Sri Lanka IT-BPM industry short-listed for EOA awards

Sri Lanka's Outsourcing Industry has been short-listed for the Offshoring Destination of the Year Award by the European Outsourcing Association (EOA).

The EOA Awards (EOAAs) now in its fifth year recognises and celebrates the efforts of companies and people who have demonstrated best-practice in outsourcing.

The awards bring the best and brightest of Europe's outsourcing industry together, featuring a range of suppliers, end-users and support service providers and affiliate organisations from the UK, Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and Spain, to reward European outsourcing successes.

The CEO of NOA, which manages the activities of the EOA, Kerry Hallard said, "Once again the EOA Awards has seen a record-breaking year for submissions, featuring a host of best-practice examples from across the European outsourcing industry."

"I am delighted to see such variety and detail within this year's entries, which shows the level of talent and professionalism within our industry. All short-listed applicants should be incredibly proud to have reached this stage," he said.

SLASSCOM Chairman Madu Ratnayake said, "We are delighted to be shortlisted for the European Outsourcing Awards right on the heels of victory at the UK Outsourcing Awards. Sri Lanka offers a compelling value proposition for European businesses as an outsourcing destination, especially for Software Product Engineering and Financial Accounting Outsourcing (FAO)."

"We hope the visibility that Sri Lanka gets with this short listing would encourage European companies to explore the tremendous potential Sri Lanka has to offer," he said.

Ranked among the Top 25 Global Outsourcing destinations by AT Kearney and among the Top 20 Emerging Cities by Global Services, Magazine, the Sri Lankan environment is highly conducive for allowing global enterprises to enjoy premium access to a high quality talent pool for small to medium scale engagements while setting up high-in-demand niche competency centres.

Sri Lanka acts as an off-shore development centre and joint venture development centre to several Fortune 500 companies and industry leaders from the North American continent, Great Britain, Australia, Sweden, Norway, and Japan.

Foreign entities that have invested in Sri Lanka have already begun to tap local talent. HSBC, Industrial and Financial Systems (IFS), Amba Research, RR Donnelley, WNS, Virtusa, Pearson, Valista, Millennium Information Technology (owned by London Stock Exchange) and Innodata Isogen are overseas investors which have become firm believers.

However, there are also over 300 other local IT companies such as Informatics, hSenid, John Keells, DMS that also operate within a fiercely competitive environment.

Among globally recognised customers of Sri Lankan ICT products and services are names such as JP Morgan, Google, Microsoft, Qatar Airways and Emirates.