Tech campuses are (almost) always newsworthy. Especially when they are built by an international company in a small middle-income country.
So, what are we talking about?
NCR is probably one of the companies that doesn’t require too many words in order to explain who they are and what they do. But for those who are not familiar with the world’s top performing companies, NCR is working on developing technologies for clients in finance, retail, and telecommunications by making self-service kiosks, point-of-sale terminals, ATMs (automated teller machines), check processing systems, barcode scanners, business consumables… Also, it provides IT maintenance support services.
In previous years, as an employer, NCR had the highest growth in the number of employees in Serbia. Seven years ago, when NCR established the business in Serbia, they planned to hire 300 to 600 people. Now, they have more than 3,000 employees and expect to hit 3,600 by the end of the year.
For that purpose, NCR is investing 90 million dollars in the construction of a 30,000- square-meter building. Modeled after the headquarters campus in Atlanta, the new tech center in Serbia will be seven stories high, with a two-level underground parking lot. The ground floor will be reserved for retail and hospitality facilities, while everything above that is supposed to be filled with offices and spaces for education, relaxing, recreation, gaming, coffee, and food breaks. And as it goes with new things in tech, everything in this campus will be top-notch, from ventilation and air conditioning systems to its LEED Gold green building certification.
Good for NCR, good for Serbia
Putting restaurants, shops, and multi-story office spaces aside, bringing such campus in Belgrade means that industrial engineers, software developers, finance and analytics experts will be on NCR’s radar. And not just them. A potential employee can be anyone that can help create software/provide technical support to clients located all over the world, from California to eastern Russia.
Also, the campus is going to be a place for creating a better cooperation between startups and the academic community. Keeping that in mind, it’s obvious once more that NCR is putting the development of the local labor market on the pipeline through hiring and education.
On top of that, it’s important to notice that NCR sees Belgrade as a place to be. Or, as Stefan Lazarević, general manager of NCR Serbia and EMEA External Affairs Director, explained for one of the local weekly papers, NCR chose Serbia for this big investment because of:
…a large number of talented people, good infrastructure, positive economic trends, and state support for investors. The opening of the campus will, first and foremost, contribute to further creation of new jobs…
I believe that the execution of this project, among other things, will encourage the creation of modern business processes based on digitization and innovation. I expect that there will be an increase in the number of business people from abroad who come to Serbia because of our company…
