Saudi Aramco, GE and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) have inaugurated Saudi Arabia’s first all-female business process outsourcing (BPO) service centre in Riyadh.

The centre, which is supported by the Human Resources Development Fund Programmes, complements Saudi Arabia's localisation targets, and strengthens local job creation and economic diversification.

Announced in September 2013, the all-female employee business process service centre will offer customers specialised finance and accounting, human resources, materials supply and office services to improve their operational efficiency.

The 3,200-sq-m facility will create up to 3,000 local jobs for Saudi women within the next three years.

Dr Tawfiq bin Fawzan Al Rabiah, Minister of Commerce and Industry; Prince Saud bin Khalid, deputy governor of Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (Sagia); Khalid Al Falih, Saudi Aramco president and CEO; John Rice, GE’s vice chairman; Natarajan Chandrasekaran, CEO and managing director of TCS, and over 100 dignitaries from Saudi Arabian government entities and business executives attended the official opening ceremony.

Al Falih, said: “The first all-female business process service centre in Saudi Arabia brings significant value to the Saudi economy and society. It helps address the challenge of creating jobs for talented and skilled Saudi female graduates, establishes a more diverse workforce, and boosts the competitiveness of Saudi Arabia.”

Rice said: “Today’s inauguration is proof of our commitment to support the kingdom’s priorities around human capital development and the creation of employment opportunities for talented Saudi women. We are proud to be partnering with the government entities in the kingdom, and our two partners Saudi Aramco and Tata Consulting Services on creating this sustainable Saudi based entity that will serve customers across the globe.”

Chandrasekaran said: “Skills, talent and technology converge at the kingdom’s first all-female business process service centre, which marks a new era for the IT and business process services industry in the kingdom. The centre draws on the experience of TCS in providing shared services across global markets and clients in the kingdom can now focus on their core competencies while partnering with this venture. We thank our partners Saudi Aramco and GE and look forward to their continued support to scale up operations at the centre.”  

Saudi Aramco and GE are the initial clients of the centre that will provide specialised business services supporting the companies’ operations. Both organisations have already surpassed their targets of hiring over 100 women each and also transferred business services to the centre.

In the centre’s first phase, around 300 employees have been recruited. The employees received over 80,000 hours of intensive training in various disciplines. Nearly 90 of the Saudi recruits are fresh graduates, while the rest have two to four years of experience.

The centre has already achieved over 70 per cent Saudisation rate. The Saudi fresh graduates, who form part of the workforce, were chosen from King Saud University, Princess Noura University, Imam University and others. Over 1,200 candidates were interviewed for the jobs.

All the recruits were also provided extensive training on subjects such as communications, presentation skills, corporate etiquette, global culture, MS Excel skills and domain training to ensure the highest levels of service efficiency.  - TradeArabia News Service