Business
AFPSA is a joint venture between Fuchs, Germany and the Al-Hamrani group in Saudi Arabia. The company specialises in blending and manufacturing lubricants for vehicles and machinery. AFPSA is a major player in this market in the Middle East, and is expanding its operations in Africa and Asia.
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Challenge
AFPSA were long overdue for a technical refresh. They had many legacy systems running and were implementing the Baan ERP package. However, where AFPSA thought they were lacking was in using web technologies effectively.
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Intelligence
The initial requirements given to us were quite vague. All the client knew, was that they wanted to utilise the web, but did not really know how to go about doing this. Therefore our first step was to identify what the client wanted. This led to a two-phase consultancy, which lasted about 3 months.
The first phase examined their business and identified the requirements. Once these were agreed and signed off by the client, the second phase of the consultancy was a technical audit covering their existing technical infrastructure, and the opportunities and constraints of the technical environment in Saudi Arabia.
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Solution
The consultancy phases resulted in two sets of documents being produced, for each phase.
The first set of documents covered:
- A comprehensive list of the clients requirements
- Detailed business analysis of the client's organisation
- A proposed solution for developing web based technologies. This covered modules such as; the website, B2B capabilities, internal intranet with specific functionality for certain departments, and improved use of collaboration and communication tools.
- Evaluation of certain "off the shelf" software, which could possibly have addressed some of the requirements.
The second set of documents covered:
- A complete technical audit of the company's operation in Saudi Arabia.
- A comprehensive IT Strategy for AFPSA to start moving towards their objectives. This covered the recommendations on updating the technical infrastructure; and also the software applications to be implemented or developed, to address the business requirements.
A project plan was also produced, detailing the different modules to be delivered, and all the phases involved.
Some work has already commenced on certain Modules for AFPSA, on the software application development front.
The Al-Hamrani group are part owners of AFPSA and one of the largest conglomerates in Saudi Arabia. They were impressed enough by our approach and recommendations, that they have now asked us to expand our IT Strategy, especially in the area of improving the technical infrastructure, to address the whole group.
We had anticipated this requirement, and designed our infrastructure solution to be easily scalable. We are now designing the solution to include the complete Al-Hamrani global network, with implementation due to start in the last quarter of 2002.
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