SAP,largest,shared services center,Czech Republic

SAP's largest shared services center in the world opens in the Czech Republic

26 Sep 2005 | (News)

SAP AG officially opened its newest shared services center, the SAP Business Services Center Europe (BSCE) in Prague, Czech Republic. SAP BSCE provides human resources (HR) and finance and administration (F&A) services to SAP branch offices in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. The center’s current workforce of approximately 132 employees supports 70 countries in 15 different languages.

SAP analyzed and evaluated 18 European cities to determine the best location for the new BSCE. The company ultimately chose Prague because of the city’s highly skilled and flexible workforce, advanced telecommunications and IT infrastructure, cultural compatibility and stable economic and political conditions. In addition, the city is ideally located within Central and Eastern Europe.

“We are pleased that SAP chose the Czech Republic,” said Martin Jahn Deputy Premier for Economics, and added: “The benefit of projects of this kind cannot be narrowed down only to just the investment size and number of jobs. Business support services bring with them state-of-the-art know-how and place the Czech Republic among the most advanced countries that are able to export intellectual work.”

“As a high performance company, it is SAP’s strategy to effectively and efficiently support core internal functions such as HR and F&A throughout the global business. In addition to providing HR and F&A services to SAP employees, the center also offers customers unique insight into how “SAP runs SAP” in performing these services,” said Claus Heinrich, member of the executive board, SAP AG. “The new BSCE here in Prague, with its highly skilled team, is a key milestone in executing to this strategy.”

SAP has three shared service centers located in the U.S., supporting employees in the Americas region; Singapore, supporting employees in the Asia Pacific region; and now the Czech Republic, supporting SAP EMEA employees.

“In recent years the Czech Republic has become a more and more attractive location for investments with higher added value—for research, development and services,” said Karolina Bockova, chief operating officer of CzechInvest, and added: “Our goal is to gain the maximum number of similar projects. Besides other benefits we also have a well-prepared state aid scheme—companies here can receive subsidies for their business activity and subsidies for employee training and retraining.”

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