Mohamed S

The company covers the entirety of technological, operational, tactical, and strategic customer requirements via integrated products and services, spanning professional hardware, software, managed data center connectivity and e-GOV services. The business has 10 established branches across 2 countries, with 7000+ active corporate customers. Handpicked for a top-level role in reflection of skills and experience. The business was having trouble upon joining due to economic conditions and the absence of founding strategy. Full accountability was awarded for transforming the business. Responsibility is held for business management/planning and P&L control. Remit includes driving high-performance delivery and providing technical thought leadership. Delivering sustainable, tangible results and long-term commercial value is imperative.

• Successfully guiding the business through a turbulent time, due to difficulties with the global/local economy and oil prices, by providing strong leadership and creating new products through strategic alliances.
• Turning around the underperformance of the business by identifying and addressing shortcomings; including low sales, lack of innovation, low customer satisfaction and poor branding.
• Delivering a new vision/strategy for the business that included a business restructure, streamlining of processes, introduction of new products, fixing issues with suppliers, reimplementing projects, slashing arrears and reducing costs.
• Transforming business performance from loss to net profit of 11%; increasing sales leads from 40M SAR till 250M SAR and facilitating a new pipeline of around 92M SAR during.
• Continually modernising business processes, business support systems and operational support systems derived from ITIL, eTOM, CMMI, PMI and Six Sigma frameworks and in line with ISO 9001/20000/27001 standards.
• Securing and sustaining strong and productive relationships with key technology vendors, Microsoft, Cisco, VMWare, Honeywell, 3M, Huawei, AVAYA, Oracle and SAP.
• Directing a seamless change process; gathering consensus across multiple business layers (including shareholders), managing conflicting perspectives, securing funding and embedding corporate governance.
• Capitalising on the trend for digital transformation, growth in IT investments and continued evolution and growth in managed and shared services.
• Driving the business towards becoming a major key player in the KSA IT market as a global system integrator, whilst extending capabilities to specialized subsidiaries that will cover IT market needs.
• Achieving significant competitive edge by introducing new products in response to innovation, customer expectations and market conditions and establishing two new branches in Egypt and Dubai.

A strategic role with a company that groups together fully-integrated infrastructure projects and services companies, with interests across: power and water; manufacturing (retail); utilities and services; construction and contracting; transportation and aviation; and real estate development sectors, that can deliver services to each and every segment of the value chain. Accountability is held for leading the IT business unit with responsibility for full lifecycle of service provision to customers, from assessment of the business needs and sending technical/commercial offer, to collection. During tenure the IT provision has been transformed into a strategic business unit and profit centre that makes a key contribution to the commercial performance of the group and its subsidiaries. The executive leadership remit spans all aspects of strategic planning/implementation, support of diverse and demanding IT requirements, management/delivery of multiple large scale projects to time and cost objectives, and budgeting design. A major responsibility of the role has been engineering the turnaround of IT Department's under performance and service levels.

• Successfully built and mentored a high performing team by spearheading talent acquisition of team members with high levels of integrity, morale and skills.
• Pursued an excellent standard of in-house IT services to ensure seamless availability of technical resources; evaluating productivity against current capacity and future needs to drive change management processes.
• Enhanced network reliability and scalability by designing and upgrading a Datacenter infrastructure, including security to protect mission-critical data.
• Secured best possible agreements with suppliers worth over 45 million SAR; negotiating pricing to accomplish substantial savings, in addition to enforcing higher supplier performance expectations.
• Positioned IT department as a profit centre through development of a strategic 5-year plan to capitalise on revenue opportunities whilst effectively planning and budgeting.
• Streamlined strategic planning, management and operations functions by implementing ERP system for over 12 companies; targeting improved results on investment.
• Supported fulfilment of cost recovery and profit margins goals by developing a competitive pricing strategy for Technical Services and IT Service catalogue.
• Transformed IT provision into profitable entity by signing SLA’s with subsidiaries for deployment of IT services to their clients, including IT managed services and counselling services.
• Accomplished project installation of WAN network at 20 companies with 1000+ users, with emphasis on high performance and improved disaster recovery capabilities.
• Developed governance framework and ensured compliance with IT protocols, policies/procedures to mitigate risks.
• Cultivated productive key technology partnerships and vendor relationships in the interests of the business.
• Delivered presentations and provided advice to corporate and subsidiaries Board and hold membership of several steering committees such as Audit, ExCom, and IT for subsidiaries.

The company was established in 1965 with current subsidiaries spanning construction, industrial, manufacturing, education, IT, mining and real estate development sectors. Business goals focus on building on the company's brand equity, stability, exponential efficiencies and group-wide synergy objectives.

Role remit centred upon spearheading transition from outdated organisation-wide and departmental technologies to more highly functional, streamlined, and cost-effective solutions with aligned with current best practices, across +1800 users in 45 geographically dispersed locations. Prioritising high connectivity, business continuity and data/revenue risk management was key.

