IT consultancy CGI opens first BPO centre in Romania
Montreal-based IT consulting giant CGI has opened a tech-focused business process outsourcing (BPO) centre in Bucharest, Romania. The centre will employee 300 people and provide software-related services to CGI’s clients in France.
Romania is a popular destination for firms looking for a good place to locate their business process outsourcing (BPO). The country is an especially attractive location for nearshoring IT services for Western European clients, since it has lower labour costs, while still being in the EU and having an adequate tech labour supply. Indeed, a report from consultancy A.T. Kearney named Romania as one of the world’s top 20 locations for business process outsourcing.
Last year, Big Four firm Deloitte opened an IT services centre in Bucharest that aims to employ 800 people by 2020. Consultancy Accenture also opened a BPO centre in Brasov, Romania last year which plans to employ 100 people over the coming years.
Now, Canadian IT and management consultancy CGI has announced its first BPO centre in Romania. The centre will be located next to the Polytechnic University in Bucharest, and will deliver software-related services. CGI’s centre will provide development and support for application software solutions based on Java, DotNet, BI, and others. The firm plans to hire 300 people by 2021, with 100 hired this year.
CGI’s Bucharest centre will exclusively serve the company’s French clients. One of the reasons Romania was chosen lies in the fact that it is the most Francophone country in the region, with a high number of French-speaking graduates. Romania is, furthermore, subject to the same General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as France, ensuring comparable security and the guarantee of data being stored in Europe.
“By opening our first software consulting and development center in Romania, we aim to provide our French customers with innovative digital services that meet international quality standards,” commented Jean-Michel Baticle, CGI Operations President, Western and Southern Europe. “Organized on the basis of a proven model, the centre aims to support the development and growth of our activities in France.”
The Bucharest IT centre will join CGI’s existing network of BPO centres in France, Spain, Portugal, and Morocco.
Based out of Montreal and founded in 1976, CGI is one of the largest IT and management consulting firms in the world. The firm has over 72,000 employees in more than 400 offices across the globe, and posted revenues of $10.8 billion last year.
In recent CGI news, the firm recently unveiled its open banking solution. The CGI Open Finance platform helps traditional banks integrate open banking and information sharing with third-party fintech apps while remaining compliant with government regulations.
