Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Bulgaria preparing to strut its outsourcing stuff - Business - The Sofia Echo

Bulgaria preparing to strut its outsourcing stuff - Business - The Sofia Echo

Bulgaria's Cabinet is not turning a deaf ear to the businesses' plea for greater involvement in promoting the country as an outsourcing and off-shoring destination – proof positive were the four top officials in attendance at a conference hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce in Bulgaria (AmCham) and Colliers International in Sofia on November 11, including Economy Minister Traicho Traikov and Regional Development Minister Rossen Plevneliev.

In fact, the country's investment promotion agency InvestBulgaria, the third co-organiser of the event, is already working on a major project in that direction, the agency's executive director Borislav Stefanov told The Sofia Echo in an interview.

"Promotion here is the keyword. I expect that in the next few months we finally start our promotion campaign for Bulgaria as an outsourcing destination. We are now doing our analysis with AT Kearney to identify those big areas where we can compete," Stefanov said.

With a budget of 22 million leva over a period of three years, the bulk of which – 18 million leva – would go towards the media and marketing campaigns, the agency aims to put Bulgaria on the map.

For all the talk of Bulgaria's strength as a software outsourcing destination, Stefanov says that the country is hardly a bastion of off-shoring: "It is good for us just to show that Bulgaria is out there, because I think this is one of the main problems of Bulgaria – that people do not know the country – so an advertisement in a big international financial publication would attract attention."

But ads are not the only recourse, he says. "No big investor will go to a country just because he has seen an advertisement in The Economist and this is something that we are very much aware of. This is why there must be a balance between generic advertisements just creating awareness of the country and something more specific, perhaps industry-based."

To that end, the agency is working with AT Kearney to identify the niche segments where Bulgaria can play up its main advantages, which Stefanov lists as "being part of the EU, being in a close time zone to Western Europe, having the human resource talent and having it at a competitive cost to our immediate competitors in the region."

Low cost, however, is not going to be the main message, since "we can never compete with countries like India or even in the neighbourhood, like Egypt or Ukraine," he says.

The target date for the campaign's launch is spring 2011. In the meantime, the focus is on identifying the five to 10 major areas of interest, as well as the markets or regions where Bulgaria could be promoted. After that, the process will switch to identifying the top companies in the respective industries that could be targeted, Stefanov says.

The agency has already called a tender to choose the detailed marketing strategy and expects to pick a winner by early-December. Although details remain to be ironed out, Stefanov says that he would like to see more promotional events: "The idea is to have several events with a big reputable partner, maybe someone like The Economist or a company like McKinsey or an institution like the World Bank that people know and trust."

And while the Government is doing its part, he says that businesses should "walk the walk and hire graduates from universities and make sure that they have good prospects for developing afterwards."

He acknowledges that there are too many students in too many disciplines that do not fit what the business environment wants, which causes a mismatch between what is being studied and what graduates end up doing, but points to the private sector's share of responsibility in preserving the talent pool that makes Bulgaria a potential outsourcing destination.

"It is quite hypocritical if businesses bash the Government and universities that the quality of students is low and at the same time do not hire people at all or hire too few. It is not what responsible businesses should do and it does not encourage students to pay attention to their education," he says.

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