Oracle Customer Success — AlSafwa Cement Company

AlSafwa Cement Company Chooses Oracle Cloud Over SAP to Streamline Supply Chain

With Oracle Cloud, we automated our procurement and inventory processes on a single cloud platform with in-depth reporting on all commercial cement operations. Oracle Advanced Customer Services optimized our deployment and their services ensure that we always have expertise to resolve any issue.

— Muhammad Bilal, Applications Team Leader, AlSafwa Cement Company

AlSafwa Cement Company Optimizes Supply Chain and Reduces IT Costs by 60%

AlSafwa Cement Company manufactures and sells cement—including classic Portland, Portland Pozolana, sulfate resistance, masonry, high powered and performance, and white Portland —for casting concrete, bricklaying, rendering, and screeding applications. The company has a production capacity of more than 4 million tons per year, and it provides cement delivery and services to educate customers about product quality.

The company separated from their previous partner, LafargeHolcim Ltd, with whom it shared an on-premise system. AlSafwa needed comprehensive business software to enhance operational processes and improve management reporting.

Challenges

Implement a new core business system—following AlSafwa’s strategic split from a conglomerate business partner—and ensure a smooth transition, optimizing processes for manufacturing and sales
Improve customer service by ensuring that warehouses are optimally stocked and that staff can rapidly advise customers if there are any shipping delays
Increase transparency by improving operational reporting, which previously required five employees developing customized management reports

Minimize IT infrastructure costs
Ensure high availability and maximum support for critical business systems

Streamlined operations by implementing Oracle Supply Chain Management Cloud and Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning Cloud for more than 100 employees
Optimized technology investment with Oracle Advanced Customer Services
Optimized stock levels and use of warehouse space with Oracle Inventory Management Cloud, capturing all stock received, on hand, and dispatched—including various types of raw materials and finished cements stored across multiple storage siloes

Significantly improved inventory management, supporting more than 300 customer shipments per day
Streamlined reporting with comprehensive, out-of-the-box reports—reducing the number of employees needed to develop and generate complex commercial reports from 5 to 2
Reduced IT infrastructure costs by 60%, eliminating expenses for hardware and software maintenance and upgrades
Increased visibility by providing managers with intuitive, real-time dashboards, including aged receivables, procure-to-pay cycle times, and cement sales by product
Enabled customer-facing staff to accurately inform customers of current cement stock availability, and to immediately notify them of any potential shipment delays—for example, a supplier not delivering raw materials to AlSafwa’s manufacturing plant as scheduled
Improved purchasing efficiency with Oracle Self Service Procurement Cloud, automating processes such as requisition approvals
Accelerated their direct procurement with Oracle Inventory Management Cloud, enabling purchasing staff to immediately order raw cement materials when stock levels reach a minimum threshold
Ensured smooth project completion and system adoption by engaging Oracle Advanced Customer Services to resolve all outstanding implementation issues—for example, building more than 300 test scripts as part of manual regression testing and providing documentation to assist with knowledge transfer
Maximized return on investment with Oracle Advanced Customer Services, which provides continuous monitoring of critical processes, upgrade assistance, and complete functional support across all modules—including 24/7 support for severity 1 issues

We selected Oracle over SAP because of its superior product functionality, user-friendliness, and reporting capabilities for our cement business operations. In addition, the flexibility of Oracle Cloud enables us to rapidly add new modules as required, at a very low total cost of ownership.

— Muhammad Bilal, Applications Team Leader, AlSafwa Cement Company

About AlSafwa Cement Company

Headquarters

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Employees

250

Annual Revenue

Under US$100 Million

AlSafwa Cement Company

AlSafwa Cement Company (ASCC) was established in 2007 as part of the El Khayyat Group. In 2012, the company was strengthened by the entry of two public funds, the Public Pension Authority (PPA) and the General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI). ASCC’s manufacturing plant accounts for more than 7% of Saudi Arabia’s annual cement production and is strategically located 140 km north of Jeddah to maintain geographical proximity to the country’s key cities.

Partners

For the phase-one implementation of its Oracle Cloud solution, AlSafwa selected Oracle Partner Mivors due to its experience in cloud deployments and digital transformations in Saudi Arabia.
“We chose Mivors after reviewing tenders from a shortlist of three competing vendors. Mivors consultants demonstrated flexibility and patience during the implementation, as we changed our desired Oracle Cloud footprint several times as new Oracle product features and functionality became available,” Muhammad Bilal said.