New investment promotes e-business technology

BDR Consulting of Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire is to invest over £800,000 to set up a Systems Integration Campus and provide an anticipated 45 new jobs in Belfast over the next three years, Leslie Ross, the Industrial Development Board’s Acting Chief Executive, has said.

Announcing the new IDB-backed investment Mr Ross said: "The new Systems Integration Campus is a strategic development by the company that will assist other businesses in the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe to harness the latest web-focused technologies and upgrade the services they offer their customers.

"The campus will build on BDR’s expertise in providing a broad range of customer relationship management (CRM) solutions including software development for a market that is projected to grow to $123 billion by 2004.

"The campus will adapt and apply electronic-based customer relationship management (e-CRM) techniques and will complement the Information Age Initiative recommendations on promoting e-commerce solutions.

"A key aspect of this investment is the access it will provide to people here to gain new skills and experience in the application of software systems in a fast growing e-commerce services sector.”

Commenting on the investment, Andrew Wilmot, BDR Consulting’s founder and Chief Executive Officer, said: "We enable clients to enhance their competitiveness through upgrading customer services by integrating the latest commercially available e-commerce software within their existing procedures

"The Belfast campus is a new direction for us in that it builds on our existing services to offer clients a total solution to the customer relationship requirements particularly within electronic framework.

"We decided to locate our first Systems Integration Campus in Belfast because our research indicated that we would be able to find a ready supply of talented and adaptable young people, including software graduates and others with good computer skills.

"We’ve also found that people in Belfast have a friendly and ‘can do’ approach to customers that is another essential requirement of our business.”

BDR Consulting, which was formed in September 1997, currently employs 62 permanent employees, also has a presence in Munich, Germany and Houston, Texas. (MB)