Sri Lanka moves up five places in GSLI index

Sri Lanka’s global country ranking jumped 5 places up to become 16th in the A.T. Kearney’s Global Services Location Index (GSLI) index.
The consulting giant, A.T. Kearney’s Global Services Location Index (GSLI) index first established in 2004, analyzes and ranks top 51 countries worldwide as the best destinations for providing off-shoring services, including IT services and support, contact centers, and back-office support.

“Sri Lanka moves up five places in this year’s index, as it develops a successful but relatively unknown knowledge services industry. With a highly educated talent base and sophisticated technical skills, Sri Lanka based firms are providing advanced services to clients such as Google, Nokia, JPMorgan and London Stock Exchange. Offerings extend beyond software development and transaction processing to off-shore legal services, architectural drawings and medical diagnostics.” A.T. Kearny.

“Our continuous rapid upward growth in the rankings of AT. Kearney’s Global Services Location Index prove, we are in the right direction. This further validates, the growth potential of IT/BPM Industry Sri Lanka and I’m sure will encourage all of us to do better in the coming years,” said Jayantha D Silva, Chairman SLASSCOM “The latest AT Kearny report findings are a testament to the fact that Sri Lanka’s IT/BPM industry can reach great heights, and provide an enormous economic stimulus as a top net foreign exchange earner for the country. These latest rankings, while endorsing the industry roadmap and the Government intervention in the growth and development of this sector, also clearly identify the areas we need to work on in order to further improve our rankings, by analyzing our relative position in the global market I pay tribute to all who have contributed to this success and rapid growth over the years,” ICTA CEO Reshan Dewapura said. Sri Lanka’s competitive advantage in 1T/BPM is built around agility, cost, a niche talent base, ethics, cultural adaptability, and superior quality of life as a destination for doing business. Sri Lanka is highly conducive for global enterprises to enjoy premium access to a high quality talent pool for small to medium scale engagements whilst establishing high-in-demand niche competency centers. Several global and local world leading companies have set up operations in Sri Lanka to take advantage of high end product engineering skills and the financial accounting capabilities Sri Lanka offers. Many Fortune 500 companies and industry leaders front the North American continent, United Kingdom, Australia, Sweden, Norway, and Japan have set up 1T/BPM operations in Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan IT/BPM industry made significant progress over the last five years. Export revenue grew 238 percent from USD 213 million in 2007 to an estimated USD 720 million in 2013. Total employment grew 123 percent from 33,700 in 2007 to an estimated 75,100 in 2013.Number of companies in the industry also grew from 171 in 2007 to over 225 in 2013. The recent ‘Outsourcing Destination of the Year’ award in UK by the National Outsourcing Association (NOA) was a true validation of this tremendous progress Sri Lanka was able to achieve. Industry has now set a bold vision to achieve $5 billion in revenue, create 200,000 direct jobs and 1,000 startups by year 2022 to lead the country towards realizing the Government’s Knowledge Hub vision. The GSLI, now in its sixth edition, tracks the contours of the off shoring landscape in 51 countries across three major categories: financial attractiveness, people skills and availability and business environment. Based on 25 metrics they have identified the countries with the strongest underlying fundamentals to potentially deliver IT and BPM.