, the Central Eastern European Shared Services and Outsourcing Summit & Awards Gala has grown to the most significant event in the shared services sector in Central-Eastern Europe. Today, the region is a significant destination for business services centres with around 400,000 people working in this area.

In Hungary, the sector has also become a real success story, most of the companies are continuously expanding their service portfolio, bringing even more complex and high added-value processes to our country. The maturity of the Hungarian shared services market is also proven by the high representation of Hungary-based SSCs nominated in various categories this year again.

said Rahul Malhotra, Head of Service Delivery of Avis Budget Group Hungary after receiving the Shared Services Firm of Year – CEE award in Warsaw.

Avis Budget Group Business Support Centre (BSC) has been supporting the Group's operations for 12 years now as Centre of Excellence in 10 languages mainly covering customer care, commercial support and financial services. Over 900 employees coming from 40 different countries are working in an award-winning office in Budapest, the biggest within Avis Budget Group globally and the greenest in Hungary.

BT ROC, as in the past two years, was awarded again this year: following the success story, received the "Top Employer Branding Initiative" award. Thanks to its employer branding strategy, BT had 300% increase in the number of delivered CV's on job fairs and 700% boost on their career page.

Operated by BT Global Services, BT ROC is the most attractive company in Hungary's services sector. In the Budapest and Debrecen offices more than 2,300 colleagues support global business operations in 11 main units. Most of the activities are centred around Customer Service, Service Assurance, Finance, HR, Inside Sales, Network Design and Project Management.

As a new player in the Hungarian shared services sector in Székesfehérvár, Harman International SSC won the "New-entrant SSC of year" category. Harman designs, engineers and produces solutions for car manufacturers, consumers, and enterprises worldwide, including connected car systems, audio and visual products, enterprise automation solutions and connected services (IoT-solutions). Its centre opened recently while having also a strong manufacturing base in Hungary.

EPAM Systems (Belarus, Hungary, Poland) also received an important recognition as the "IT Services Frim of the Year". The US-based EPAM offers comprehensive software development solutions all over the world, in more than 25 countries on 4 continents. The Budapest office is the European centre of the company, which is the largest software developer in Central and Eastern Europe. Outside the capital, they have offices in Debrecen and Szeged, where they have more than 1,700 employees.

By participating in the two-day event, HIPA further promoted Budapest and countryside cities like Debrecen and Szeged to the international audience of 300+ guests. The SSC sector is especially important also for Hungary: most of the new jobs have been created in this sector after the automotive industry in recent years. This trend also appears in the results of HIPA: with respect to the number of investment projects managed and the jobs created by them, the SSC sector was the second strongest sector in Hungary following the automotive industry in 2017. In addition, the SSC sector is considered a high added value area, which provides excellent career opportunities and a promising vision to work in the sector.

At present, more than 110 companies operate service centres in Hungary, employing approximately 46,000 people, mainly young and strongly driven specialists who speak multiple foreign languages.