GBS Next Stop: Tricity

The global business services landscape has entered a state of recalibration. As multinational enterprises navigate the currents of technological innovation waves and geopolitical uncertainty, the question of where to locate complex business functions has never been more strategical. The Tricity’s maritime identity has shaped everything from its infrastructure investment to the business culture, producing a region that is capable and eager to fulfill business services investment demands.

Key findings from the report

Tricity has become one of the most valuable technology
hubs in Poland.
The presence of established business clusters has a significant impact on the talent pool and serves as a strong incentive for new investments.
The Tricity BSS sector has reached a high level of maturity, further reinforced by the growing importance of AI development.

Cost Effectiveness and Knowledge Intensive Functions

The cost effectiveness equation for GBS operations in the Tricity – and in Poland more broadly – is in the process of recalibration that impacts centers at all stages of maturity.

With the wage levels growth through the years, the era of pure labor arbitrage has passed. The organizations that established operations in the region primarily on cost-effectiveness grounds have long since had to find additional justifications for their presence. And the cases in the study reveal that they have found them – and not simply by resisting cost pressure. The key was to respond to it with functional upgrading, automation, and the development of higher-value service portfolios that generate returns justifying a higher cost base.

The organizations whose Tricity centers are most secure in their long-term futures are those that have made the transition from cost center to capability center; the evidence is visible in the fact that the Tricity’s talent ecosystem and institutional infrastructure are well suited to support that transition.

Business Clusters

The cluster effect – as the tendency for co-located organizations in related sectors to generate positive externalities for one another – is clearly visible on the Tricity example. The aviation cluster, anchored by Lufthansa Systems and Boeing, was built through sustained investment efforts spanning nearly three decades, despite the region initially lacking an aeronautical knowledge base. It has since become self-sustaining, with each new entrant both contributing to and drawing from the accumulated expertise that the cluster has generated.

The Nordic cluster operates similarly; each Scandinavian company that establishes operations in the Tricity contributes to the cultural and linguistic infrastructure that makes the market more attractive and more effective for the next entrant.

The maritime cluster, encompassing Hapag-Lloyd, DAMEN, and a range of specialist logistics operators, is grounded in the region’s maritime heritage but has been modernized by the impact of the GBS sector into one that can serve global supply chains with excellent capability. In each case, the cluster itself is worth more than only sum of its parts as it creates a business legacy and incubates know-how which persists even if some of its elements decide to exit the market.

Appearance of such cluster is a sign of the maturity of the market and it’s depth, which is required to sustain such ecosystems.

AI and Automation

Within the GBS sector in particular, AI’s impact is most visibly expressed in the progressive automation of manual-heavy tasks – the very functions that formed the foundational layer of the shared services model in its earliest form. Processes such as invoice processing or simple data entry are among the most advanced areas of AI-driven automation. The displacement of human effort from these functions is already well underway across the most mature GBS operations globally.

This implication is clearly visible in every analyzed case in the study; majority of companies identified AI as significant force currently reshaping their operations.

Notably, each of them, framed its impact in the same terms – as a tool that elevates human work rather than replaces it. Throughout strategies and visions statements shines a shared conviction that the appropriate response to AI is not workforce reduction but workforce transformation – moving people from transactional execution to supervisory, analytical, and creative roles that AI tools support but cannot perform.