Working for a company that deals with $1 million in payments every second has been a hugely rewarding experience for Shane Blake who talks to Andrew Carey about the many reasons why Limerick is proving such a popular attraction for overseas investors.
โTHE art of doing good business is being a good middle man.โ
That line from the 2004 movie Layer Cake probably best encapsulates what ACI Universal Payments does on a global scale.
And when HR manager Shane Blake clicks his fingers every second, $1 million dollars would have passed through ACIโs worldwide payment systems.
โWe are a technology company but what we are doing is payment systems for banks and we have $14 trillion dollars a day going through our systems all over the globe.โ
During his five years with the company, Shane has watched it grow from a head count of 20 to over 100 and still growing.
Now in theirย third building since setting up in Ireland, ACI Universal Payments is located in the former Flextronics building inย Castletroy.
โBecause ACI was looking to set up a European based data centre, finding the right location was key.
โOur customersย didnโtย want third party hosts for their data, they want us to handle it so we have complete responsibility for the data centre.
โThe Limerickย data centre is theย largest outside of the US so whenย they were looking for a building, ACI had three or four locations throughout Europe on its radar.
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โBut with the availability of high calibre engineering talent and a strong site leader in Martina Power, who rose through the ranks to become global Vice President of software engineering, Limerick was very high on the list.
โLimerick was an obvious choice for setting up the data centre in the ACI network with its strong track record over the years.
โItโs ironic that the Irish weather is on our side but little variances in temperature can be important. We also have an excellent working relationship with the US management team and how our timezone is also an advantage. All of these line up in our favour.โ
And for Shane, who is a former recruiter with employment agency CPL, the availability of talent in the region cannot be overestimated.
โOur senior executive VP and leader of product development wants to continue to expand the Limerick site because the calibre of managers and individual contributing engineers is second to none.
โIf you go back ten years or so, you had Galway, Cork and Dublin where the majority of companies investing were in the tech sector employing software engineers, network engineers for the data centre or systems engineers.
โThese cities are where some of our talent pool is coming from. The majority of those graduates were moving to Galway and FDI companies followed them. Galway soon became saturated with people jumping jobs every year and it looked like attrition rates were high.
โWe are a global player in the payments industry, handling $14 trillion dollars a day, but most people will never hear about ACI like they would other consumer brands.
โWe are handling payments transactions for banks and retailer like a middle man and there is huge responsibility and security that goes with it.”
Workingย in HR, Shane is well aware that acquiring top talent is always the goalย and having the right environment is key.
โIn late 2016, when ACI opened their data centre, there was a tech job announcement every Monday for four weeks. They were all tech companies and Limerick was fast becoming a tech hub whereย everyone was looking for thisย talent.
โACI was probably the new kid on the block andย while that might not be the case anymore, our attrition rate is still very low for industry standards in Ireland.
โWe have people moving from other locations outside of Ireland but we havenโt had to attract outside of the ACI family much as of yet.
โTheย perception of Limerick is that we are getting very good talent here and they are good communicators and engineers so a key thing for us is that these guys are not just sitting at a desk.โ
With almost 5,000 across the ACI network, Limerick is seen as a development site so ACIโs headcount here could rise to 200 over the coming years.
Along with Limerickโs recognition on the international stage, Shane also derives enormous satisfaction from seeing new recruits grow their careers at ACI.
โThere is a great sense of satisfaction in seeing ACI look after that personโs career because we have been able to retain them through the culture that has been created here.
โWe have a high performance culture here and we try to hire top talent. Itโs not the person who got top of the class but those who are interested and have a passion for it.โ
โThe tech sector has become more competitive and people want more flexibility in their lives, so keeping a balance inย that flexibility is key. ย Itโs not just the employees as employers need to be agile too.
โThere is a cultureย here where we allow people to grow their career but we also provide them ย with a good work-life-balance.โ
He also believes that people should take more risks in their careers and look for good quality mentoring.
โSince joining ACI, I report into the US arm and by nature they are very good at that whole โanything is possible scenarioโ and I liked that. In the end, it all amounts to a simple mantra, donโt let failure define youโ.
See more at careers.aciworldwide.com
