The center inaugurated Wednesday, in Avrig Business Center, will provide IT and support services to Vodafone customers in Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany and Ireland. On the IT segment, the services consist of help desk operations for the local activities of Vodafone Group and its five divisions located in the five countries, as well as the management of IT applications and databases.
The investment in equipping the center and training the new employees in Romania is estimated at GBP5 million (EUR6.25 million).
Vodafone Romania CEO Ravinder Takkar said Wednesday that the inauguration of a shared services center in Romania is a major step, adding the telecom operator will continue to invest in Romania.
Prime Minister Victor Ponta, who attended the opening ceremony, said 750 people will be employed at the center by the end of 2014 and staff numbers are expected to go up to 2,000 people over the next two-three years. He added that Vodafone is going to make a similar investment for which it already required state aid.
Finance Ministry data show that Vodafone Technologies Romania SRL will receive state aid of EUR8.19 million to create 450 jobs. According to the same data, the state aid for Vodafone was approved on June 27, 2014.
This is the second international operations center opened by Vodafone Group in Romania. In 2013, Vodafone opened in Bucharest the Danubius Network Operations Center (NOC), which monitors and administers Vodafone’s network operations in nine European countries like The Netherlands, Germany, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Greece, Albania, Malta and Italy, which have a total 90 million clients.