Hi °C | Lo °C The Ulster workforce of an Indian call centre company has played a major role in boosting European and global profits.
HCL Technologies, which employs 1,400 at offices in Belfast and Armagh, is attributing "massive success" in Northern Ireland to a 54% increase in annual revenues
Over a third of its European workforce is based here, with many of the employees using their knowledge of other languages to speak to customers in countries including France, Spain and Germany.
Most of its Ulster staff work in call centre and back office roles.
Rajeev Sawhney, the president for HCL Technologies in Europe, told the Belfast Telegraph that the skills shown by local employees had given the company the ability to deliver its services successfully.
It has had a presence in Northern Ireland since 2001 when it took over a 90% stake in the BT-owned Apollo Centre in Belfast, where 460 people were employed.
Since them it has invested almost £20m here and now around 1,000 people work for the company in Belfast and 400 in Armagh.
In 2005, HCL took over the staff and business of AnswerCall Direct in Armagh in a deal worth £3.9m after it went into receivership.
And later that year it said it would create 600 jobs in a major expansion of contact centre operations in both cities.
Mr Sawhney said the company had been keen to invest in Northern Ireland to expand internationally: "We were the first Indian company to establish a call centre in Northern Ireland.
"The Armagh centre was in deep trouble but we managed to create further employment and it has become an important part of the business."
Firstsource and Polaris Software Labs followed HCL into the local market, helping attribute to India's place as the second biggest investor after the US in Northern Ireland.
The company says a large number of European clients have signed up with it because of the near-shoring services in Northern Ireland including BT, Deutsche Bank, Co-op and financial company Skandia.
