European economy dragging on Eastern Europe

3 Reasons Eastern Europe Needs to Grow Process Excellence

This year's European Football Championships held in Poland and Ukraine have served to show how successful Eastern European countries can be in the face of financial issues in the rest of the continent.

With these eastern markets emerging, there is a need for strong process excellence in such countries in order that Europe as a whole can recover from the mire that it has been in since 2007 and the worldwide recession.

One of the main reasons for this is the fact that the eurozone countries have been particularly problematic, bringing down the prospects for the entire continent and causing a shortage in jobs and economic growth.

While Germany has managed to stay particularly resolute, often being at the forefront of austerity measures for other countries around Europe, places like Spain and Greece have fared particularly badly. The former has seen almost constant unemployment levels of nearly a quarter for over a year, according to Eurostat figures, while the latter recently had to vote on new austerity measures as part of a last ditch attempt to even stay in the single currency.

Another issue which is causing a much higher need for good process excellence in Eastern Europe comes from the desire to compete with China and India and other traditional outsourcing markets, and the phenomenon of nearshoring. This is the process by which outsourced jobs, such as IT processes are brought to countries in the vicinity of the other nation, as opposed to further east in the globe.

Some of the reasons for this can include a better infrastructure, such as the newly constructed motorway stretching from Warsaw to Berlin, which makes for better access between Poland and Germany.

There are also benefits from the likes of stronger educational backgrounds, with many former Soviet nations for example providing a highly skilled practical workforce. Addison Lee, a UK cab company, said that it favoured Eastern European nations because they were more susceptible to problem solving and working out issues rather than just ignoring them.

Peter Ingram, IT director at Addison Lee, said: "The guys in India said yes to everything, copied the mistakes we had deliberately put in there, and didn't ask us anything about the business - it was all very systematic. The team in Russia looked at our proposition, asked if it was functional, noticed the mistakes and asked us why we did things in this way. They really challenged us and had much better engagement."

The final reason for the need for better process excellence in Eastern Europe simply stems from the need to take advantage of the stronger economy in these countries.

Countries such as Russia have seen far better financial situations than their Western counterparts. In Russia, for example, it is reported that house prices are constantly rising, while a recent report from Federal State Statistics Agency (Rosstat) said that the unemployment in Moscow was as low as one per cent throughout June.

Similarly, in Ukraine the unemployment rate sits as low as 1.6 per cent, showing a thriving economy in an emerging market which can afford to have companies which have money to create jobs. This is likely to bring about an influx of firms looking to move their operations to economic regions where there is a stronger economy, pushing the need for better levels of process excellence in the area.

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