Executive Director - IT
Savola Group
Total years of experience :23 years, 5 Months
Heading the IT department for Savola Foods Co and Savola HQ
Manage the IT department with the focus on smart business solutions that support the business and provide opportunities for growth through streamlining processes and cutting edge business analytics.
Built a new department (Center of Excellence) to be the custodian of the organization's processes and to provide support to the infrastructure and ERP.
Put the organizational structure of the new department and assigned the needed resources.
Managed the investment (58M SR), budget and employees.
Worked on identifying the ROI of the SAP project.
Worked as a Project Manager for the SAP (ERP) implementation at IATCO where successfully managed the people, the budget, stakeholders and vendors.
Managed the change management process.
- Lead all IT projects for the company’s information management and sales departments.
- Managed projects resources and budgets.
- Worked on the retrofit and U2K2 project member. (SAP modifications)
- Lead Customer Development projects:
o Binzagr's “Unilever Partner” SAP implementation (Project LEAP) from Unilever side (integration with Unilever).
o KSA and Gulf (UAE, Oman and Bahrain) sales force automation. (Project SAWA).
- Participated in Marketing/Supply Chain/HR workflow projects:
o Unify (travel and expense workflow system).
o Delivery confirmation system. (shipment tracking system)
- Managing the support of 2 SAP modules across Arabia (KSA, Gulf and Yemen) :
o SD (Sales and Distribution).
o BW (Business Warehouse “also called BI”).
- Leading Information related projects:
o Delivering 3rd party sales/stocks information
o Delivering business critical reports (CD, SC, FI) e.g.:
- Forecast reports.
- Product & Customer Profitability.
- Continuing my role as Information Business Analyst.
Lead information management in the company as well as managing and supporting SAP BW module.
Set business processes for data upload and file formats to SAP BW.
Managed the Hand Held Terminal & Core Range project between BCO and UA.
Managed the implementation and delivery of Kuwait Sales and Stocks reports.
Managed the delivery of several business critical reports and enhancements:
o Pack size reporting.
o Multiplier Factor Control.
o Volume by Cubic Meter reporting.
Worked on raising the awareness and profile of SAP and BW.
- Managed the IT customers service for KSA and Yemen, heading the service desk, network and infrastructure projects.
- Developed a job tracking and prioritizing system and process for the IT support team.
- Implemented several cost reduction processes.
- Developed a system for assets recording and management for tracking all IT assets.
- Lead KSA project team for renewing the company's 300 computers (and laptops) in an excellent and flawless way.
- Lead a project for upgrading several servers including email server from Intrastore to Exchange server.
- Successfully organized training programs for KSA and Gulf countries for all the employees. (more than 97% attendance).
- Successfully ran monthly pipeline according to the forecast for ordering 6 Brands with around 60 SKUs including world wide known products (like Pampers, Silvikrin and Felix).
- Worked with marketing and sales teams on demand planning of the imported product.
- Developed remnants liquidation systems.
- Developed a daily out of stock report recording data from more than 10 Warehouses.
- Systems development mainly using VB6, ASP, DAO, VB.Net, ADO.NET and ASP.NET.
- Successfully participated in the IT technical support and helpdesk to serve more than 250 users and computers as well as 350 handheld computer systems.
- Planned the connection of the company’s telephone systems (Voice over IP) across branches around the kingdom to utilize the existing frame-relay network and to cut telephone calls costs.
- Defining policies and process flows for IT department’s major duties. For e.g. “Policy for creating a new user account”, “Process for preparing a new computer for users”.
- Designed, programmed and then deployed a complete inventory system for the IT department that would store all IT assets.
- Designed, programmed and deployed a job ticketing system for the IT department.
- Developed a complete reporting system for RVO (retail van operation) sales division of the company.
- Successfully completed the analysis, modification and then implementation of BDF (business development fund) system for the company’s key accounts sales teams.
- Member of the project team worked on computer network upgrade, management and troubleshooting.
Got my MBA with concentrations in marketing and entrepreneurship from LMU, ranked #6 in the nation and #3 in the West by Bloomberg Businessweek. Took courses in Strategy, Operations Management, Data analysis and Big Data technologies.
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science - Developing applications using languages like Pascal, C, Java, visual basic, assembly and other languages. - Object oriented programming and data structures. - Advanced courses on computer networks, operating systems, database systems and software engineering as well as the World Wide Web management and development. - Economics engineering, management and communication skills.