SAP has planned to establish 50 E-academies across Pakistan with special focus on small towns to train youth particularly in the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. “Two such academies are already functioning in Lahore and Karachi where SAP Pakistan offices are imparting training to a selective bunch of young persons on experimental basis.
Following very encouraging response, we have planned to extend this facility across the country. For this purpose SAP would be inviting expression of interests from different colleges and academies interested to impart this training which is a mixture of distance and on-site learning,” said Sajjad Syed, Managing Director SAP Pakistan while talking to Business Recorder here on Thursday.
He said that young people trained by these E-academies would be placed on jobs in their Singapore and Dubai offices. He said that there was a demand of 11,000 SAP experts every year only in the Asia-Pacific region. He said India was already facing SAP experts shortage, Chinese could not fill this gap due to not being well versed in English and as such there was a great scope for Pakistanis to capture this field.
He said that experts could be sent for SAP applications abroad on remuneration as higher as US 1000-1500 dollars per day. Sajjad Syed stated that there would be an entry test to these applications and students having degrees of computer sciences, B Com., MBA or other disciplines could be trained in SAP applications.
He also said that IBA Karachi had already signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with their organisation to include SAP courses in its curriculum for MBA students. He said at present faculty of these E-academies were being trained in their software. He said the students having SAP training, would have a chance of getting job with 20 percent more salary.
Talking about their organisation, he averred that SAP was a forty year old German company having more than 83,000 customers from over 120 countries, having SAP applications from distinct solutions addressing the needs of small and midsize companies to suite offerings for global organisations. In Pakistan, SAP has offices in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. It has approximately 70 customers, including public and private sectors departments.
He said that SAP was committed for the development of Pakistani software industry and IT sectors, with particular focus on consultancy, education, public sector and other industry verticals. He said that they see a good market for their applications in Pakistan as they had signed some 21 new customers last year. Regarding impact of financial crunch on SAP and other IT industry, he said that although global financial crunch had left negative impact on IT sector but it was not that serious in SAP.
