Digital Innovation
Aramco SAP Innovation Day continues company’s digital maturity
Held under the theme “Mastering Innovation and Digitalization,” the event sought to share best-in-class ways to leverage platforms, tools, and processes.
The Aramco SAP Innovation Day was held virtually under the theme “Mastering Innovation and Digitalization” in collaboration with the Systems Applications and Products (SAP) company, one of the world’s leading producers of software for the management of business processes.
Speakers from Aramco and SAP discussed the ways in which best-in-class organizations are leveraging transformative platforms, tools, and processes to achieve operational efficiency and profitability.
More than 500 registered participants attended, including representatives from joint ventures and affiliates such as SABIC, SATORP, Johns Hopkins Aramco Healthcare, and SAMREF, to discuss a variety of topics concerning supply chain technologies, sustainability, and cloud platforms.
Speakers included Information Technology (IT) vice president, Yousef A. Al Ulyan, president of SAP Industries and Customer Advisory, Peter Maier, and senior vice president and managing director of SAP-KSA, Ahmed Alfifi.
Partners of success
Last year, Aramco announced a new strategic partnership with SAP Saudi Arabia to roll out SAP’s S/4HANA platform, which marks the company’s shift to cloud-based development tools and environments for application development, security, and integration into Aramco’s hybrid cloud IT infrastructure.
“SAP has long been a trusted partner in building Aramco’s IT infrastructure,” said Al Ulyan. “Looking ahead, we believe SAP will continue to strengthen our services and offerings. We are pleased to have this opportunity to collaborate and network with our partners and to continue our work in steering the company to a higher degree of digital maturity.”
This is an exciting time to be working on digital transformation in oil and gas, especially at Aramco. We see powerful applications in everything from HR and trading, to supplier management and asset maintenance, in addition to partner collaborations.
— Yousef A. Al Ulyan
Digital transformation
In an effort to become the leading digital energy company globally, businesses across the organization are exploring ways to utilize technologies to increase efficiencies and unlock new opportunities. These efforts include utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) to optimize drilling and forecast energy demand, and pioneering the use of drones for faster, safer inspections. In addition, Aramco’s smart-linked facilities at Abqaiq, Khurais, and ‘Uthmaniyah are ranked among the top 100 most advanced manufacturing sites in the world.
“This is an exciting time to be working on digital transformation in oil and gas, especially at Aramco,” said Al Ulyan. “We see powerful applications in everything from HR and trading, to supplier management and asset maintenance, in addition to partner collaborations.”
Learning and networking
The event provided attendees with a platform to share success stories, innovation, digitalization, and best practices in technology deployment. Participants also had a chance to join a design thinking hackathon for selected business challenges.