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SABIC UK Wins Gold For SAP Excellence

Saudi Basic Industries Corporation is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of chemicals, fertilisers, plastics and metals. In June 2007 SABIC completed the purchase of Huntsman Petrochemicals and the new entity was renamed SABIC UK Petrochemicals. With 850 staff, the company operates in Wilton and North Tees.

A successful program to clone the Huntsman SAP system was run by the newly formed SABIC UK IT team under ICT Manager Paul Ettridge - “This provided us with the ideal opportunity to optimise the SABIC system for effective and efficient support of the business in the new environment and to plan a system strategy and future upgrade path that might ultimately save a significant amount of money.”

SABIC opted for the West Trax KPI Scan® SAP optimisation solution that provides a detailed understanding of SAP system usage. It does this by analysing the system’s real transactional use and by benchmarking Key Performance Indicators against SAP systems worldwide.

The initial SABIC KPI Scan® results were very good.  The system established new Measured Best Practice values for two of the KPI’s measured. As a result SABIC qualified for a Bronze level West Trax Quality Award in 2007. The analysis also highlighted several key areas for further improvement. 

Paul Ettridge decided to exploit these additional optimisation opportunities through a West Trax KPI Optimiser® analysis. The SABIC UK SAP team implemented the resulting recommendations and followed this up with a West Trax KPI QA® analysis to verify that the changes had been effective.

As a result SABIC has now qualified as the first West Trax Gold Award Winner in the UK and the first in the petrochemical industry worldwide. Of almost 900 systems analyses performed to date by West Trax, the SABIC system is only the second to achieve this level of excellence.

SABIC qualified for GOLD in 6 of the 7 award disciplines measured by West Trax, establishing 3 new Measured Best Practices values in the process. This is the best result achieved to date in any West Trax analysis.

Ettridge states, “We are delighted with the improvements our team has produced with the assistance of West Trax. We are now able to demonstrate to the business proof of best practice in terms of cost efficiency, productivity, performance and quality. In addition we have identified additional improvement opportunities to extract even more business value from our SAP system”.

West Trax Chief Executive David Long comments, “Well done SABIC UK. I heartily congratulate Paul and his team on the many improvements they have made to their system and I’m delighted to present them with their well earned Gold Quality Award. Congratulations once again on this outstanding achievement.”

Organisations that qualify for a West Trax Quality Award can expect to benefit in many areas of their business. Lean business processes, improved cost structures, increased user acceptance and shorter project cycles will increase the organisation’s competitiveness and market opportunities significantly, especially in the global market where speed, quality and price are key success factors.

Organisations with outsourced SAP systems and their service providers will gain a key cost advantage. Transparent systems require less maintenance and as a result costs can be reduced

For more information on SABIC visit www.sabic.com

About West Trax:
West Trax Ltd is a service provider delivering management consulting and IT consulting services. Founded in 2003, the company combines many years of international experience in the professional services business with state-of-the-art technology.
With KPI Scan®, KPI Optimiser®, KPI QA® and Benchmark Express®, West Trax offers solutions that help to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of corporate processes and the performance of IT infrastructures. West Trax focuses on global SAP system optimisation. More detailed information can be found at www.westtrax.com.

For further information and images, please contact David Long at West Trax International Ltd. Telephone 01531 670325 or e-mail dlong@westtrax.com.