Coloplast is a Danish developer of products and services that make life easier for people with very personal and private medical conditions. The business includes ostomy care, urology and continence care, and wound and skin care. It operates globally and employs more than 7,000 people.
In October 2009 Coloplast opened in Szczecin a financial and accounting centre for Europe. The company occupies an entire floor at the Oxygen office building.
 

Szczecinbiznes.pl: What do you do? Your business is often seen as a call centre or outsourcing of accounting centres.

Allan Kjer: We are definitely not a call centre though we do have phones and we do use them. Coloplast Shared Services is a financial and accounting centre of Coloplast. We are its finance department located abroad. At the end of 2011 we will be providing services related to liabilities, receivables and general accounting to 80 percent of our European companies. Right now we provide services to our branches in such countries as: Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and Poland. The finance departments in those countries ceased to operate and the branches have focused only on sales. Our centre differs from other also because we are responsible for full accounting management. The majority of centres deals only with a part of finance and accounting processes. It is also very often that large companies outsource such services. We, on the other hand, are part of Coloplast.

How did it happen that Coloplast decided to locate its financial centre in Szczecin.

It all started in 2008 with an idea to create a separate unit within the company to optimize the operations of the support departments and, in the long-term, streamline them. The most important decision was first to combine many accounting units from various countries into one. It wasn‘t that difficult as in the case of finance, procedures in various countries are either similar or the same.
Then the question appeared: where should such finance centre be located? To look for the location we contacted Deloitte which deals with finding the right places for starting businesses, based on specified criteria.

What criteria and requirements did you consider when looking for the address?

One of the main criteria was the location. We wanted it to be in Europe, relatively close to Denmark were the headquarters are located. The proximity to our major markets, 80% of which are in Europe, was also important. This is why we never considered moving the centre e.g. to Asia. Another important thing was to find appropriate staff. Therefore, it was important for the place to have good universities with the right number of finance and accounting graduates. We were also interested in the procedures necessary to start operations in a given place. Based on the criteria we selected 65 cities from all over Europe.

The majority of cities in Europe, often more developed, meets the criteria. It seemed natural to choose Germany, e.g. Berlin. Why not there?

Of course, we had Berlin in mind. One of the strong points was the proximity to the Danish border. I don’t remember what made us abandon Berlin. Anyhow, it did not qualify to the 65 cities proposed by Deloitte.

What then made you choose Szczecin?

Poland quite soon became a natural target of our interests. There are a number of large cities with good universities. There are many educated people, the majority of whom know foreign languages. We selected five cities, four of which were in Poland and theoretically each of them met the requirements to become our location. We chose Szczecin because we would be the first with such business.

Is this an advantage?

Poznań, Warsaw, Gdańsk and Kraków have already got such centres. What is more, their markets are much more dynamic and new companies from our industry keep appearing. This means that we would need to compete for employees. Of course, it’s not about the fear of competition or the belief that Szczecin will never have another company and we will always be the only firm in the market. However, back then it was a very comfortable situation and we could build a stable team composed of people with top qualifications. We had time to hire people and see them in action. On the other hand, we had time to show them what we had to offer without being afraid that next day they will quit to join another company that was just opening an office in the city. It's also about the family nature of our company, which values a stable, reliable team and human interactions.

Did Szczecin meet all the requirements or were there any failures?

In our analyses, Szczecin for sure had a very poor result when it comes to office space. When we were hiring first people at the end of 2009 Oxygen, where we are now, wasn't even there. Hence, there was some risk. Additionally, what was the biggest advantage could in practice prove an obstacle - there had been no similar companies and therefore there were no experienced employees. However, all in all, the benefits prevailed and today we can say that we made the right choice.

Did the local authorities participate in the process and did they make efforts to bring the company to the city?

All the time we co-operated with the City Hall which showed us the city and promoted it. I spent many weeks here. I was shown the universities, I could talk to the students, see whether they were planning to stay in the city or not and what expectations they could have of us. The city was also very helpful in finding our present location. It definitely proved a good host.

Wasn’t it the lower costs that made you choose Poland and Szczecin?

The key reason for creating the financial centre was higher effectiveness. Of course, we benefit from lower costs after closing 15 finance departments in our offices in Europe, but we did it primarily because we decided that such divisions would never be sufficiently effective. If it was only about money, we would never choose Poland which is not the cheapest country in Europe and in the world.

Are you planning to expand your activities in Szczecin or maybe in some time you will decide to move to a different city or country to cut costs?

We will definitely stay here for many years. In fact, we have not yet finished the first stage of the project, i.e. moving the finances of our local companies to one place. The stage itself is so complicated that terminating it or changing would be too risky and uneconomic. In the next stage we will be trying to stabilize the situation and improve the business as much as possible. It’s a long-term work and throughout the time Coloplast will remain in Szczecin.

How many staff do you hire?

Right now we have 75 employees. Most of them are young, around 30. They all have university degrees, know English very well and very often another foreign language. Most of them graduated from economics or finance faculties. But we also hire people with language education and we train them in accounting and other necessary skills. What is interesting is that quite a lot of our employees came back from abroad where they gained experience in similar companies and improved their language skills. We gave them a chance for future development, here at home.

What are your requirements of employees?

Our requirements were and still are very high. Of course we pay attention to competences, especially the knowledge of languages. However, a diploma in economics and knowledge of foreign languages is not enough. We look at the personality of candidates and their willingness to work and learn new things. We are a relatively small company and we are all very close. Additionally, considering that we are not an outsourcing company, but an accounting department within Coloplast we have a big responsibility. We need to trust our employees and be sure that they want to carry out our task with us. Therefore it is not only the CV that we analyze, but also the personality of the candidates.

Are you still looking for employees?
Yes, we are because we will be taking over services in more countries: France, Spain, Italy and UK. Our target number of staff by the end of the year is 90 people. Of course, we do expect that hiring may be more and more difficult as we already have the best employees. Luckily there is still a lot of "fresh blood" in the market. It is hard though to find people with experience.

Are you cooperating with local companies?

Yes, though because of what we do, to a limited extent. We use the services of a recruitment company. Our employees regularly use catering services. Large meetings or company events are organized by local companies. There is of course office cleaning, transportation services and accommodation for our guests.