SAP, one of Europe’s largest software firms, has revealed it is already more than halfway to its target of 350 employees at its new global support centre in Galway, which was officially opened this morning by Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Micheál Martin TD.
Speaking at the opening, Minister Martin said: “Progress at the Galway centre has been excellent and is in line with planned targets: 200 of the 350 people planned for recruitment over four years are already in place and operations such as technical support, customer interaction, licence auditing, telemarketing, translation services and technical writing are up and running. I congratulate SAP’s Irish management team and workforce for the early success of this centre and also for the achievements at the Dublin operation, which helped to influence SAP’s decision to locate this additional centre in Ireland.”
The minister continued: “Galway has a proven track record in providing the best of highly skilled and educated people, and the infrastructure necessary to support knowledge-intensive activities from global international services companies. The new Galway centre is providing employment opportunities for people with fluency in European languages, IT expertise, business and communication skills.”
The new Galway operation provides technical support to SAP’s customers across Europe and the US for its business management product Business One. SAP also has an operation at Citywest Business Campus in Dublin since 1997, which is the company’s largest global support centre.
Gerhard Oswald, member of the SAP executive board SAP, commented: “We are very pleased with the successful start-up of our operation in Galway. In line with our expectations we have been able to attract numbers of internationally experienced and highly skilled people. We are keeping our employees at this centre up to speed in a technology that is continually evolving by on-going investment in their training. This will ensure that our customers receive the very best of experienced support care on the most up to-date technologies as SAP grows and expands globally.”
By Brian Skelly