OREANDA-NEWS. March 10, 2011. Estonia was ranked 11th, up seven places since 2009, in A.T. Kearney's Global Services Location Index, which lists the world's 50 best destination countries for outsourcing. The outsourcing activities considered for the ranking include IT services and support, contact centers and back-office support.

The study is an outcome of a weighted combination of relative scores on 43 measurements, which are grouped into three categories: financial attractiveness, people skills and availability, and business environment.

In the freshly published 2011 index, all three Baltic nations are recognized as examples of countries that have climbed in the competitiveness rankings as a direct consequence of the crisis. Latvia has gone up nine places to 13th, and Lithuania seven places to 14th.

In subcategories, Estonia came in fifth overall in education and seventh to ninth in language proficiency, significantly outranking its Baltic neighbors. On the other hand, labor compensation costs were higher in Estonia than in Latvia or Lithuania, whereas tax and regulatory costs were found to be lower.

"The economic downturn has forced companies, especially large multinationals, to review the patterns of providing corporate services. We have seen relocation of production plants internationally for decades, but now the shift has caught up with services. Increasingly, those services that do not need proximity to the end-user are relocated from countries with a high cost base to places with the best cost-to-quality ratio. The patterns of corporate services are changing and becoming ever more influenced by globalization," said Maria Alajoe, board member of Enterprise Estonia, commenting on the report.