A Company Visit to Our Polish Partners
Like many other marketing firms, we work with outside professionals for specialized projects. We place a great deal of value in our professional relationships. It is important to Reliance to properly vet any firm that we work with to ensure that our partners can comply with the standards of both Reliance and our customers. We especially want to develop a positive working relationship with our vendors and our customers. The internet and Skype are helpful in meeting other professionals, but nothing beats meeting vendors at their office. Face to face meetings allow us to better assess our vendor’s staff, the quality of their operation and provide us a chance to meet the people our team members will be interacting with on projects.
This September we visited several groups of vendors and customers in Poland. Poland is a hub for software development, IT and graphic design. The fact that Polish cities such as Wroclaw, Warsaw and Krakow are tech hot spots is no accident. The Polish educational system has a strong emphasis on STEM. Poland has a tradition of excellence in Mathematics. It was Polish mathematicians who initially broke the supposedly unbreakable German Enigma code of WW 2. Poland offers many advantages to American business. For software development Poland is consistently ranked 3rd in the world. Many young Poles are dedicated to educational self- improvement, not only in technical areas but in languages. Many speak a second or third language such as English, German or Spanish- with English being dominant. During a train ride from the Warsaw Airport my travel companion Karol conversed with people in Russian, Polish, German and English. His son Michael – a hard driving micro electronics engineer has a MSc in Engineering plus speaks fluent English and Spanish.
A strong tech sector and fluency in English are just two reasons why working with Poles has been a good business choice for Reliance. Though Polish and American cultures have their differences- they do mesh well together. The Polish Advantage- a tech savvy, highly educated and motivated work force with good language skills who work well with Americans has not gone unnoticed. Today most of the world’s top tech companies have major operations in Poland.
Americans are appreciated in Poland. Once in Krakow, my wife Karen and I were struggling with our suitcases looking for the right track to catch a train to Prague, Czech Republic. We asked a very strong young man to point us to the right platform. Not only did he give us directions, he walked us to the platform carrying our bags! What more can you ask for in help and hospitality? I have been sold on Poland ever since!
Written by Terry Butler
CEO Business Development LLC
c 1-919-740-0317
email terry.butler@reliancebusdev.com
