On 20^th of October 2008; Both of Western Bakeries and the International Company of Bakery Service celebratedthe inauguration of the Enterprise Resource Planning system from SAP/ERP under the auspices of the CEO Mr. Majed Nofal and the CFO Mr. Georges Schorderetand Head of Inbound Supply Chain and Procurement of both companies.

 

Western Bakeries and IBS, both had been running Oracle ERP system since a few years. After having been assimilated as a part of Almarai, an initiative was undertaken in mid-March, 2008 to migrate the entire business transaction system to SAP, in order to centralize most of the financial business operations, the electronic purchase operations and production planning and maintenance services of factory equipments.

 

A challenging target of 105 working days (or five and half elapsed months) was set and a team of qualified, experienced SAP application and support personnel, together with dedicated WB business personnel, were briefed to achieve completion in the time allotted. Having identified the major processes, along with all business rules and 95 business reports, the SAP implementation project was deployed using the standard ASAP project methodology. The project steps were carefully followed, requirements were meticulously analyzed and deployed and the entire team achieved this remarkable result.

 

Mr. Majed Nofel at the inauguration Party emphasized the significance of the new system with process improvements and operational benefits in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, along with fulfillment of the corporate policy of aligning business systems within the Almarai group of companies.

 

The team was able to complete the tasks within the desired time frame to launch work with programming system of Enterprise Resource Planning (SAP, ERP) achieving the remarkable result of “Going Live” on August 6, 2008