IFS Applications helps Omani water company enhance visibility
Since implementing an ERP solution from IFS Applications, water provider Majis has achieved greater operational efficiency

IFS Applications helps Omani water company enhance visibility

Since implementing an ERP solution from IFS Applications, water provider Majis has achieved greater operational efficiency, enhanced communications with partners and provided staff with real-time information. The Omani company can now utilise the user-friendly and intuitive solution to accurately manage forecasts, work across all departments and make the most of its rich functionality.  

Since its inception in 2006, Majis’ roots were in providing seawater for cooling the tenants of Sohar Industrial Port Area (SIPA) in Oman.

Majis was using a small financial package and a mixture of spreadsheets and databases to manage its operations. All data was entered manually, for example, and staff were managing maintenance, inventory and procurement with spreadsheets and databases. Even back-end operations were manual and cumbersome.

If an employee applied for leave without pay, there was no visibility from management through to HR and payroll to administer this simple task – it was all manually entered.

Majis lacked visibility into daily operations, there was no consistent process followed by departments, work was unwieldly and errors with data entry were incurred.

“This impacted the ability to make decisions in real time, which affected the business,” says Emad Al-Manthari, Head of Information Technology, Majis Industrial Services S.A.O.C.

The operation and maintenance of Majis’ assets were outsourced to Azaliya, a Veolia company. There was no consistent single version of events that existed between the two companies on asset performance, maintenance history, spare parts ordered and inventory supplies.

If a water pump was down sometimes there was duplication of staff allocated to fix it. There was no clear asset record to view and often there was the duplication with multiple spare parts ordered to repair the pump.

“We needed to address the visibility and work in unity with Azaliya to ensure we were running at the highest level of plant availability with 100% asset optimisation,” says Al-Manthari.

Majis expanded its footprint to become a complete water utilities solution provider and required an integrated ERP solution that could manage assets, procurement, finance and human resources.

“We went to tender but it was IFS Applications that was the standout solution for us. The rich functionality in IFS Applications was more advanced to meet the needs of our business whilst being highly competitive,” said Al-Manthari.

“The IFS Middle East team gave us the confidence that the project would be implemented on time and on budget and would be able to grow with us.”

By implementing IFS Applications, Majis has optimised operational efficiency coupled with gaining extensive functionality to support asset optimisation, procurement and inventory planning to support Azaliya.

“Implementing IFS Applications allowed us to integrate all our departments with one system where we gained business intelligence and access to information in real-time from any location,” said Al-Manthari.

The integration of finance, human resources and document management has improved planning, scheduling and work force optimisation whilst achieving greater control over production costs.

With the implementation of health and safety, Majis is now fully accountable and can take the necessary procedures to deal with any issue. Majis increased collaboration between Azaliya, improving complete visibility of assets, procurement and inventory, whilst achieving the highest possible level of plant availability.

“With one system that both Majis and Azaliya enjoy, we have complete visibility of the plant, asset lifecycle and inventory stockpiles so that we now achieve operational efficiency,” says Al-Manthari.

Majis has complete visibility of inventory stockpiles and can order parts when required whilst Azaliya proactively operates and maintains the assets ensuring plant availability.

This means that Majis can focus 100% of its efforts on the commercialisation of water and Azaliya can dedicate total focus to maximising plant availability. An added benefit of IFS Applications is that employees at both Majis and Azaliya can work anywhere in real-time.

Majis uses IFS touch apps ‘IFS Notify Me’ and ‘IFS Talk’ for mobile devices that enables employees to approve purchase orders, expenses and invoices anywhere and collaborate with other staff in realtime.

“This has helped to increase operational efficiency,” says Al-Manthari. “Training staff to use IFS Applications could never be easier.

“IFS Applications has easy to search functionality, saving favourite screens and post-it notes has enhanced communication between colleagues. IFS Applications is so user-friendly and the intuitive nature sometimes means I don’t need to contact the IFS support team, I can solve the issue myself.”

Implementing IFS Applications has elevated Majis ability to be agile and allowed it to successfully concentrate on the commercialisation of water.

“Our CEO loves IFS Applications because it gives him the business intelligence in real-time to accurately manage forecasts, risk management and business operations to make informed decisions that impact the business,” said Al-Manthari.

Having information in a central repository means the wealth of knowledge has increased across the business and employees.  Even Azaliya has reported benefits towards achieving 100% plant availability.

“I would completely recommend IFS Applications to any asset intensive business as we have seen huge improvements in the way we operate. Most importantly, it’s the right solution to support our business,” says Al-Manthari.

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