SAP Expands Worldwide Customer Support Infrastructure in Asia Pacific Facility
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia — SAP today announced its latest investment in Malaysia with the opening of its Global Support Center (GSC) in Kuala Lumpur. This million dollar center complements SAP’s Global Support Centers in Austria, Spain, Ireland, India and China as a result of the strong business growth in Asia Pacific and will provide ongoing support from SAP to customers worldwide. This timely move is in line with the government’s initiative and call to global conglomerates to educate and transfer IT knowledge to the local workforce, whilst at the same time creating job opportunities.
The new Global Support Center, located in SAP Malaysia’s office, has more than 50 skilled consultants trained to support the whole suite of SAP products and solutions of customers in Malaysia and Asia Pacific, with plans to double the number over the next 2 years. With an investment of more than RM20 million to staff and complete the infrastructure over a period of 3 years, the center has the capacity for workforce expansion as the number of serviced customers increases. The GSC Malaysia will become one of the primary hubs for delivering services and support to the more than 5,400 SAP customers in Asia Pacific from all industries throughout the region who will benefit from a highly skilled local workforce.
“The GSC Malaysia underlines SAP’s continuing global outreach and commitment to Malaysia. We have been conducting business here for more than 12 years and we have built a strong team to drive development and localization of SAP software for this market,” said Eric MacDonald, Managing Director of SAP Malaysia.
“Malaysia has a very well educated work force with excellent English language skills. The country has an excellent infrastructure, enjoys competitive costs, and we have a deep understanding of local business,” continued MacDonald. “The decision to set up the GSC Malaysia is a significant step towards ensuring that SAP customers across the Asia Pacific region are provided with direct support by highly qualified staff, which will improve customer relations and provide customers with best services to enhance their IT solutions. Asia Pacific has been the fastest growing SAP region in the 1HY of 2005 and SAP continues to invest and increase market share in this strategic region. One key example is the increased headcount in Asia Pacific to the current of more than 5500 employees,” he added.
Complementing existing GSCs in Austria, China, India, Ireland and Spain the GSC Malaysia will serve as part of SAP’s 24*7 proactive and reactive service and support network – the SAP Active Global Support network, whilst ensuring an effective use of SAP resources. SAP Active Global Support has more than 3000 employees supporting more than 28,000 customers in 40 countries worldwide.
GSC Malaysia will provide remote product support for all SAP products and solutions to help customers meet their challenges during planning, implementation, operations and upgrade; with continuous maintenance to help ensure the optimum performance of their SAP® solutions. Once an SAP system is installed and running, support and maintenance will continue with helpdesk services, online monitoring, and remote maintenance. GSC Malaysia will also help customers detect bottlenecks in their system, plan resources, and support the upgrade to new releases and technologies.
SAP has more than 500 software installations and more than 200 customers in Malaysia, including some of the most prominent businesses such as DaimlerChrysler Malaysia, Bank Islam Malaysia, Nestle (Malaysia), Hitachi Electronic Products, Measat Broadcast Network Systems, and Perbadanan Putrajaya. With the setting up of the GSC, SAP customers will gain dedicated local support as SAP continues to benefit from Malaysia’s well-educated workforce, an excellent business culture and sense of entrepreneurship.
