Ireland prepares to become Europe’s shared services hub
Website design By BotEap.comIreland will not be the next Calcutta or Mumbai. It’s not trying to be the Western world’s back office customer service contact center mecca. Which is probably for the best.
Website design By BotEap.comWhat it does want to do is consolidate its position as a leading European provider of the next business stage, from contact centers (contact center plus, if you wish), offering serious technical support and a wide range of services that go beyond give simple solutions to simple solutions. customer inquiries. Some are operated by outsourced providers, but most in Ireland are managed by the companies they serve.
Website design By BotEap.comHere, staff take care of the entire internal communications system for large multinational operations. They not only handle traditional helpdesk calls, but also provide technical support to their own staff and business-to-business, dealing with human resource issues such as hiring and sick leave, payroll systems, company accounts and internal company communications on policies and strategies. , staff and customer information and the intranet function.
Website design By BotEap.comIn its now sophisticated telecommunications sector, Ireland has 66 contact centers for a variety of companies including 3Com, American Airlines, AOL, Dell, eBay, GE Insurance, Google, Hewlett Packard, IBM, MBNA, Oracle, Starwood Hotels, Symantec and Xerox. – and that’s just an arbitrary sample.
Website design By BotEap.comThese hubs (Europeans call them Shared Services Hubs, but most Americans will be more familiar with the term Managed Services) is where Ireland sees its growth potential, although the Irish have no intention of turning their back on investments. ordinary in contact centers that serve banking and catalog. clients, for example.
Website design By BotEap.comTechnology is changing the product. Just answering the phone is not enough these days. To be successful, the centers must serve the world in a number of functions.
Website design By BotEap.comBacklash from Customers May Boost Ireland’s Efforts
Website design By BotEap.comA recent survey of 1,000 UK adults by ContactBabel contact center industry analysts found that 142 had switched providers because the existing one was using a service abroad, while three in four said they felt more negative towards your provider if they used overseas agents.
Website design By BotEap.comContactBabel Principal Analyst Steve Morrell said in the report: “If UK companies do not address their customers’ concerns, the level of customer churn will increase and their profits will decline further.”
Website design By BotEap.comTherein lies a problem, and for Ireland, an opportunity. In India, college graduates, attracted by the prestige of contact center jobs, earn perhaps ten times the average salary, but still cost their employers just one-tenth of a European or US-based operation. USA
Website design By BotEap.comHypothetically, that means that a typical bank with 12 million customers and revenue of $ 400 per customer each year would save more than $ 17 million by replacing 1,000 of its expensive call center staff with 1,000 in India. The downside is that the same hypothetical bank would need only about one percent of its customers to go to another bank in protest of having lost all of those savings instantly.
Website design By BotEap.com“Ireland is the only native English-speaking member of the euro zone,” says Brendan Haplin, manager of international media at IDA, the Irish government agency that seeks internal investment from around the world. “Ireland offers a world-class advanced telecommunications infrastructure including vital bandwidth and hosting capacity, and we back this up with strong support from IDA, both financial and practical.”
Website design By BotEap.comThe appeal? Language and low taxes?
Website design By BotEap.comIreland’s landscape, both business and cultural, has attracted far more than its fair share, not only from European companies but also from the United States. “Ireland has changed radically in the last 10 or 20 years,” says Haplin. “We now have between 60 and 70 shared service centers that are multilingual, pan-European and transatlantic.”
Website design By BotEap.comWe are talking about large companies the size and scale of IBM or Dell. Overall these organizations are extremely satisfied with the quality of staff, quality of life and service delivery that they have encountered in Ireland. They bring in selected technical experts from the states and then use locally selected personnel to develop and broaden the skill base.
Website design By BotEap.comThese big operators are proof of success, not just because they stay there, but because they can signal significant cost reduction, increased efficiency, better quality customer service, and a real boost in sales that ultimately delivers. better returns to shareholders.
Website design By BotEap.comIreland, Haplin adds, offers an attractive package, complete with a low corporate tax of just 12.5%. It works hard to minimize red tape and instead design a low-risk, fast-start-up, high-performance knowledge economy. “We have a well-developed environment for the call center and shared services operations because we have all the basic ingredients in place: the skills and knowledge, the experience and availability of multilingual and IT-savvy staff and the strategic fit. global that provides the facilities for companies to ‘follow the sun’ on a 24-hour model. “
Website design By BotEap.comA population increase bodes well for employers
Website design By BotEap.comWhile Ireland may deserve a spot on a company’s list of potential offshore locations today, what will happen tomorrow? Will the right, enough talent be available? According to Dr. William Harris, CEO of the Science Foundation Ireland, the answer is a resounding “yes”. “The key element in creating knowledge are intangible assets such as experience, knowledge, talent, passion, imagination and persistence.
