We recently joined the Site Selectors Guild European Conference (28 October 2027) in Riga, an unusually useful opportunity to hear directly from the consultants who advise multinational companies on where to locate their next Global Business Services centre, manufacturing plant, technology operation, or R&D facility.
The gathering brought togther 11 Site Selectors Guild members with more than 50 investment promotion professionals from Europe and beyond. But what interested me most was not another discussion about which European city has the lowest costs or the biggest incentives. It was how much the conversation around location decisions has changed.
For those of us working in the GBS sector, several lessons stood out.
GBS is competing for attention with a new generation of investments
One audience poll asked investment promotion agencies which sectors they are currently prioritising. The biggest responses included advanced manufacturing, defence, life sciences and automotive, alongside semiconductors, aerospace, data centres, AI and energy.
But GBS and Global Business Services were also clearly present.
That is significant. Cities across Central and Eastern Europe are no longer competing only against each other for SSC and GBS projects. Their investment agencies are simultaneously chasing semiconductor projects, defence manufacturing, data centres, life sciences and increasingly sophisticated R&D investments.
For GBS leaders considering a new location, that changes the competitive landscape for talent, government attention and incentives.
Germany and the US remain critical sources of investment
Another live poll asked delegates about their priority geographic markets for attracting investment.
Germany and the USA dominated, followed by markets including France, the UK, Canada, Japan, the Nordics, Switzerland and the Netherlands.
For CEE this reinforces an important point: despite all the discussion about Asian investment into Europe, the traditional transatlantic and Western European corporate markets remain enormously important sources of new projects.
And these are precisely the corporate markets from which much of CEE’s next generation of GBS investment is likely to come.
“Understand your client needs”
Perhaps the most revealing poll asked experienced investment professionals for their number-one piece of advice for winning an FDI project.
The largest answer on the screen was simple: “Understand your client needs.”
Around it were similar responses: understand the requirements; build relationships; establish trust; be transparent; know the sector; understand the business drivers; follow up; demonstrate competence; and, importantly, be realistic and don’t oversell.
This sounds obvious. In practice, it isn’t.
Too many investment pitches still begin with what the city wants to sell rather than what the investor needs to buy.
The strongest message from Riga was that sophisticated investors increasingly expect locations to understand the economics and operational requirements of their particular project. Generic presentations about universities, airports, office stock and quality of life are no longer enough.
Site readiness increasingly means “answer readiness”
This was particularly clear in discussions around advanced manufacturing and semiconductors.
Different parts of the semiconductor value chain require radically different location characteristics. A wafer fabrication facility, for example, places critical importance on power reliability, water supply, industrial land, cleanrooms, permitting and infrastructure. Chip design is far more dependent on specialist talent and the university/R&D ecosystem.
The broader lesson applies equally well to GBS.
There is no universal location proposition.
A 1,000-person transactional finance centre has different requirements from a 150-person AI and analytics hub. A cybersecurity operation, procurement CoE or global finance transformation centre will each evaluate talent pools differently.
Locations therefore need to stop selling themselves simply as “good for business services” and demonstrate which business services they are particularly good at.
Relationships still matter — perhaps more than ever
One of the most interesting parts of the conference was the direct dialogue with the site selectors themselves.
When participants were asked what wins projects, the responses repeatedly came back to trust, relationships, patience, responsiveness and understanding the investor.
That may sound decidedly low-tech at a time when location analysis is becoming increasingly data-driven.
But it makes sense.
The numbers get a city onto a shortlist. They don’t necessarily win the project.
When a company is committing tens or hundreds of millions of euros — or moving a business-critical global function involving hundreds of employees — executives need confidence that the people sitting across the table will actually deliver what they promise.
That is particularly relevant for CEE’s smaller cities and emerging GBS locations. They may not always beat Warsaw, Kraków, Prague or Budapest on sheer labour-market scale. But they can compete through responsiveness, senior-level access, specialist talent pools and the ability to mobilise universities, government and business quickly around an investor.
One of the conference’s semiconductor presentations concluded with five lessons: the opportunity extends far beyond fabs; quality comes before differentiation; timelines vary sharply by segment; ecosystem strength drives long-term success; and no single blueprint exists.
That could just as easily describe the future of GBS location strategy.
The next wave of European investment will not simply go to the cheapest city with available labour.
It will go to locations that understand precisely what an investor is trying to build — and can demonstrate, credibly and quickly, that they have the ecosystem to help build it.