Obeikan Investment Group is a large conglomerate headquartered in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Starting from a printing press in 1982 it now has diversified manufacturing interests in glass, packaging, paper & board and plastics across the GCC. Obeikan is also the leader in the Education segment in the Kingdom on both the academic and retail side and is dedicated to the mission of spreading knowledge across the region via a combination of its digital assets and over thirty retail outlets. With 28 companies and over 7000 employees Obeikan is one of the brightest shining lights in the Arabian economic landscape.

Obeikan group is an extremely diverse group with thousands of people with dozens of nationalities working for it in many different locations across GCC and with sales offices even farther off.  Furthermore the group had a combination of service, manufacturing and retail businesses across multiple industry verticals. Within this complex ecosystem the HR function was challenged with meeting key deliverable timelines like payroll, which used to take 12 days to process.

While an ERP catering to HR was in place around the group it did not meet pressing needs like employee self service. Simple requests like salary changes took months to process. Different HR needs were catered to by different products, which were not integrated. This led to challenges in finding the right data and getting it within a time frame that would enable decision making on outstanding issues.  Joint venture reporting and differing IT environments in different companies were additional complications.

Obeikan was a very employee oriented group that believed its employees were at the heart of its success. As such it wanted a solution that could help it enable an employee group relationship that enabled both to grow.

An RFP was floated for a standardized automation solution. InfoTech reached out to group leadership team and made the case that we had to manage HR data properly before we automated Human Capital Management and that a straight automation without that would not deliver desired results. Obeikan agreed.

InfoTech consultants then moved into action. They first classified the group companies according to regional and holding company clusters. Then they defined those policies according to clusters. This was done keeping in mind software capabilities so that consulting work would seamlessly translate into automation. Then the consulting team spent a considerable amount of time getting basic raw data correct and deduplicated.

Once the integrity of the data was secure InfoTech implemented the best in class HR automation solution Oracle HCM across the group. The HCM solution was then integrated with active directory for single sign on. Lastly InfoTech integrated sophisticated biometrics with the HCM solutions.

The effect of HCM implementation done in a systematic manner by InfoTech to ensure maximum success was transformational. Key metrics improved immediately. Payroll processing time was cut by 50%.

Raw data cleaning and access had a profound effect. The entire HR organization moved into a sphere of trust with the executive management of the group.

Now that every HR manager across the group and their CEO’s could actually trust HR data they started using it in decision making.

An incredibly robust self service portal empowered employees. Self service and automation allowed for HR to spend more time on engaging with employees allowing for HR departments across the group to move the needle from reactive to proactive.

Multilateral compliance requirements are now met and governance and transparency now allow for fair and equitable transactions across the HR ecosystem.

Above all the greatest feedback has been that actual HR capability as enabled by Human Capital Management automation has allowed for genuinely better employee relations.

InfoTech very quickly in its engagement with Obeikan had come to them with a comprehensive plan aimed at project success that differed from initial scope.

InfoTech was awarded this project because it was able to provide executive group management the vision of an organization that put employees at its center and a plan for achieving that vision. Obeikan also appreciated InfoTech’s deep expertise in Oracle and complex project delivery. Of special interest to Obeikan was the fact that InfoTech had deployed projects across countries in emerging markets.