A QATARI consulting firm is opening a new office in Belfast, creating 22 jobs.
In a bid to grow its business across Europe, Excelledia Quality Consulting, headquartered in Doha, is opening an innovation centre in the city and aims to have all the new positions in place by the start of next year. It is the first inward investment to come from Qatar and it is hoped more will follow in the future.
Excelledia is a business improvement and management consulting company helping organisations become more efficient, effective and financially profitable. With offices in the Middle East and India the company provides process improvement initiatives to over 300 customers across government and the private sector.
Muhamed Farooque, CEO of Excelledia said the skilled workforce on offer was a key reason behind its decision to open the Belfast office.
“We began exploring locations for a new centre late last year. We wanted to be based somewhere that would enable us to offer our consulting, training and technology solution services to potential clients across the globe," he said.
“We were very impressed by the knowledge and experience in the local universities and hope to work with them as part of the process of developing innovative technology solutions, particularly in addressing the compliance issues surrounding ISO, GDPR and other major business frameworks. The culture of close links between academia, business and government agencies in Northern Ireland is particularly attractive and added to our decision to choose to locate here.”
Invest NI has offered £97,500 of support towards 15 of the 22 jobs and executive director of international business, Steve Harper welcomed the Qatari investment.
“The Technology Innovation Centre will focus on Business Performance Management. Using Artificial Intelligence and business analytics the team will develop technology innovations and solutions to help companies implement process and technology improvements. The information that the company works with will be new to Northern Ireland so there is real potential for knowledge transfer with our universities and wider technology sector.”
“Doha is one of our 10 new international office locations so I am hopeful we will see other investors from this region in the future," he added.
