On Thursday, October 20, 2022, now already traditional “5 Pillars of Business” panel was held at the Metropol Hotel on the topic of “Criteria for business success in 2023 through the trends of the 5 pillars of business.”
In the last few years, the world economy has been hit by a lot of unplanned events. Through the debate, it was analyzed how all this was reflected on the global and domestic economy, as well as what are the potential catalysts of positive economic trends.
What are the main criteria for business success? At the top of this pyramid of business success, profit is slowly catching up with staff retention, mental health of employees, but also green transformation. All this is reflected in the place and space of work, personnel management, employee rights, but also finances and investments.
The panelists of this event were: Aleksandar Hangimana, General Director for SEE, Manpower, Bojan Žepinić, Managing Partner, TPA Serbia, Goran Živković, General Director, CBS International, Igor Anić, President of the Executive Board, ProCredit Bank, while the moderator was Ljubica Tomić , founder and partner, TSG Law Office. The communication and program partner of the event was the Business Intelligence Institute.
“Companies have faced enormous challenges and undergone an incredible amount of change in the past few years, and this will not slow down in 2023 either. First there was Covid, which completely changed the concept of doing business in many industries, then there was the war in Ukraine.” Certainly, CBS International has achieved growth every year, practically since its foundation, and we should continue this upward trajectory. In order for that to happen, in these changed conditions, we will all make maximum efforts. When we talk about clients, it is important to point out that due to the change in working methods and conditions, one group of our clients went into hibernation, and on the other hand, other clients became active, so we do not expect major turbulence”, said Goran Živković , Managing Director, CBS International.
Bojan Žepinić, managing partner, TPA Serbia, commented on the term “Friendshoring” as a relatively new term, established in the previous six months. “The novelty that this new term introduces in relation to the existing “off-shoring” is that production from developed Western countries is redirected not exclusively to more affordable locations (with lower wages, taxes, etc.), but also that such locations (countries) must be politically compatible with the country where the production comes from. This is certainly a consequence of the ongoing geostrategic, political and military conflict between the West and the East and the placing of economic interests behind the aforementioned”.
Igor Anić, President of the Executive Board of ProCredit banka a.d. Beograd, added that “as a rule, projects or investments that cannot withstand significant fluctuations in borrowing costs are not well-placed projects. What influences the decision whether to invest or not, is the investment climate and the degree of security and certainty that investors have for the coming period, bearing in mind the geopolitical situation and existing or potential market disturbances. There has been a lot of uncertainty in this segment in the last few months, and this may slow down or postpone some investments for the next period. On the other hand, every crisis also represents a chance for new business opportunities, and many businessmen can look for their chance precisely in that context”.
“Investors from the so-called The DACH area, and especially companies in the field of industrial production from Germany, are looking for new locations for their production. In addition to the standard labor price criterion, the geographical factor now strengthens. The nearshoring process puts Serbia in the spotlight for moving production (especially from China) to countries closer to the home country,” said Ljubica Tomić, founder and partner, TSG Law Office.
Taking into account the outflow and deficit of labor, but also the potential of “import” of labor, Aleksandar Hangimana, General Director for SEE, Manpower, stated that “there is still no systemic solution for labor import, because this model is reserved only for certain industries. There is almost no job position for which we do not have a shortage of candidates, so an integral approach to this problem is extremely important. To begin with, it would be useful to focus on retaining profiles that have a wider societal importance such as medical staff”.