Portugal is becoming an attractive destination not just for tourists drawn to its beaches, wineries, and all-year-round surfing. It has also become a top choice for many American and European tech companies looking to set up BPOs or offshore facilities in low-cost centers in Europe.
It’s not just Portugal’s business-friendly policies and ease of doing business that makes it an attractive potential BPO hub. After all, this country of 10 million ranked no. 39 in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index in 2020. Portugal’s competitive real estate and better cost of living, which is lower than in other European cities, is also a strong factor.
What makes Portugal a strong contender in tech and BPO is its people: 90,000 high-quality graduates are produced by Portugal’s top universities every year. Recruitment managers who have scouted engineering talent in Portugal can vouch for the quality of hires they can get in this small country, and how they come at a competitive cost compared with other talent hubs in Paris, Dublin, Berlin, and London. In addition to talent, the Portuguese also demonstrate a high level of English proficiency compared with their European neighbors. All these factors make it easy to choose Portugal as a possible BPO hub.
If you’re looking to set up your business process operations in Portugal, these are the areas where you can find a strong, reliable pool of talent:
- Customer service outsourcing – The highest number of call centers are headquartered in Lisbon, Portugal’s capital city. These include Conectys, Buildness, Ventask, Pluricall, and Helpware. Thanks to a deep pool of multilingual professionals who can speak English, German, French, and Spanish, companies have not had difficulties building their workforce. In fact, inbound and outbound contact centers have also opened up in other Portugal cities like Porto, Alges, Braga, and Viseu.
- IT and software development – More than a quarter of service centers in Portugal are focused on IT and software development. With a huge pool of STEM graduates from high-quality universities, Portugal is able to fill a range of tech roles such as software engineers, network engineers, IT and support engineers, QA engineers, UX/UI designers, Scrum Masters, and DevOps engineers. It’s no wonder that the EY European Investment Monitor 2021 names Portugal as the sixth-largest destination for software and IT services, which represent 33% of total projects.
- Finance and accounting – Less than one-fifth of the BPO industry in Portugal focuses on finance and accounting services. With highly trained professionals, coupled with advanced cloud technology, the F&A BPO sector in Portugal can automate, standardize and streamline accounting and reporting processes to help companies achieve efficiency and be on top of their financial operations. Portugal’s F&A sector has built its expertise for a range of services beyond accounting, bookkeeping, reporting, tax compliance, accounts payable and accounts receivable.
In addition to these services, Portugal is also building its expertise in other functions such as actual services, robotics, sustainability, infrastructure management, R&D, procurement, data analytics, tax, and legal and compliance.
Truly, with a range of expertise areas offered, competitive costs, and a wealth of talent, Portugal has a lot going for it as an emerging BPO hub.
If you’re considering setting up a BPO in Portugal, Wingspan Consulting can help you find and hire top-quality local talent to staff your team. We can also assist you in getting your BPO operations up and running while ironing out the complexities of setting up a company in Portugal—so you can focus on what you do best. Email solution@wingspan-consulting.com to understand how we can help.