Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 26 | Page 52

COUNTRY FOCUS: OMAN Since implementing an ERP solution from IFS Applications, water provider Majis has achieved greater operational efficiency, enhanced communications with partners and provided staff with real-time information. The Omani company can now utilise the user-friendly and intuitive solution to accurately manage forecasts, work across all departments and make the most of its rich functionality. ///////////////// Enhancing availability, increasing visibility and controlling costs S ince its inception in 2006, Majis’ roots were in providing seawater for cooling the tenants of Sohar Industrial Port Area (SIPA) in Oman. Majis was using a small financial package and a mixture of spreadsheets and databases to manage its operations. All data was entered manually, for example, and staff were managing maintenance, inventory and procurement with spreadsheets and databases. Even back-end operations were manual and cumbersome. If an employee applied for leave without pay, there was no visibility from management through to HR and payroll 52 INTELLIGENTCIO to administer this simple task – it was all manually entered. Majis lacked visibility into daily operations, there was no consistent process followed by departments, work was unwieldly and errors with data entry were incurred. “This impacted the ability to make decisions in real time, which affected the business,” says Emad Al-Manthari, Head of Information Technology, Majis Industrial Services S.A.O.C. The operation and maintenance of Majis’ assets were outsourced to Azaliya, a Veolia company. There was no consistent single version of events that existed between the two companies on asset performance, maintenance history, spare parts ordered and inventory supplies. If a water pump was down sometimes there was duplication of staff allocated to fix it. There was no clear asset record to view and often there was the duplication with multiple spare parts ordered to repair the pump. “We needed to address the visibility and work in unity with Azaliya to ensure we were running at the highest level of plant availability with 100% asset optimisation,” says Al-Manthari. Majis expanded its footprint to become a complete water utilities solution provider and required an integrated ERP solution that www.intelligentcio.com