Oracle Customer Success — Abdelhadi Al-Qahtani and Sons Beverage Industry (AQS)

Abdelhadi Al-Qahtani and Sons Beverage Industry (AQS) increases shipping, sales and global business efficiency with application server upgrade

With Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 together with SPARC server hardware, Oracle Solaris 11, and a Pillar Axiom 600 storage system, we implemented an efficient, cost-effective, automated, and nimble enterprise resource planning application that provides the flexibility to respond to changing business needs and has enhanced our operational efficiency.

— Qais Shaker Al Jurf, IT Director, Southern Region, Abdelhadi Al-Qahtani and Sons Beverage Industry

The Abdulhadi A. Al Qahtani Sons Group of Companies, an industrial conglomerate, was founded as part of the late Sheikh Abdulhadi Abdullah Al Qahtani’s mission to contribute to the growing economy of Saudi Arabia. Since its inception, the group has expanded and diversified into various fields of activity.

Abdelhadi Abdullah Al-Qahtani and Sons Beverage Industry Ltd. (AQS) is the group’s division in the soft drinks market. Headquartered in the south of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, AQS operates globally and is a franchised Pepsi Cola Inc. bottler. The company’s achievements have been acknowledged in various community and quality awards, including fifteen international awards for product quality and quality control standards in the last twenty years—a global recognition of its highly qualified team.

Challenges

Support the company’s goals for rapid growth by replacing disparate and proprietary business applications with a single, integrated enterprise resource planning system that spans its business processes, including manufacturing, HR and financials, while increasing visibility and control over a global beverage manufacturing and distribution business
Replace legacy application servers and storage with modern hardware and operating systems, all engineered for maximum performance and end-user productivity levels

Redesign and centralize business processes, including Finance and HR, to increase global co-ordination and communication with a scalable solution that will adapt as the business continues to grow
Optimize order management to streamline order entry and processing, and ensure accurate information on inventory availability, to accelerate order fulfilment, improve shipment times and increase volume of products delivered
Reduce and reconcile inventory discrepancies in the company’s legacy order management system and revise how the system handles barcodes to increase efficiency in inventory handling and shipping
Enhance the sales process by enabling faster lead flow to sales and providing sales with real-time visibility into prospect and lead history, to accelerate sales cycles, increase lead quality, and facilitate nurtured customer engagement across the customer lifecycle

Deployed Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.3 in partnership with Evosys to integrate and centralize financial processes with HR, manufacturing and supply chain planning and to create an integrated enterprise resource planning environment which supports aggressive growth goals and diverse business processes, including product development and order-management processes
Consolidated HR, established new HR processes with Oracle Human Resources and integrated with Finance and other core business activities, leveraging the advanced functionalities in Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 to enhance operational efficiencies and productivity

Integrated and streamlined order management with Oracle Supply Chain Management, reducing order entry and maintenance time by 10 %
Streamlined order management by eliminating the need for manual processes such as reviewing customer data, planning and shipping schedules and forecast generation, saving a further 30% of the time previously spent on order management
Cut shipping execution times by 33% with Oracle Shipping Execution, part of Oracle Supply Chain Management—on the first day live, shipping volume increased by 50% compared to average, achieving one of the top 10 days for shipping volume in the company’s history
Incorporated customer-specific barcode labelling requirements from retailers, wholesalers and distributors within E-Business Suite with one common code for all labels—replacing the legacy system of separate codes for each label, and reducing solution development time by 77%
Automated the sequence of printing barcode labels to match the order in which labels are pasted on pallets of beverages and other products for distribution, eliminating the time and effort previously spent sorting and arranging labels
Enhanced productivity by deploying two SPARC T5 application servers powered by Oracle Solaris 11 and clustered with a Pillar Axiom 600 storage system, delivering faster application response times, better overall application service availability and greater synergy with Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.3
Rolled out the implementation to global and regional users, gaining access to critical data and providing visibility across business segments, to maximize relationship-based sales and increase sales globally
Increased component-segmented sales by 33% with increased demand across all lines of business

Why Oracle

AQS was impressed with Oracle’s expertise, local presence and technology. The company had experienced the benefits of running Oracle software on Oracle hardware from using Oracle E-Business Suite 11i on Oracle SPARC Enterprise Server platform with Oracle Solaris and Oracle Pillar Axiom data storage. AQS had used Oracle E-Business Suite applications for its manufacturing, planning, core HR and finance operations and knew that sixty percent of future business needs could be met by the older E-Business Suite, but wanted to expand its footprint, to enable enterprise-wide integration and visibility across business functions and to harness the features of Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 to meet all future requirements.

The company chose Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1 because of its seamless module integration, its support for business growth with technology for higher transaction volumes, its large product and solution portfolio that reduces total cost of ownership (TCO), and its continued focus on product enhancement. In addition, AQS appreciated the robust, standard out-of-the-box functionality available and the ease with which Oracle products enabled it to build custom solutions. Oracle’s SPARC T5 servers running Oracle Solaris 11 were the ideal choices for a company like AQS: it wanted to drive down complexity while delivering improved application response times and overall service availability.

Execution

“We went live with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 within five months. It was a great implementation: on time and within budget. We worked with the Oracle Collaborative Engagement Process (CEP) team and Evosys to identify pain points and to re-implement E-Business Suite from scratch. Our IT department worked closely with Oracle and performed exceptionally high-quality work under very tight deadlines, while adhering to planned budget and schedule, which was a priority for AQS management. The CEP team played a vital role in supporting both us and the partner throughout the project, and we really appreciate their valuable contributions toward our success.” - Qais Shaker Al Jurf, IT Director, Southern Region, Abdelhadi Al-Qahtani and Sons Beverage Industry.

About Abdelhadi Al-Qahtani and Sons Beverage Industry (AQS)

Headquarters

Dammam, Saudi Arabia

Employees

1,500

Abdelhadi Al-Qahtani and Sons Beverage Industry (AQS)

Partners

Evosys is a leading Global Oracle Platinum Partner providing enterprise solutions that span Fusion ERP, ERP, CRM, EPM, Taleo, Endeca, VCP, mobile applications and custom solutions. It is a process-centric partner that believes in specialized solutions and has demonstrated an exceptional record in implementation for different verticals like healthcare, finance, logistics, manufacturing and distribution across public and private sectors. Evosys has a highly skilled team of more than 650 consultants and is currently catering to more than 120 high profile clients.

Qais Shaker Al Jurf said: “Evosys was selected as our implementation partner based on an unrivalled track record and experience in deploying Oracle ERP solutions. The entire project-which encompassed everything from financial processes to sales, procurement, inventory, and contract management, was completed in just five months. A key factor in the effort was the partner’s sharp focus views on our business, and regular liaison with our own internal IT teams.”