Opinions of Investors

Abhishek Sinha, Chief Operating Officer and Member of the Board, L&T Technology Services:

“By establishing this important centre in Poland, we aim to make our customers in Europe and North America benefit from LTTS’ long-standing expertise in new age engineering and embedded technologies. We also seek to tap into the local engineering talent pool for many of our mission critical global programs, and will work with the local administration and the academia to further develop the local ecosystem. We would also like to express our gratitude for all the support we have received from government institutions and local authorities”.

Source: businesswire.com

Scott Staples, CEO at First Advantage:

"We are excited to expand our global footprint and to tap into the vast technology talent in the region. This new facility enables us to continue to deliver a superior customer experience and bring our suite of HR technology solutions to businesses of all sizes. This represents another step in our global strategy to help our clients hire smarter and onboard faster.”

Source: techrseries.com

Erica Chapman, Vice President, Global Real Estate and Workplace Productivity, Akamai:

"We are very excited about expanding our footprint in Krakow, which is now our largest office in Europe. As a centre of excellence for engineering and customer support, our talented Akamai Krakow team was recognised last year as one of the top 10 companies to work for in Poland by the Great Place To Work Institute."

Source: infowire.pl

Simon Kriss, Manager Global Contact Centres w Cathay Pacific:

"The decision to choose Kraków as the location for a project as important to us as the Global Contact Centre follows months of analysis and complex considerations, with many potential locations involved. Given Cathay Pacific’s track record and passion for quality, the most important factor for Cathay Pacific is that we are able to consistently ensure a premium level of customer service. We strongly believe this is available to us in Krakow. 
Interestingly, we arrived at this conclusion in two ways. The first was to check the hard facts, data, statistics, infrastructure, market maturity, growth trends and so on. The second was to walk into any café, restaurant or store in Krakow and immediately get a sense of the true service ethos that seems to be naturally inherent in modern Polish culture."

Source: www.krakow.pl

Tomasz Stoma, HR Manager at Lundbeck Business Service Centre:

‘Competencies (both universal and subject-related ones), as well as the quality of delivered operations, are very important matters for Lundbeck. Kraków has made tremendous progress in this respect. Here we have access to a well-educated and experienced staff of specialists and experts. Head offices appreciate our communication skills and intercultural awareness.’

Source: Gazeta Wyborcza

Konrad Kończewski, SSC Head and A&F Operations Lead, RWE Group Business Services Polska:

‘RWE considered various locations in Central and Eastern Europe. Kraków and a few other locations in Slovakia and Czech Republic were taken into account. The decision to choose Kraków as the location of the centre was made, among others, because of the local developed market of shared services, the excellent infrastructure, rich academic traditions and the market of highly skilled specialists – both those who are experienced and those who are only starting their career in this industry.’

Source: Gazeta Wyborcza

Filip Thon, President of RWE Polska and Member of the Management Board of RWE East:

‘I’m happy that, in view of its good infrastructure, long traditions of academic education and active participation in international co-operation, Kraków was chosen as the location for REW Group Services. This confirms that Poland is an important market for the RWE Group, which gives us favourable prospects for the future.’

Source: http://www.rwe.pl

Marc Ammelung, Managing Director of Lufthansa Global Business Services:

‘We transferred many processes to Kraków – both from Germany and from other parts of the world. We chose Kraków as the only European division (apart from our base in Germany, of course) for many reasons: First of all, the availability of personnel was important – a city with such a large number of universities and other schools of higher education has certainly huge potential in this respect. Other things that mattered were obviously costs, the relative proximity of Germany and other European markets, as well as a good command of English among Polish employees. Because of all of these things, Kraków seemed to be the best choice for us.’

‘During these 10 years, Kraków has undergone a diametrical metamorphosis. As I said, we made the first steps here as one of the first of such centres, and later we were followed by more companies, which were encouraged by the attractive market of job candidates and, obviously, running costs of such business. However, costs are becoming slightly less important at the moment, because we have a multitude of educated and experienced candidates. A decade of experience on the market of shared services is invaluable. Obviously, you can also find many employees in other states and cities, but they certainly do not represent such a high level of quality.’

‘Today, not only tourists, but also businesspersons from various locations round the world, treat Kraków as an increasingly attractive place - for instance, for the SSC industry. During these ten days, shopping centres have adopted more demanding tasks. Many companies transferred simple accounting tasks to Kraków at the beginning, but today, the number of more analytic or decision-making tasks is increasing. Employment in Kraków outsourcing is no longer based on the fulfilment of superiors' orders; employees can also have an active impact on the functioning of their company. This ensures the high availability of skilled personnel both outside and inside companies in Kraków.’

Source: Gazeta Wyborcza

Joe Antonellis, Vice Chairman of State Street, Head of Global Services and Global Markets for Europe and Asia/Pacific:

‘The office in Kraków is the largest place of business of State Street in Europe, which is responsible for a range of complex financial operations being carried out for customers from all parts of the world and is a key location in Europe for activities relating to investment fund accounting, evaluation of securities, exchange-traded derivatives (ETD) and administration of hedge funds.’

‘Conditions on the financial market that customers must cope with are extremely complex, so they seek opportunities to invest in increasingly advanced financial instruments on global markets in view of large regulatory changes – and we are able to help them to face all of these challenges.’

‘We continuously seek new ways of improvement of the scope of services and expertise in our corporation and adapt them to the changing needs of customers. Kraków plays a significant role in this strategy. It serves as an excellent example of how we create a fully consolidated and specialised environment of experts in a specific location to deliver services to customers not only from Europe, but also from other territories.’

Source: http://www.statestreet.com

Young Sun Paek, Ambassador of the Republic of Korea in Poland, about the opening of a research and development centre in Kraków by Samsung:

‘The choice of Kraków, which is the historical centre and the heart of Polish education, should not be surprising to anyone. We hope for fruitful co-operation both with the academic environment and the IT industry. I believe that we will contribute to the technological development of Poland by making use of the knowledge and creativity of young educated specialists.’

Source: Gazeta Wyborcza

Przemysław Berendt, Vice-President of Luxoft and Vice-President of ABSL:

'Representatives of companies from the sector stress that Kraków fulfils all the requirements of investors. They included, among others, the availability of skilled personnel, a well-developed infrastructure or a strong academic base. Investments have already been made in Kraków by companies such as Shell, Capgemini, UBS, HSBC, Luxoft, Accounting Plaza Central Europe, HCL Poland, Hewitt Associates, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM BTO Business Consulting Services and State Street Services.’

‘When our company entered Poland in October 2010, we assumed that we would employ 150 persons in Kraków for two years. Today, we have 240 employees and would still like to employ more.’

‘I arrived to work in Kraków from Warsaw. Here the quality of life is better. I work in Zabierzów and live in Kliny. It takes me a short time to arrive to work – I do not sit in traffic.’

Source: Gazeta Wyborcza

Mariusz Krzak, Regional Director of Skanska Property Poland

‘For us, Kraków is a natural place to do business. We could observe its potential when we built our first project here – the building at Kapelanka 42, which found tenants and its first buyers within a very short time. Our new investment – Axis – responds to the growing demand of investors for top-class office space where they could develop new workplaces.’

Source: http://biznes.pl