SAP consultants will have business knowledge

The consultancy and support center opened by Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing (SAP)  in Romania last year has already employed 40 consultants, and their number will increase to 100 by the end of this year.

“This center will offer consultancy and support for implementing SAP solutions in Europe. Few of our employees are IT specialists, because we need them to have business knowledge first. We are looking for people that know how the economic process works in banks, utilities, the pharmaceutical industry, and so on,” said Valentin Tomsa, SAP Romania General Manager.

At the global level, SAP has four support centers, one in Bucharest for European clients, one in Argentina for the Americas, and two more in China and India, covering Asia-Pacific.

“Romania was not necessarily chosen because of its low salary, because there has been a significant increase in this area recently. It is extremely important that human resources have business competence, and know foreign languages, but the SAP dynamics in Romania was taken into consideration. We are 10 times bigger than we were in 2002,” added Tomsa.

SAP is the world’s largest business software company and the world’s third-largest independent software provider overall. SAP Romania’s turnover for 2006 was some €10 million (licence sales), and a 20 percent increase in business is expected in 2007.  The General Manager believes that the company’s focus this year will be on the small and medium-sized enterprise sector, generating about 50 percent of SAP Romania’s income, while the public sector yields a mere 10 percent of the company’s business. SAP currently has 16 partners in Romania.

Revenues
Total SAP revenues for 2006 amount to some €9.4 billion, 10 percent higher than year-on-year (€8.5 billion). Net profit for 2006 is €1.9 billion, 25 percent higher than in 2005.