• Played a pivotal role in dramatically improving efficiency, decreasing expenses, and optimising compliance/data integrity/safety through the expert introduction of client-server technologies and business solutions.
• Executed multiple scalable, high performance and complex projects, spanning application, infrastructure, business solutions and security, ahead of schedule and to budget through recruitment/leadership of a 20-person technical team.
• Achieved cost savings through aggressive negotiation of contracts and pricing for hardware/software purchases and consulting services.
• Provided key involvement in the replacement of more than 20 systems; built 5 Datacenters including DRC (backup) and main Datacenter tier 2; and streamlined selection/implementation of Core ERP system MS-Dynamics AX.
• Accomplished high levels of control and integration through supervision of the construction of 5 energy-efficient towers of smart buildings system and BMS.
• Served as Committee Member to facilitate system implementation at a glass and aluminium factory with reduced costs, and optimised performance of German production line system HANIC for glass factory.
• Led selection/implementation of Orgadata for aluminium plant; applying strategic vision and tactical execution skills.
• Fortified cost containment, collaboration and connectivity between all companies and branches through installation of Cisco IP phone systems.
• Enhanced prompt resolution of performance bottlenecks and optimised bandwidth/ utilization by designing, implementing, and managing WAN of 45 branches and point of sales stations.
• Secured contracts and POs worth 30 million SAR to secure new revenue streams through effective leveraging of IT services, processes and peak performing teams.

A role with one of the manufacturing and production leading industry groups in KSA which has established a joint venture with an American Group and investment of over USD 500 Million. Group business activities span: S/W air-condition production; refrigerator and oven production; central air-condition production; home appliances retail; textiles; and travel and tourism.

Responsibility was held for the provision of global technology vision and strategic information technology services leadership whilst formulating, evaluating and implemented IT solutions, policies and initiatives to enhance the quality/ effectiveness of business goals and operational efficiency. An instrumental part of the role was re-organising the Information Technology Services Department as part of the Shared Services Division, and aligning it to the business groups. This objective demanded delivery through technology and close collaboration with international corporations such as Cisco, Dell, and Microsoft. Project leadership to the value 14 Million SR was also key, whilst driving economies of scale through leveraging applications and people across +850 users and 20 main branches.

• Delivered world-class innovative technology solutions and established budgetary/performance controls and monitoring of documentation/security/risk of all IT systems whilst effectively responding to challenges and opportunities.
• Advanced the organisational IT systems and enabled expansion of internet-based business and web architecture.
• Maintained a high performance team; ensured delivery of critical technology solutions; and drove optimal analysis of business performance to internal/ external stakeholders
• Enhanced performance and effectiveness of IT provision by spearheading a restructure of the IT division and IT polices and procedures manual to align with ITIL framework.
• Leveraged availability and contingency plans through leadership of an expansion / upgrade the IT Datacenter and Disaster Recovery Center.
• Supported business goals by initiating technical strategies that enhanced efficiency and facilitated cost savings.
• Enhanced effectiveness of operational business activities through the introduction of workflow/documents management system and an attendance system.
• Saved 45% of licensing by securing long-term agreements with Microsoft Corporation for MS office and Servers; saved +USD 300, 000 through long-term agreements with Microsoft for MS AXAPTA ERP; and achieved improved technical support by agreeing a long-term agreement with Dell for bespoke PC manufacture and support.

A strategic level role with a leading national group of companies, ranked between 30 - 25 in the top 100 Saudi companies, plus some related sister companies, with activities spanning: operations and maintenance; contracting; commercial (retail); travel and tourism; financial investment; real estate investment; and outdoor media advertisement.

Primary role focus was on managing the service implementation of networks, systems and solutions in support of the strategic aims and objectives. Leadership of a multi-disciplinary IT team in the head office of the business group was a critical part of the post; driving effective provision of IT services to seven subsidiaries and fifteen branches linked, and forty projects directly to the group subsidiaries spanning +1000 users. Remit includes providing vision and insight to the organisation e.g. assisting with development of long term plans, identifying risks and opportunities, and assessing/reporting on progress reports.

•Propelled business growth through day-to-day management of significant issues whilst leading on strategic realignment and business development solutions in line with policies and procedures.
•Leveraged achievement of organisational goals by building and leading a well-trained, engaged, high performing IT team that worked collaboratively towards the shared goals of timely completion, deliverability and quality.
•Played a key role in the success of project work by expertly mapping project scope for all IT units, streamlining efforts and formulating strategic plans.
•Transformed and enhanced business processes by designing the ERP project and implementing BPR and ERP system with minimum cost and maximum quality using best practice experience and methodology.
•Expanded scope of operations through deployment of 10 websites and a cutting edge IT infrastructure network.
•Boosted competitive advantage of the group; playing an instrumental role in the design of company logo, establishing new companies, and setting up an investment division in liaison with Reuters to keep abreast of the latest bonds prices.
•Reduced costs by 30% of total expenses by devising strategies to optimise usage of telephones, fax and mobile phones.
•Drove efficient, effective scalable growth through evaluation of IT systems/processes and organisational requirements.

Leading an IT Network services to a command operations center and supplier of advanced war control systems for both land-based and airborne military applications.
Additional responsibilities include Team Leader for help desk and Network service in the Command Operations Center of more than 3000 the number of users.