'Nearshore' is the new offshore for UK firms

'Nearshore' is the new offshore with UK outsourcers favouring the former Eastern bloc countries and Morocco as opposed to traditional locations such as India, according to a new report.

Profiting from European Nearshore Outsourcing by analyst Datamonitor claims companies are increasingly looking to countries such as the Czech Republic when it comes to moving call centre operations overseas.

The projected growth, however, is still relatively small when compared with the size of the offshore market, particularly in India. Datamonitor forecasts that outsourced call centre positions in the European nearshore regions of Central and Eastern Europe and North Africa are set to rise from 4,400 in 2003 to 13,700 by 2008.

To put it into context, the Indian city of Bangalore alone currently employs around 60,000 people in its BPO call centres.

The nearshore call centre market is more mature in the Baltics, Poland, Czech Republic, Morocco and Hungary, but Datamonitor predicts that growth in Tunisia, Bulgaria, Romania and the Balkans will be significant, due to their friendly investment attitudes and geographic niche-market advantages.

In addition to the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, countries that are emerging as viable locations for English-speaking customers include Bulgaria and Morocco, claims the report.

Peter Ryan, call centre analyst at Datamonitor and author of the report, said in a statement: "EU-based firms are impressed with Central and Eastern Europe's and North Africa's educated labour pool that is growing in its multilingual capability. An available workforce that is located relatively close to major EU centres, combined with modern telephony infrastructures work in favour of nearshore call centre outsourcing."