Latvia takes part at the GBS Award

Global business service centers (GBS) sector has been recognized internationally being rewarded in CEE Shared Services & Outsourcing Summit & Awards event, held in Warsaw for the eighth consecutive year. Latvia participates in this event for the third year.

The goal of the GBS regional event is to reward and highlight GBS companies operating in Central and Eastern Europe. This year Cognizant Technology Solutions was acknowledged as "Best Services Provider – pan-European (BPO)", as well as "Top Robotics Implementation of the Year", and SEB Global Services was rewarded as Business Services Firm of the Year.

Last year, the capital city of Latvia, Riga won the prize at the award ceremony as the emerging GBS location in Europe, Circle K Business Center was awarded the title of "Business Services Firm of the Year in the Baltics" and Cognizant Latvia received the title of "Digital Services Company of the Year". This year, several companies from Latvia was shortlisted for the awards - Cognizant Latvia, Atea Global Services, Allnex Latvia, MSC Shared Service Centre Riga, Circle K Business Centre, SEB Global Services, Tieto Latvia, EVRY Latvia (now merged into TietoEVRY).

SEB Global Services has been rewarded as the "Business Services Firm of the Year – Baltics" for several achievements in 2020. For example, SEB has been recognized as the best Sub-Custody service provider in the Nordics as company and received a Global Custodian 2019 Major Markets Award, which reflects operational excellence of Sub-Custody teams in Riga. In addition, the award symbolizes SEB’s Robotics Centre of Excellence achievements in efficiency and focus on diversity and equal rights in the workplace. SEB has been not only growing in terms of the size having almost 2000 employees in Riga and Vilnius, but also company managed to ensure service excellence, efficiency and a motivating work environment.

Cognizant group received award "Top Robotics Implementation of the Year" for implementing various automation tools in their daily work, focusing on developing reusable components and saving several thousands of hours per year by significantly reducing average handling time (AHT). Also, Cognizant group was awarded as "Best services provided - Pan-European (BPO)" for delivering services to major clients from multiple locations in Europe, in many cases in 20+ languages, having proven processes for knowledge transfers and onboarding of new clients and being a people based industry, so focus on having good benefit system, good people processes as well as a focused recruitment team to attract new talents.

LIAA has been working with the GBS industry companies, inviting them to expand their operations in Riga, to encourage to expand services of new and higher added value business support functions in Latvia. Global business service centers (GBS) sector has been defined as one of states priorities being rapidly growing for the last years, still having quite low market saturation and place for new players to come. The successful participation of LIAA and nominations of the business centers that located in Latvia indicates that Riga has great potential to develop GBS sector, providing a favorable environment for both already existing companies as well as newcomers, thus, encouraging the transfer of new business support functions to Latvia.

In order to promote the development of the GBS sector in Latvia, an industry memorandum was signed in 2018, by the Riga City Council, LIAA, the Ministry of Economics, the National Alliance of Real Estate Developers, the Financial Industry Association and the Foreign Investors Council in Latvia, in agreement that they will carry out certain activities with the aim to promote the development of business service centers in Latvia. Moreover, in April, 2019 an Association of Business Service Leaders (ABSL) was established in Latvia to foster cooperation between companies from GBS sector and address such issues as raising public and potential employees' awareness of job opportunities in the industry and fostering communication with universities on the competencies needed in the GBS labor market today and in the future.