Eagle Creek Software Services, provides Web and app development and technical support to large health care, financial services and other companies, plans to build a new $10 million, 200-employee office in Vermillion and partner with the University of South Dakota to help train its potential hires, said Chief Executive Ken Behrendt.
Daugaard said state economic development officials often include training money in incentive packages, but directing the training money to a university in the form of tuition and fees for students who want to take the classes is a new approach.
“We’re not only helping Eagle Creek, but we’re using those economic development dollars to help the USD and the students who come here,” Daugaard said during a news conference Wednesday. “So it’s really a unique arrangement.”
Behrendt said the partnership allows for expansion of Eagle Creek’s Dakota model, which uses U.S.-based project centers in lower-cost areas such as South Dakota and North Dakota as an alternative to providing IT support from India or other overseas locations.
The company says it can competitively provide consulting services out of South Dakota as opposed to an overseas location because it’s a business-friendly state with no corporate or income tax.
Behrendt said there are numerous hidden costs with sending development jobs overseas. In addition to avoiding language, cultural and time-zone issues that arise with overseas support teams, U.S.-based project centers work better when a company needs continuous interaction with their consultants or want techs to speak to their customers.
“Actually, it’s cheaper to do work in South Dakota than it is in Chennai, India, when you really get down to it,” Behrendt said. “That’s what the business and corporate world is realizing.”
Eagle Creek has wanted to expand in the Dakotas, but the company had been having trouble finding qualified people to fill consultant positions. So it called the state Governor’s Office of Economic Development for help.
Officials worked with the state Board of Regents to create a four-course certificate at the University of South Dakota geared to the software skills Eagle Creek was seeking, allowing the company to spend less time on in-house training, said Mel Ustad, the office’s director of commercialization.
“We see this as a great opportunity to create the quality jobs for college graduates and to continue to increase the number of grads who stay in South Dakota,” Ustad said.
Students opting for the IT Consultant Academy certificate will take two software engineering courses, project management and data management.
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