Olive is essential for strategic digital transformation. If you’re managing digital transformation, or looking to change vendors, you need Olive. Olive is a much-needed tool for evaluating and implementing enterprise technology solutions. It’s a unicorn!
Zamil Group is a family-owned investment holding company with a diverse portfolio of businesses, including Building Materials, Manufacturing, Offshore, Petrochemicals, Trade and Services, Real Estate, and Investment.
Zamil was established in 1920 and has a 100-year proven record of building business. The Group’s motto, “Strength Through Diversity,” illustrates its sustainable approach. This, along with the Zamil Group’s pragmatic strategies, core values, and expert team, has contributed to their success and longevity. Based in Saudi Arabia, Zamil Group has remained prosperous throughout the country’s economic and industrial era, notably becoming the first family company to be listed on Saudi Arabia’s stock exchange.
Zamil group has over 40 affiliate companies, either wholly-owned or joint venture partnerships, as the majority shareholder.
A complete strategic digital transformation of the entire Zamil Group with integration across solutions at a broad level for companies within Zamil, as well as integrations within the individual companies.
Nouf AlZamil heads up digital transformation for Zamil Group. The vision is to accelerate strategic digital transformation with Olive for the Group and affiliate companies. Zamil has continuously improved digital transformation with Olive since 2020.
Previously each company within the Zamil Group had a variety of custom-built technology solutions that operate in Oracle, SAP, etc. These solutions have been built up over time. This method had cost the company a huge sum and didn’t work appropriately. The user adoption rate for one solution, particularly, was less than 30%. To add salt to the wound, the team became aware of an off-the-shelf solution that could have met 80% of their needs and been used appropriately for considerably fewer costs. Having been through the process, Nouf’s team identified that they were missing out on efficiency by using these custom solutions. They were much too costly to run and did not yield the intended results. Additionally, many solutions used had basic functionality and reporting capabilities, and some were becoming obsolete and needed to be replaced.
Rather than continue to build and rebuild something from scratch for every solution required, the team favored finding existing options that meet each project’s majority requirements. Zamil’s strategy was to find best-match solutions that meet 60%-70% of the business needs. The remaining 40% to 30% can be optimized down the road when the second phase of digital transformation has been implemented. Therefore, finding solution vendors that listened to client feedback to optimize their product was important.
Zamil Group needed the digitization process to both modernize the solutions inside each subsidiary, and make them more cloud-based and connected, giving the head office broader visibility into each company while enabling all the subsidiaries to flow data up to the head office. By choosing Olive for this multi-year digital transformation venture, Zamil Group has already increased the flow of information between the organization and accelerated reporting to optimize decision-making, ultimately innovating and future-proofing the organization.
Undergoing digital transformation affects business activities, processes, competencies, and models. When done successfully it can yield valuable results for business growth. The volume of solutions Zamil Group required, along with the overlap of projects and integrated solutions were daunting, but Olive’s features met these needs and more.
Olive’s collaborative platform saves hours of wasted time in meetings, spreadsheets, and email threads. Olive instantly disqualifies vendors that don’t meet the project’s custom requirements. This saves much time and ultimately money in the process. Looking forward, the value of finding the best match solution is incalculable. The current solutions used were extremely costly due to the level of customization the product needed to meet the Group’s needs. With a <30% user adoption rate, this was extremely wasteful.
Due to the level of integration required between solutions, it was imperative to gather requirements from necessary stakeholders and make changes to the project as new requirements emerged. With Olive, multiple projects with overlapping stakeholders can be run simultaneously. Olive can facilitate a high volume of collaboration on multiple projects with agility.
With no specific timeline in mind for implementation, due diligence was a priority to ensure the best-fit solution is chosen. To meet the needs of the individual projects and integrate with other solutions seamlessly, all work done in Olive is recorded and time-stamped, and extensive due diligence reporting is built into the product.
Since choosing Olive to facilitate the entire digital transformation, Zamil has moved through the undertaking with unprecedented speed and agility, while ensuring all potential solutions are carefully analyzed against business needs.
Zamil Group has been steadily improving its digital transformation with the help of Olive since 2020, and the results have been impressive. Thanks to Olive’s collaborative platform, the Zamil team is gaining new confidence and making good progress towards completing all phases of the transformation. The team is optimistic that with Olive’s support, they will achieve continuous improvement.
So far, Zamil has discovered a range of solutions with Olive that have enhanced connections between the various companies within the group and strengthened relationships among them. Zamil has streamlined its processes, saving valuable time and resources. These digital solutions sourced with Olive have positioned Zamil for success.
