Bulgaria: an eligible outsourcing destination
Located in Eastern Europe, Bulgaria is offering the key managers of global US and European companies a great base for the outsourcing of their businesses. Once concentrated in countries like India and also having China and Vietnam in their shortlist, today the European and the North American companies are looking towards a country which has less social and cultural differences. Bulgaria is such a country for them – it has stable economy, a well-developed educational system forming specialists in computer sciences, electronics and engineering, physics and mathematics, etc. The excellent education has placed Bulgaria into the fifth place in the world when it goes to sciences which make it today a tempting zone for outsourcing of businesses because of the high mental potential of the young specialists. An interesting fact to mention is that Bulgaria ranks second in the IQ tests made by MENSA and the SAT test results. In the IT sphere, the country is among the top ten destinations when it goes to certified IT professionals.
Which are the global companies that have already outsourced their business in Bulgaria? Several major companies have established their branches in the Bulgarian capital Sofia in the last few years. Among these outsourcing pioneers are the German software company SAP, which has focused some of its major Java software development in Sofia. Another giant company that has outsourced part of its business activities is IBM, which was soon followed by HP, Oracle, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, Siemens, etc. and many more companies which joined the group after Bulgaria entered the European Union in January 2007.
One of the main questions that the outsourcing companies often face is connected to the potential of the Bulgarian professionals and their ability to develop and further educate themselves. These young people have several main qualities – they speak good English, they are technically aware and they know how to program well. The Bulgarian programmers have proven their ability to understand and work perfectly with the software code and to observe the deadlines of the different projects. This turns Bulgaria and its capital Sofia into a tempting offshore destination, which has potential and all the preconditions for remaining such country for a very long time.