On 16 and 23 March the Slovak Investment and Trade Development Agency (SARIO) participated at the Business Service Center Forum (BSCF) Quarterly Meeting taking place in Bratislava and Košice. BSCF of the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) brings together shared service centers and business process outsourcing providers operating in Slovakia and the SARIO agency has been a long term supporter of the platform.Business services centers (BSC) sector is an important pillar of the Slovak economy employing more than 40,000 employees and providing broad global services. Most local centers are at the forefront of the ranking of Slovak companies when it comes to value added and moreover they are significant contributors to the total export of services from the country. In Slovakia, there are two categories of business services: shared service centers (SSCs) and centers for business process outsourcing (BPO). While shared services centers are subsidiaries of multinational corporations and support mainly parent company, BPO centers focus on specialized support for external clients. Thanks to 15+ years of experience and the SSCs & BPOs dynamic growth, Slovak centers are being allocated more and more complex functions. Majority of the SSCs and BPOs are transforming transactional tasks into value-added services (e.g. conduction of finance & accounting reports, development and administration of IT solutions, marketing activities, HR etc.) and are striving to establish/found centers of excellence.During the quarterly meeting, SARIO representative Laura Nádaská introduced to the Forum members SARIO´s services with an objective to support further expansion of BSCs and encourage to extend the range of provided services, functions.Our services related to supporting the sector include:• Investment incentives consultancy for BSC sector• Assistance to companies interested in registration to BSC Register of Ministry of Economy of Slovak Republic• Advocacy activities for representatives of the sector at public institutions• Facilitating connections between schools, universities & research centers and business sector• Promotion of BSC success stories Representative of the Ministry of Economy of the Slovak Republic, Ms. Veronika Michálková presented the Institutional Strategy for Business Service Centres, which sets measures to facilitate activities of BSCs and strengthen the position of Slovakia as preferred destination for this type of investments.
