The share of mid-office processes in Poland's business services sector exceeded 50 percent for the first time ever, and now stands at 52.9 percent. Additionally, knowledge-intensive business services continue to account for more than half of all the work conducted in Polish centers. Data from the Business Services Sector in Poland 2024 report by the Association of Business Service Leaders (ABSL), shows that Poland is becoming a country of experts, and is leaving behind the focus on simple processes.

The most recent edition of ABSL’s annual report proves that Poland is no longer a location specializing in low cost transactional processes. The sector’s leaders are preparing their respective centers for an AI-driven technological revolution, positioning the sector in Poland as highly specialized, run by experts who can drive global innovations and partake in strategic decision making. With increased specialization comes changes such as increased productivity and increased value of services. In 2023, the sector's estimated contribution to Poland's GDP rose to 5.3 percent, while the value of exports reached USD 36.8 billion (up 22.9 percent year-on-year) with an average export value per employee of USD 59,300.

Poland's growing role in global processes

Compared to previous years, there is a marked increase in the share of both mid-office and front-office processes. Front-office positions are the most customer-oriented and related to headquarters functions. The middle-office functions deal with more complex tasks, such as advanced analytics, anti-money laundering, and cybersecurity. Back-office functions mainly provide administrative support. In recent years, Poland's modern business services sector has been clearly shifting towards higher value-added and more complex processes. This has been made possible by upgrading the skills of employees and increasing the use of technology. About 25 percent of centers in Poland say they have introduced process automation at a level exceeding 30 percent, with 20 percent saying they are already using artificial intelligence in finance, HR and IT departments.

Janusz Dziurzynski, president of ABSL, emphasizes: “What investors are looking at is the value we are able to deliver. Continuous transformation towards increasingly complex processes is necessary for the further development of the sector in Poland. In the coming years, we will aim to increase the number of global processes owned and managed from centers in our country. For this we require employees who understand both technology and the complexity of the services provided. We are and will continue to move away from relying on simple transaction processes such as manual data entry and invoicing.”

Multipurpose sector

Among business service centers in Poland, 65.5 percent provided more than one function In addition, some of the global business services centers, accounting for 29.1 percent of the national sector, were also multifunctional. This means that these centers handle simultaneously, for example, HR, IT and F&A tasks. 62.2 percent of companies said they had expanded or significantly expanded their services in 2022, and 53.1 percent had made changes to products, product mix, processes or the organization of operations in the last three years.

The centers in Poland are characterized not only by multitasking, but also by a wide geographic range of services provided. Customers include companies from 45 countries, with the leaders being Germany (76.5 percent of centers in Poland), the UK (57.4 percent), France (45.1 percent), the US (40.7 percent) and Poland (33.3 percent).

Plans for further transformation

Transformation trends at the company level in the modern business services sector in Poland are clear, with 74.4 percent planning to introduce a transformation strategy in the upcoming year (up 15 p.p. compared to last year's report). The vast majority of companies (91.3 percent) declared that the main element of transformation was process automation. This was followed by process standardization (79.8 percent) and implementation or expansion of AI (70.2 percent). These figures indicate that an increasing percentage of business processes conducted by centers in Poland will be based on technology. An example of this is HR departments, 11 percent of which had already implemented AI in their hiring processes, with an additional 21 percent planning to do so by the end of 2024.

Piotr Wierzbicki, CEO of Capgemini Poland and General Manager of Global Delivery Center, notes, “In order to remain globally competitive, the sector in Poland needs to move to higher value-added services, more advanced functions and even greater participation in mid-office and front-office processes, as well as higher skills and capabilities in knowledge and use of technology. Poland is still considered to be the best location in terms of cost-to-value ratio, but in the long run this will not be enough to maintain our position in the global market. Undoubtedly, our major advantage is access to specialists with very high competencies – Poland has stood out internationally in this regard for many years. However, it is now very important to shape the talent pool in a way that is adequate to market needs, so as to achieve local specialization in cutting-edge technologies. For this to be possible, it is necessary to further develop cooperation between the worlds of business and science.”

Full report is available here: