Chemanol, one of the leading producers of methanol-based chemicals in Saudi Arabia, said it has become the first company in the Kingdom to fully upgrade its SAP software system.

SAP’s upgrading process is managed in such a way that manufacturers can innovate without disrupting their on-going business operations, said a senior official.

'Chemanol has been working with SAP to ensure best business processes using internationally proven solutions, a culmination of SAP’s experience over more than 30 years, with thousands of successful customers in more than 25 industries,' said Abdul-Raheem Bawazeer, managing director for SAP in Saudi Arabia.

'SAP is committed to delivering innovation to customers by transforming business challenges into opportunities,' he added.

Chemanol opted for a full-service upgrade and went live from SAP Netweaver ECC 5 to ECC 6 last July to benefit from flexible business structures, innovative company processes and aggregation of information, Bawazeer explained.

SAP Netweaver ECC 6 benefits manufacturers by enabling more flexible business structures, innovative company processes, and easier aggregation of information across an organization. It also offers customers and employees a more efficient experience by providing a role-based portal interface.

'The upgrade will offer far greater transparency for our customers with the Portal in near future. They can check orders, chemical quantities, dispatches, and read quality reports online using a customer identification system,' said Khalid Al Rabiah, Chemanol CEO.

'The main advantage from a business aspect is that SAP allows for scalability and transparency. We plan to expand during the next five years, and having the latest solutions in place will allow us to do that in a streamlined and trouble-free way,' Al Rabiah pointed out.

“We have upgraded all the layers of our IT system: the network layer, operation layer, application layer, and database layer to SAP’s Net weaver ECC 6/ Windows 2008 Server (64 Bit)/and Microsoft SQL Server 2008. We are the first in the Kingdom to go through this process, which was completed in just over four months without us having to close down any of our business,” he added.-TradeArabia News Service