Malta Emerges as new European Nearshore Contact Center Outsourcing Destination

The emergence of new outsourcing markets continues within Europes nearshore, and Malta is positioning itself as a location that is able to provide multilingual services across verticals. This is a according to Peter Ryan, Senior Analyst of Contact Center Outsourcing Research with independent market analyst Datamonitor (DTM.L). Ryan recently had the opportunity to visit the location and examine its contact center sector. In his view, Malta's established contact center sector, language capabilities - capacity to provide multilingual services over the long term and its open business environment and incentives, bode well. Ryans observation and comment follows below.

Malta's already solid-base of operating contact centers bodes well for its burgeoning business process outsourcing (BPO) sector. In addition to in-house deployments such as HSBC, there are a number of independent outsourcers already doing offshore work for a number of different industry verticals, including travel & tourism, telcos and financial services.

The fact that English is an official language, coupled with near universal fluency in Italian bodes well for offshore / nearshore contact center service provision in Malta. Not only is Malta a location of choice for UK tourists, which can boost comfort and familiarity for this location as a place to do business, but the lack of Italian offshore options is also an advantage. Many Italian firms are looking for offshore locations in which to house some of their contact center operations, and Malta's proximity and language skills could play into that strategy.

Malta's inclusion in the European Union and steps to liberalize its economy are also selling points for potential outsourcing clients. In addition, its program of targeted incentives could prove attractive to companies requiring assistance in establishing operations in Malta.

As has been the case with many other countries looking to establish BPO sectors, Malta is limited by a small population and limited real estate. Thus, in order to maintain what appears to be significant progress over the past few years in developing the contact center industry, there must be efforts to attract the right projects to the island. Whilst Malta will not be able to compete on scale, it has the potential to add value in terms of higher end customer care and sophisticated service.