Question Details:
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Where should I locate my SCC after 2010?

Anyone have information concerning expiring tax benefit centers like in Belgium in 2010, and what corporations are considering in either moving to a new location or Asia, or staying in the region?  If there is a high level white paper one can refer to me, it would be appreciated. 

Dick,

in general, relocating an SSC can make sense, but the tax benefit should be the last factor to be considered. If the SSC is a centre concerning financial operations of legal entities across Europe, Asia is definitly a no go, although I am aware that a lot of young wizards is coming from the business school and they may analyzed different in their case studies and  at PwC, E&Y and others..
Since the SSC serves internal customers within the organisation, moving the SSC to Asia will trigger unhappiness between the local Line Of Business, since due to time difference, they hardly have a chance to communicate back issues concerning AR, AP or Treasury or whatever it is. Communication would be purely e-mail based and the experience has proven the pure e-mail communiocation will slow down the process and even worse, issues can get aged until they become an item of threatening urgency. Any thing which needs to be solved with haste due to aging, will create new gaps and follow ups, hence a issue spiral is born
Although I can imagine, that there are some savings in the payroll, I would ask first the costs to establish such centre in Asia + the cost to obtaib historical knowledeg essential for Financial Reporting and transfer it to Asia. This would either require to hire European Expats willing to move or Asian accountants with comprehensive language skills in order to be able to read and understand local business affairs communicated ( usually each line of business communicates in local language unless it is a cross border affair, where everyone is supposed to write in English). However, both variants appear costly if not unrealistic. Next question would be, how many SSC are already in the targeted location. As if you e.g. move to Bangalore, the salary spiral is in up turn already, since everyone thinks he can make a bargain there, leading to the situation, that there are more open job postings than qualified personel. The effect for the hiring company is predictable.
I believe, that it is possible to transfer tasks to areas like Asia which can be standardized ( such as AP and AR) as longest you keep purchase ordering and Sales order entry local, since the main key information would have been entered in the location of affair already ( P/O, S/O, Goods Receipt, Shipment etc). But anything you cannot simply standardize to a global template ( in Finance it concerns everything related to local compliance and tax) would require special treatment - either expensive consultants or big4. Next question I would raise is, whether it will  be easy to retain qualified staff on the new location, as nothing is more expensive in Finance than staff turn over. This is very often ignored and you cannot get so much tax benefits and payroll savings as you may have to pay in replacement recruitment and re-training and never mind here the recurring quality loss in the financial reporting, as every accountant leaving the company takes the historical knowledge away as well.
For some countries in Europe, where you need prior authority approval to move your financial functions offshore, I doubt that you will get those. It is already a hussle to centralize inside Europe, but countries like Belgium France and Germany or actually any countries where local accounting policies are driven by law rather than business reasons or general accepted accounting pronciples, will be reluctant to grant you permission if not restrict it at all if you move out of Europe. Hence forcing it may bring your local line of business into jeopardy.
Moving a SSC just for low payroll or tax benefits often also ignores the additional consulting hours required to readjust mistakes made, never mind it probably leads also to an increase of Big4 costs, because for local purposes they will even ig deeper into the periodical reporting.

I could go on with it, but here the alternative I can see.
Alternative 1) Stay where you are and stream line your process efficiency to cover any benefit losses you may suffer in 2010
Alternative 2) Move to anothe "old" EU country as it is expected, that the current crisis creates lots of free work force  excess on the markets, which can impact the payroll in a positive manner
Alternative 3) With the extension of the EU to the Eastern Europe, there are some good locations, where facility costs as well as labor is significantly lower than Belgium, also tax benefit may be granted and business travel costs for new associates to the old SSC in order to transfer knowledge and history will be far lower. Although that Europe is cultural quite diverse, the cultural differences between each other are far less than Asia, which is crucial in order to establish good team approach and communication with local line of business. Often the language skills in Eastern Europe are comprehensive. Since most of those countries have also a very regulated accounting policy, it will be easier for them to deal with compliancy matters of regulated jurisdictions such as Belgium, France and Italy since the  those new associates are to used to it in their home countries. Often qualified personel is also trained there in matters of local compliancz in other countries or zou can get staff which has passed internship incountries concerned.

It still would leave you with the challenge of local statutory accounting but to a far lower extent as you either maintain the old center as a statutory hub or most of the countries arer attractive enough to hire specialists from the relevant jurisdiction to move there.  

Compare the costs to move your SSC and to bring it up to current quality levels