Eaton

"Scotland provides a great platform for developing potential."

Eaton, one of the world's leading maunfacturers of electrical systems opened Scotland's first shared service centre in 1997. Today Eaton's European Shared Service Centre in Glasgow provides financial and IT services to 19 countries.

London, Dublin and Amsterdam were all considered as possible locations for Eaton’s Shared Services Centre and were all strong contenders.

The combination of the following three factors put Glasgow ahead of the others:

• Easier to recruit and retain the right level of staff
• The concentration of higher education establishments meant a good provision of graduates, especially with language skills
• The availability of grants from government agencies

Eaton’s investment in Scotland

Eaton’s European Shared Services Centre provides internal financial, accountancy and IT support to sites in 19 countries that include Australia, the Middle East and Asia as well as Europe.

The need for a wide spread of language abilities is paramount and staff at the Glasgow office are proficient in 14 different languages. 27 percent of the staff are foreign nationals and most members of staff speak more than one other language.

One of the advantages of Glasgow is that its cosmopolitan nature attracts a lot of young people from abroad and Eaton have been able to tap into a wide range of language skills on the back of this, including Spanish, Slovakian and Polish.

One of the key reasons for choosing Glasgow was the availability of high calibre staff in the fields of accountancy and IT as well as languages. The strengths of Glasgow and Edinburgh in terms of financial services and IT means that there is a healthy labour pool.

As Eaton’s strategy for growth is to move up the value chain, increasing automation to free up employees to take on more skilled jobs, there is no prerogative to move the business elsewhere and Eaton’s presence in Glasgow is assured, capitalising on its initial decision.

The company’s auditors Ernst & Young were involved in Eaton’s decision to locate in Glasgow and they helped find and secure office accommodation that is absolutely right for Eaton’s needs – housing all its staff in one location, plus accommodating an IT room and generator in the basement.

How SDI helped

Scottish Development International and Scottish Enterprise were very much involved with Eaton locating to Glasgow. Scottish Enterprise’s Business Location Service helped find suitable city centre office accommodation. Eaton also received a Regional Selective Assistance grant to help with initial location and recruitment.

Since 2005 Scottish Enterprise have helped source and fund management training from the Institute of Leadership and Management. In addition, Scottish Enterprise has helped with brand recognition, promoting achievements in business publications. They have also introduced Eaton to the Scottish Shared Services Forum at which insights into best practice are shared.