Gaby Matar on springboarding into the sevice sector in the Middle East

Gaby-Matar-on-springboarding-into-the-middleeast-service-sector

Gaby Matar lifts the lid on how his business is using experience gained in the Middle East energy industry as a springboard into the service sector.

Can you tell us about the recent IBM Tivoli Business Partner award won by eSolutions and its significance?

Gaby Matar. Out of hundreds of eligible partners, eSolutions has been honoured by IBM with the Smarter Planet Award in February 2010 at the Annual Pulse in Las Vegas. This award was given to eSolutions for its dedicated work with clients to manage instrumented, interconnected and intelligent infrastructures with better visibility control and automation across IT assets, people, information and processes. The IBM Tivoli Business Partner Awards recognises business partners that have demonstrated deep technology and industry expertise with IBM Tivoli software and are delivering exceptional industry solutions that solve critical business issues. eSolutions have represented IBM Maximo in the Middle East since 1996 and have trained over 22,000 Middle East Maximo users in the past 14 years. We are honoured to win this award and to be recognised for our commitment to provide solutions and services that enable businesses to gain a competitive edge, even during these challenging times.

How have you been affected by the global economic downturn?

GM. Despite the economic turmoil, eSolutions managed to maintain the level of revenue in 2009, while projecting a growth of nine percent in 2010. This is mainly due to gaining a bigger market share and to offering our existing client base newly introduced functional add-ons of Maximo software for specific industry sectors such as oil and gas, utilities and transportation.

Where is IBM Maximo being used?

GM. Maximo started in the GCC as the big company tool and rapidly won the lion’s share of the oil and gas and utilities markets in UAE, Kuwait, Oman and more. Now the focus is moving towards the service companies and we are seeing a big upsurge in facilities management and transportation markets. In today’s marketplace there is a shift towards the service provider model. Companies now outsource the maintenance and operation of their strategic assets. For the service providers, the key to winning business is to be better and more efficient than their competitors. This leads to these companies selecting products like Maximo to give themselves a competitive advantage.

What sort of ROI can be expected?

GM. Our experience is that Maximo provides a rapid ROI, usually with 12 – 18 months of roll out. Some of these ROIs happen naturally, for example by inventory cost reductions and some take longer to achieve, such as improvement of workforce efficiency. Our experience is that usually the first major ROI is in the reduction of the Inventory size costs. Large corporations may have hundred millions dollars of investment locked away in the Inventory. A 20 percent saving on this realises tens of million dollars of free operating capital, which easily repays the investment.

How do client achieve these savings?

GM. Savings can be achieved by implementing in time inventory replenishment (this is an automatic benefit of Maximo). Also by shortening the supply chain cycle – many of our major customers have been able to trim 20 weeks off their supply chain by simply implementing the automated workflow. This dramatically speeds up the replenishment cycle as approvals are automated and also because people know the clock is ticking and they are being measured. The result is 20 weeks less stock and a massive reduction in inventory. Another way is by improving the purchasing process, meaning that Items on orders are better specified, history is available and the buyers can negotiate better pricing.

Are there functional add-ons?

GM. Maximo has always been a leading product in the EAM sector with its base functionality. IBM has now started to provide focused enhancements for specific Industry sectors. These enhancements are based on the core product but add industry specific functionality. These include, six industry solutions for oil and gas, utilities, transportation, nuclear, government, pharmaceuticals and specific add-ons such as Linear Assets Management (for roads, rail, pipelines and oil wells). Calibration for regulated industries, service provider functionality, IT asset and service management, Asset Configuration Manager for aircraft and technical systems.

Gaby Matar is the Group Managing Partner of eSolutions FZ LLC. With 23 years of experience, Matar drives worldwide partner relationships as well as establishing ties with key partners in the MENA region. He has been successful in working closely with many enterprise accounts especially in the energy, telcoms, government and banking sectors.