MARKUS BUCHER: Skills, skills development, effective recruitment and focused, successful management of human resources are significant and influential aspects of national business in Africa

Business technology partner provider Swicon360 has launched a business process outsourcing (BPO) service in support of the SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) human capital management (HCM), or SAP ERP HCM, application.

The new service, the HCM Spectrum in the Cloud, reportedly positions Swicon360 as the only SAP-certified provider of BPO services headquartered in Africa.

“Skills, skills development, effective recruitment and focused, successful management of human resources are arguably the most significant and influential aspects of national business in South Africa and on the continent today,” CEO Markus Bucher said.

Together with SAP and business network provider Vodacom Business, the company has introduced a solution that makes human resources (HR) services available as a virtual platform.

It allows organisations and businesses access to best practices in HCM, without large upfront investments in hard- ware and infrastructure.

Thomas Spandl , head of SAP’s outsourcing and on-demand global trade management in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, added that SAP technology would support any existing processes used to make hybrid architectures a reality, with a mixture of on-premise shared services and on-demand outsourced services.

Further, the delivery of SAP ERP HCM using BPO services from Swicon360 adds to Vodacom Business’s stable of services, helping make online software-as-a-service applications in the cloud a reality for all customers.

“Virtualisation and cloud computing is fundamental to the delivery of applications and services to key markets. By linking Vodacom Business’s virtualised hosting platform, scalable data storage and backup facilities through a secure network infrastructure to this distinctive HR solution, we are proud to provide the first hosting platform of its kind in Africa,” said Vodacom Business executive director Steven Hayward.

Hotels, casinos and resorts group Peermont Group CFO Nigel Atherton announced at the launch that the Peermont Group would be the inaugural customer of Swicon360’s new cloud computing solution.

“We believe that, together with the backing of our industry partners, our HCM Spectrum in the Cloud offering represents the advancement of local business and the ability of decision-makers to embrace innovation and the roll-out of future service distribution and delivery,” concluded Bucher.