The high competences of IT specialists from the Vistula River are evident by the number of  specialized IT – shared – service centers established in Poland. Of the  1.5 thousand Polish and foreign centers of the business services sector, nearly half are IT centers (46.5%). And there would be even more of them, if not due to  the lack of Polish universities educating more of them …  The needs of the market are much higher than the possibilities.

According to the report, “Executive Brief Outsourcing 2019”, prepared by the international consulting company 7N, Poland ranks third in Europe in outsourcing IT services in the nearshoring cooperation model and in the global ranking it’s fifth. The Philippines, India, the Czech Republic and Hungary came ahead of Poland. In total, almost every fourth IT company in Poland provides outsourcing services, and their value is estimated by experts at 8 billion PLN! And, it will grow … As the value of the global IT outsourcing services market is growing. In 2027, it is expected to amount to $ 940 billion, growing 7.7% annually (Grand View Research).It clearly indicates that the IT outsourcing industry around the world has all the potential that Polish IT companies want and consistently use.

– The IT services market in Poland is very mature. Compared it to other popular locations,  such as India, the quality of Polish staff as well as the level of office organization and management is much higher – says Paweł Olejniczak, Vice President and  Member of the Management Board at RITS, which provides IT outsourcing and Team Extention services. – The problem faced by the industry before the pandemic were Polish salaries, which were no longer competitive. The time of the pandemic, however, showed that Poles were able to quickly adapt and thrive  with remote work and continue the implementation of services. We also have a very good quality of teaching in IT, although we are still struggling as with other countries around the globe  with the shortage of IT staff, due to high demand. Last year it was as much as approx. 50 thousand positions.

It is the shortage of staff that makes Poland lose in outsourcing rankings by less than 1 point with the Czech Republic or Hungary. In the “competition” category, the market is less saturated with companies and IT specialists. Polish universities and private programming schools are not keeping up with educating specialists. It is estimated that a comparable number of students, around. 13-14 thousand students, have completed IT studies at universities. Every year, only half are professionally involved in programming. In order to meet the current market demand for IT specialists, at least 10,000  more students would have to complete their IT studies every year in Poland.

The solution to this problem are the services of companies that specialize in providing IT specialists for a specific business order – even in the case of the most niche competences, in a very short time and regardless of the place in the world where the programmer is to work. Szymon Kujawiak, Business Unit Director at RITS, which is one of such examples, declares that sending candidate recommendations at RITS takes two or three days, which makes the process of searching for programmers as short as possible, and cooperation with them is very flexible. Specialists are hired for exactly the period necessary to implement the project and precisely define the competences that the candidate is to have.

Business awareness of the benefits of outsourcing IT services is increasing. This is evidenced by statistics – the propensity to outsource is growing. The data of the polish Central Statistical Office for 2018 shows that almost 71% of companies used at least one IT service provided in this model.

However, there is no shortage of concerns. The most serious concern  is associated with the risk that particular processes transferred to outsourcing companiees will stop working. To prevent this, conducting due diligence of the outsourcing company, thier experience and references in advance, greatly improves chances of finding a perfect match. Clutch is a useful platform (www.clutch.co) as it can verify all references added on the company’s profile by direct contact with their client (by phone or email). Only if the customer confirms the information, the testimonials are published.

The second concern is whether a given specialist will integrate enough with the team. Here, a lot depends on the company that decides to contract, although companies such as RITS support the entire consultant process, providing each specialist with a professional tutor who helps him solve all current issue and HR –  in relation to the new employer.

Finance can be another barrier. IT services outsourcing is not the least expensive, however, it’s worth noting, that when we compared to hiring a specialist  full-time, you should calculate the real  costs that the full-time position generates. Not only social benefits, but also for maintaining the HR or accounting department, turnover, office space, equipment and so on. After taking into account all these elements in the calculation, it may quickly turn out that outsourcing an IT specialist is much cheaper than hiring him full-time.

See the RITS profile on Clutch

Warsaw, October, 28, 2020, RITS Press Office