As services globalisation evolves, companies are looking at developing countries and are seeking relevant, up-to-date data in order to evaluate the state of readiness of services globalisation locations and suppliers. Central Europe has been the primary beneficiary of sourcing deals in the European region, with Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary leveraging their skilled workforce and cost competitive advantages to garner business from the United Kingdom and the European Union. This has prompted the SEE countries to hone their offering in order to more fully participate in the services globalisation arena.

Titled, Offshore Readiness of SEE Countries, neoIT's latest white paper, the latest in its monthly series, evaluates the four SEE countries' abilities to attract and successfully implement information technology outsourcing (ITO) and business process outsourcing (BPO) work. The study examines each country's regulations, business environment, infrastructure and resources.

neoIT created an Offshore Readiness Index for the four SEE countries. The resulting index provides useful assessments of each country's strengths, weaknesses and general state of readiness for global sourcing.

• Slovenia appears to be the most offshore ready, given its excellent information, communications, technology (ICT) infrastructure and a supportive business environment; however the country's small labour pool and high wage rates could prove to be a hindrance.
• Romania's strength is its skilled, cost competitive labour pool and the relatively low cost of setting up a business.
• Bulgaria has the lowest wage rates of the four countries and a fairly large labour pool, but has low supplier maturity.
• Croatia was ranked the least offshore ready of the four, with a small labour pool, relatively high wage rates and low level of supplier maturity.