BrazilQatar's Excelledia Quality Consulting opens office in Northern Ireland
Excelledia Quality Consulting, a management consulting firm based in Doha, has launched an innovation centre in Northern Ireland in what the local business development authority has said is its first inbound investment from Qatar.
Primarily specialising in the Oil & Gas, Construction & Engineering, Banking, Healthcare, Government, Education, ICT and Manufacturing sectors, with big-name clients including Oreedoo, RasGas, Qatar Steel and the Qatar Foundation, Excelledia offers training and support services in segments such as ISO Management Systems, Lean Six Sigma, Project Management, Risk Management and more.
While the consulting firm has an existing outlet in the UK, in addition to its bases in Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE and offices in the Karnataka and Kerala provinces of Southern India on the Arabian Sea, the move to establish a new Northern Ireland hub in Belfast is intended to serve as a launch-pad for European growth.
"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,” Excelledia’s CEO Muhamed Farooque 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.”
The new office will host 22 employees, expected to be in place by the early part of next year and supported in part by a £97,500 incentive subsidy from the governmental economic development agency Invest Northern Ireland. Commenting on the announcement, the investment body’s executive director of international business Steve Harper said, “I am delighted to welcome Excelledia to Northern Ireland, our first inward investment from Qatar.”
“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,” Harper concluded.
In line with the nation’s ambitious 2030 vision to promote social and economic development through innovation, the Qatar Foundation, a non-profit development agency which features among Excelledia’s clientele, recently established the Qatar Science & Technology Park as a research and innovation hub designed to foster international collaboration in building the local knowledge-based economy – so far attracting names such as Cisco, GE, Microsoft, Vodafone, SAP, Siemens and Iberdrola to set up shop.