Website design By BotEap.com“We believe that investing in those capabilities is the best indicator of how successful Ireland could be,” adds Harris. “Ireland has a wealth of young talent ready to make science and engineering the next great wave of Irish innovation.”
Website design By BotEap.comIreland is one of the few European countries showing an increase in its population, and some 260,000 people, 12.6% of the total workforce, are employed in business services. While the working population declines in other countries, heralding real trouble ahead, Ireland seeks to grow a young talent pool on par with that of the US.
Website design By BotEap.com[SIDEBAR] The Irish landscape: ready to compete
Website design By BotEap.comIreland has changed and has changed dramatically. Gone are those sad representations of girls in love saying goodbye with tears in the eyes of men who were ready for a life in the New Worlds of America or Australia? They would make their fortunes and return to build a castle and raise a family in Kilkenny.
Website design By BotEap.comIn the past two decades, the Celtic tiger has made its way through the jungles of the world economy. He’s getting fatter, healthier, and ravenous with every footprint he makes.
Website design By BotEap.comThe environment is hospitable
Website design By BotEap.comThe quality of life is a fabulous balance of stunning scenery and great leisure options. Golf courses, angling, biking, camping, hiking, and searching for deserted bays along the rugged coastline are just some of the possibilities to ponder.
Website design By BotEap.comReal estate is cheap (except in central Dublin) and land is plentiful. Gasoline costs about half the price it is in the UK and the 12.5% corporate tax ranks alongside 39.5% in the US or 30% in the UK. companies whose profits are based on exporting outside the EU and the government has simplified the paperwork. If 85 percent of your goods or services are for export, then you will be exempt, so you will not have to fill out forms to claim VAT.
Website design By BotEap.comThe Irish are famous, and rightly so, for their warm welcome, and that extends not just to a pint of Guinness with a passing stranger, but to those who have come to stay longer.
Website design By BotEap.comUnlike some of their European neighbors, the Irish do not resent the arrival of migrant workers, but they welcome them with open arms as a real and useful addition to the native skill base.
Website design By BotEap.comLocation and politics provide a counterweight
Website design By BotEap.comAir travel is reasonable but needs further development. The main airport is close to Dublin and offers around 100 direct destinations around the world. There is a second international airport at Shannon and smaller facilities, mostly short haul, at Cork, Belfast and Londonderry. Most international flights depart from Dublin or Shannon.
Website design By BotEap.comIn terms of freight transport, ferry services are strong, but the distance to continental Europe makes them slower. Although a crossing from Dublin to Holyhead on the Welsh coast is less than two hours, Normandy is 19 hours away. From Belfast and Larne in the north, there are faster crossings into Scotland and England.
Website design By BotEap.comA long history of a slow agricultural economy meant that Ireland was slow to move into the 20th century, regardless of the 21st century. Outside of some major cities, it remains a wonderfully unspoiled but also underdeveloped rural society.
Website design By BotEap.comIreland entered the European Union with Objective One status, meaning that its underdeveloped economic status entitled it to a full package of significant infrastructure grants to help it move forward quickly. Its strong rural culture saw the benefits of the Common Agricultural Policy, which instantly enabled farmers to access guaranteed markets and guaranteed prices for their products, even if many of them ended up dumped in mountains of butter and lakes of milk. Almost half of the € 44.5 billion in the EU budget is spent on agricultural subsidies of one kind or another.
Website design By BotEap.comThe maze of country back roads give Ireland much of its charm, but they are of little use to the heavy trucks that transport large quantities of produce to markets around the world. Money from the European Union helped expand a major road and motorway infrastructure that was essential for economic growth.
Website design By BotEap.comAll of this helped to encourage new investors from other countries to set up facilities in Ireland. The government encouraged them with attractive packages that attracted companies such as Dell, Xerox, Baxter International, Hertz, and many others before they reached the contact centers.
Website design By BotEap.comBut all that aid from the euro zone is already gone. The rise of the Celtic Tiger, the reality of economic growth, has forced Ireland to go from being subsidized by the European Union to being a provider of subsidies to other emerging nations, including some of the 10 new countries whose incorporation has led the European bloc to 25 in total.