Intelligent CIO Kuwait Issue 1 | Page 7

NEWS Alghanim Industries scoops award for payment process project Bhattiprolu, Senior Manager, Corporate Treasury received the award for the Best in Class Treasury Solution in the Middle East category, for completing the Payment Process Excellence project. Launched and completed within 12 months without compromising workflow, the Payment Process Excellence Project unifies transactions in Alghanim Industries’ 300 plus bank accounts, spread across more than 20 business units, with a new system. The new system centralises all payments securely across different business units of Alghanim Industries, working integrally with built-in systems. This new wide-reaching solution is in line with Alghanim Industries’ ongoing efforts to enhance corporate finance and funding, risk management, governance and cash management across all its businesses and bank accounts. A lghanim Industries, one of the largest privately-owned companies in the Middle East and founded in Kuwait, has been recognised at the Adam Smith Awards 2018. Representing Alghanim Industries, Richard Quinlan, Corporate Controller; Sonal Gupta, Head of International Accounts; and Pramod Having the new system in place automates processes and creates an easier workflow, improving financial visibility and increasing security throughout the transaction process; in essence, implementing the Payment Process Excellence Project has allowed the company to improve its infrastructure in ways that are ground-breaking to the local market. ///////////////// KDIPA chooses IBM cloud to host its IT environment I BM has announced that the Kuwait Direct Investment Promotion Authority (KDIPA) has chosen IBM Cloud to host its IT environment. KDIPA is one of the implementing arms of Kuwait’s development strategy, tasked to promote direct investment in the country. Since its inception, it has relied on its own on-premise, in-house IT infrastructure. Its applications and data were stored in its own data centre. As the organisation grew, it needed to find a security-rich alternative to host its business- critical applications and data, while having the ability to securely and instantaneously customise its requirements and control its security needs at any point in time. It also wanted to reduce the time being consumed on upgrading its IT infrastructure and managing its physical data centre. www.intelligentcio.com Following its tendering process, KDIPA decided that the IBM Cloud best fits its current needs, given its security-rich architecture and IBM’s industry and enterprise expertise. To help enterprises around the world gain valuable insights from their data, IBM Cloud provides clients with an extensive global data centre network spanning 19 countries, next generation cognitive services and enterprise- strength security and industry expertise. INTELLIGENTCIO 7