How Big is the Bright Spot in Nordics Global Services?

For the past two years, we’ve observed rapid adoption and market growth of outsourcing of global services in the Nordics. This is well-documented and a real bright spot for a number of global services companies. The question is: how long will this growth continue?

At Everest Group, we believe the Nordics will behave much like the Australian marketplace. The Nordics are a larger market than Australia but have similar characteristics.

Australia is a market of 20 million people and has a well-educated, sophisticated population. Aussie businesses were quick to adopt a new global services paradigm, quick on the traditional outsourcing infrastructure model and quick on labor arbitrage. However, the Australian services segments grow quickly for three to four years and then mature equally quickly.

We believe the Nordics are following a similar path. This market is limited in size and scale. Just like Australia, its business is concentrated in some large companies that have a tendency to share or to think similarly. Therefore, we believe the growth in the Nordics likely will slow down and the market will move into a mature stage within 18 months to two years.

We make this prediction based on our observation of the Australian market performance which shares many characteristics with the Nordics in terms of size, business concentration, sophistication and collegiality.