Thermo Electron Corporation has established a new local customer support centre for its informatics software and services in Dammam, in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia this September. The new helpdesk has been developed in close collaboration with the Yusuf Bin Ahmed Kanoo group, Thermo’s partner in the region.
Located within Kanoo’s regional IT facility, the new office will work in close partnership with Thermo’s local support centre in Dubai in order to provide comprehensive support services to informatics customers located across Saudi Arabia. The new helpdesk will offer timely and reliable local language technical assistance. Two Thermo employees currently work in the office.
Kanoo has been linked to Thermo for some time, having sold Thermo's LIMS systems throughout the region. They are one of the largest groups in the Gulf region, with a large variety of projects including travel, oil and gas, and machinery.
Thermo Electro are already well-established in the Middle East, with other locations including Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestinian Territory, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Their principle market is oil and gas exploration, production and chemical plants, to whom they have been selling LIMS, chromatography data systems and mass spectroscopy software for over 10 years. Other markets include government, food, and environmental labs.
'The opening of the new customer support centre demonstrates Thermo’s growing investment in the Middle East to support our ever-increasing number of prestigious accounts in this region,' said Kevin Smith, senior channel manager for Thermo’s informatics business.
'We are trying to build a network in the area,' he told scientific-computing.com. 'There are definite benefits in this expansion, and it will seriously help us to serve our customers. The decision was made in response to a lot of customer demand, and the price of oil at its current rate; it's obviously a good market.'
V.V. Ramesh Kumar, IT support manager at Kanoo in Dammam, said: 'We are excited with the opportunity to support Thermo's informatics customers in Saudi Arabia. We are already providing services to many of these companies and we feel that this strategic partnership with Thermo will further strengthen our relationships with them. Our goal is to maintain and grow a culture of engineering and customer service excellence through a continuous process improvement program.'
