SCC to increase Romanian headcount to 1,200

Managing director James Rigby says adding 450 new staff in Romania will make it more competitive against the SIs

SCC has put its faith in Romania as a nearshore location as it prepares to expand headcount in the country from 750 to 1,200.

Talking to CRN, SCC managing director James Rigby said the firm would recruit 450 more staff across its three Romanian sites this year in response to demand from cost-conscious customers in the UK, France and Spain.

"Eighty per cent of the 750 people out there are servicing UK clients and we are seeing that UK customers are very open to being provided with those services offshore, which makes us competitive against the SIs," he said.

"It has been a bit tough in France because there is a social stigma to it, but even there they are embracing it because of the cost savings."

Claiming to answer more than 35,000 calls a month, SCC's multilingual service centres in Bacau and Sadoveanu provide services such as first, second and third-line support, application packaging and 24/7 monitoring of customers' and SCC's own datacentres.

"It's just a question of continuing to grow those aspects," Rigby said.

While Computacenter and Misco both have nearshore hubs in Hungary, Ingram Micro has opted for Bulgaria and Capita recently set up a shared services centre in Poland, it is Romania which offers the best mix for SCC's clients, Rigby said.

"We've been there about six years," he said. "We liked the multilingual capabilities - Romanian is a Latin language so is very suitable for France, and their English is very good as well. We also liked the education system, so we set up in two university towns so we could attract lots of students.

"And we also liked the low rate of turnover. Our turnover of staff is sub-four per cent and in Poland and India our research indicated there is a much higher level of staff turnover, so we have some stability."