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Customer Stories

alfanar: Pioneering a proactive digital workplace and positive employee experiences

Explore alfanar’s journey with SAP

alfanar, a global provider of electrical solutions, believes that an organization’s strength depends largely on the quality of its people. Recruiting talented individuals from different cultures and geographies, it wished to create a proactive work environment characterized by innovation and diversity. It became the first company in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to embrace the SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone solution, with outstanding results.

100%

of HR applications accessed with SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone.

1

digital workplace.

14

weeks from project start to go-live event.

The feedback from employees has been incredible. So much so that many parts of our business are getting wind of the benefits of SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone and are begging us to speed up the process of switching from the old systems to go full throttle with this solution.

Yamen Zarnaji
IT Application Manager, alfanar Group

The Challenge

Removing complexity and empowering employees

alfanar Group offers electrical solutions for energy, water, and infrastructure. With 20,000 employees in 15 countries across the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Europe, the company faced a complex HR landscape due to localization requirements. Local teams were using a mix of SAP applications and third-party applications, resulting in different interfaces, tools, and systems. There was a lack of control and visibility of the technology, and each business function had distinct processes contributing to disjointed staff experiences.

 

Employees had to search multiple sources and potentially choose from more than 230 applications to find information, which meant several entry points, passwords, and systems. This led to poor employee experiences and impacted productivity. The company had adopted the RISE with SAP offering as part of its cloud strategy to develop new business models to avoid being disrupted, gain efficiencies to fund innovation, and transform mission-critical systems without business risk. However, its legacy on-premise HR technology was at odds with this approach and could not be migrated to the cloud infrastructure. Nor could the limited user experience be matched with artificial intelligence, chat, or personalization capabilities. Management communication relied on e-mail, and there was little opportunity for employees to provide feedback.

 

alfanar wished to streamline and integrate its HR processes into a unified system. It wanted to enable employees to work smarter and faster from anywhere, with a modern interface, and engage them with improved communication and feedback processes.

This was a functional project that required discussions with the business and change management. We needed our employees to buy in to the digital workplace project, plus there was training to test the solution. So it was a huge amount of work, but we did it with the help of SAP.

Yamen Zarnaji
IT Application Manager, alfanar Group

The Solution

Equipping employees for productive and personalized experiences

True to its tagline “companies employ, we empower,” alfanar implemented the SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone solution, built on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP), to better equip its 5,000-strong office-based workforce. It’s the first company in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the second in the Middle East and North Africa region to implement this solution. Currently, 3,600 office-based staff have already signed up, with the remaining 1,400 due to join soon.

 

Employees can now log in to the main company system and use the dedicated icon for the solution to access the tools and business applications they need within HR and other areas in real time. This is possible thanks to the Identity Authentication service that runs on SAP BTP. For example, organizational charts, open vacancies, annual and sick leave, and pay slips are readily available. With the SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone mobile app, employees can access their digital workplace remotely from any device. And alfanar’s “My Workspace” allows them to personalize the solution to meet the requirements of their roles and add the applications they use regularly as well as profile pictures and videos. The company is able to publish its news, and staff can post comments and feedback. The solution can be integrated with Microsoft Teams for learning and company collaboration.

 

As alfanar is also using the SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central solution as the core HR system, its workforce is already benefiting from an improved self-service experience, thanks to the design and appearance of SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone. The company also deployed the SAP SuccessFactors Recruiting, SAP SuccessFactors Compensation, and SAP SuccessFactors Performance & Goals solutions. In addition, it took advantage of the SAP Preferred Success service for Human Experience Management (HXM) solutions from SAP and the accelerated deployment service for SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone. In launching SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone at the same time as RISE with SAP, the company worked to the same deadline and achieved a successful co-implementation in just three and a half months.

Two days after we went live with SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone, I was in the gym with one of the general managers who had forgotten to approve a purchase order. He thought he’d have to go back to the office. I showed him how to use the solution for the approval, and he was delighted and excited to see the immediate benefit.

Yamen Zarnaji
IT Application Manager, alfanar Group

The Result

Optimizing the employee experience with a personalized digital workplace

With SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone, alfanar has given its employees the ability to access what they need on a daily basis in a single place. Using the mobile app feature, staff can access and check information wherever they are, so there’s no need to be in an office, saving them time and maximizing their productivity.

 

alfanar’s “My Workspace” is a big bonus of the solution, as it can be personalized to match employee requirements and preferences. The feedback has been extremely positive, and employees are finding the solution to be highly intuitive with no training required. As SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone can be integrated with other applications, such as Microsoft Teams, staff no longer feel like they’re isolated or working in silos but rather feel informed and connected. And employee communications are centralized, so the workforce is always up to date with the latest company news.

 

When a new hire joins, they are immediately assigned the correct business applications, giving them day-one access to the tools and systems they require. The company is now able to meet the expectations of its technologically savvy workforce and deliver a truly digital workplace experience. This supports alfanar’s ambition to be “not just an employer, but a career partner.”

Future Plans

Setting high expectations for further employee engagement

Using SAP BTP enables the further extension of SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone to 15,000 field- and factory-based employees over the next 12 months. alfanar plans to continue with a project to communicate and publish policies and procedures in the solution and ask employees for feedback. This supports an open-discussion approach that’s important for alfanar to build and foster employee engagement. It’s garnering positive input and responses from staff who welcome the opportunity for interaction and feel their voices are being heard.

 

The company has high expectations for SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone, because it believes it will add real value for anyone who uses it. Having deployed RISE with SAP, it has access to SAP BTP so it can extend the solution for other business processes. This represents significant value, as it can meet future requirements across the organization, be they for standard, nonstandard, or third-party business applications.

 

The company also plans to implement Employee Experience Management solutions from SAP and Qualtrics to take advantage of the integration capabilities in SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone. It will also roll out the SAP SuccessFactors Onboarding solution.

SAP helps alfanar run better

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Key business outcomes and benefits

  • Provided employees with anytime access to HR applications and other business applications in a single place
  • Enabled employees to check information on the go, enhancing efficiency and maximizing productivity
  • Offered employees the personalization of “My Workspace” to match their requirements and preferences
  • Integrated the solution with other applications and centralized communications to help employees feel informed and connected
  • Delivered a truly digital workplace experience in line with the expectations of a technologically savvy workforce

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Featured solutions and services

  • SAP SuccessFactors Work Zone offers employees an intuitive, personalized digital workplace that’s centered on optimizing the employee experience.
  • SAP SuccessFactors solutions enable you to provide employees with experiences that recognize their individual value and consistently motivate them to achieve peak performance levels.
  • SAP Business Technology Platform brings data management, analytics, AI, application development, automation, and integration into one unified environment.
  • RISE with SAP offers cloud ERP for business needs, industry next practices and extensibility, analytics and business process transformation, and outcome-driven services from SAP and its partners.

About alfanar

alfanar Group engages in manufacturing electrical construction products, electronic power control (EPC) solutions for conventional and renewable power plants, allied engineering services, and design engineering. With an international presence in 15 countries throughout the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Europe, it prides itself on quality products and services, excellence in practices, and values that nurture human potential. It remains at the cutting edge of electrical technology while supplying the growing demand for energy worldwide.

Industry Region Company Size
Engineering, construction, and operations Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 20,000 employees
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