Further support for growing demand for SMART products and services in France and EMEA
CALGARY, Alberta --- March 13, 2009 --- SMART Technologies announces the opening of a new customer service and training center in Paris, France. The center underscores SMART’s commitment to a growing number of customers in France, specifically, and Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) more generally, and is the company’s fourth European office. The company’s first European customer service center opened in Bonn, Germany, in 2000. This center underwent a major expansion in 2008, tripling the square footage of training space and further demonstrating SMART’s commitment to helping education and corporate customers understand how SMART products can improve their daily work lives and offer greater efficiencies and desired results. SMART has two additional centers in Hamburg and Munich. Staff at the new Paris center will help SMART and its resellers manage expected increases in business and customer numbers by providing a central location for in-depth product demonstrations and by localizing support for resellers’ marketing, sales and support efforts. The Paris center marks the first full-capacity training center, including distance learning, for SMART outside of the company’s world headquarters in Calgary, Canada. Up to 2,000 customers a year can be trained on SMART products in the center and many thousand more remotely.
This center gives educators and business people the opportunity to experience and evaluate SMART products firsthand. Educators can tour three technology-enabled classroom environments designed to meet whole-class, small-group and individual learning needs. They can also assess distance learning applications and new products such as the recently announced SMART Table interactive learning center. Business people can experience model meeting rooms equipped with SMART’s business solutions, including easy-to-use collaboration platforms and interactive displays, which provide multiple options for technology-enabled interaction in single- or multi-display rooms. Corporate solutions are designed to increase the sharing of ideas and information, improve communication, productivity and decision making, and offer significant time, travel and expense savings with reduced environmental impact. As part of the purchasing process customers can engage in a one- or two-day proof-of-concept workshop in the Paris center where staff will work with customers develop the best solution of their unique school or business environment. This ensures customers get the best return on investment, deployment and training and project management plan to ensure optimal execution and guarantee the technology will deliver what the customer needs.
“Paris is the largest city in France and one of the largest business centers in Europe making it an ideal location from which to support customers and resellers,” says Nancy Knowlton, SMART’s CEO. “France and many countries within EMEA are quickly adopting SMART products, and the new center means we can more easily offer them local support, strengthen relationships and continue to expand operations.”
Contact Details
SMART Technologies
Immeuble OPTIMA
10, rue Godefroy
92800 Puteaux
FRANCE
Telephone: +33 (0)1 40 90 44 44
E-mail: franceinfo@smarttech.com
Web: www.smarttech.fr
