Abu Dhabi Petroleum Ports Operating Company was incorporated in 1977 to operate all petroleum and industrial ports in Abu Dhabi and to provide maintenance operations, safety and diving services.

IRSHAD operates the oil terminals and ports of Jabel Dhanna, Ruwais, Umm AI Nar, Das Island, Zirku, and Mubarraz Islands. The company also carries out maintenance work on ADMA-OPCO's single point moorings and ZADCO's oil terminals. It also helps, whenever necessary, in combating oil pollution in petroleum ports.

The company owns 42 vessels of which 17 are Berthing/Fire Fighting Tugs and 6 are Pilot Boats. Five of the tugs are fully equipped dive support vessels.
The combined ports of Jebel Dhanna and Ruwais now handle over 1000 very large crude carriers and gas carriers, etc. per year and the Company as a whole nearly 2000 per year.

In addition to the Port Operations, the Company also maintains 7 Single Point Mooring Systems for their Oil Company Clients. The Company now operates 7 full diving spreads and has 9 Diver Decompression Chambers distributed throughout the 6 petroleum ports that it operates.

The need

In the face of rapid growth, IRSHAD’s financial and technology departments felt the need to streamline its internal operations and automate business processes in order to achiever business flexibility and continue to deliver first class service to their internal and external clients. That’s when ITQAN stepped in.

Until then, the existing financial system needed technical programming to generate meaningful financial reports. As the business grew, so did the requests for financial reports and its analysis became a major workload for the IT department. Mansour knew that he could save man hours by automating this function and empowering the financial department to run their reports.

Besides financial control, it was apparent that other departments in the company could also benefit from integrating information companywide. Human resources, maintenance, field service operations, distribution, supply chain processes, manufacturing forecasts and order fulfillment processes could all benefit from such an integrated system.

Irshad was aware that the existing hardware and software installed was already running at full capacity, with little room for increased performance, sufficient security, scalability and little reliability. It was a classic case of a successful company that had outgrown its technology infrastructure. Now, it was up to ITQAN to identify a solution which could cater to future growth as well.

One of the challenges that ITQAN identified was a manual data processing environment.  Data was sent from different sites by fax and then re-entered into the system manually. This was time consuming, created consistency problems and was prone to human errors.  What was needed was an integrated back office system with straight through processing which will enable cross-platform communication. 

Also, three of the remote locations at IRSHAD were on dial-up Internet connections, which had to be modernized with adequate security to meet the needs of the business. At a more critical level, vessel operations were isolated from the administration of the company.  When there were technical issues with engines, requirements to raise work orders or request repair items had to be a speedy and communicated reliably.


The solution

“ITQAN’s first challenge was to find a solid foundation for unifying and automating IRSHAD’s business processes. Microsoft Business Solutions–Great Plains with its integrated capabilities for financial management, distribution, manufacturing, project accounting, human resource management, field service management, and business analytics, fit the bill,” said Mohamed Hussein Abdel Hamid, Project Manager, ITQAN.

Great Plains offers IRSHAD integrated tools to master the financial data and processes, taking full advantage of the information residing in its financial system. With instant access to accurate, up-to-the-minute financial information, IRSHAD is now equipped to make informed operational and strategic decisions at a moment's notice, and map the course to their business roadmap.

The solution also provides the tools IRSDHAD need to effectively manage project performance while ensuring budgets are met and billing is both accurate and timely. With Microsoft Project Accounting, cash flow is improved and costs are better managed. Full integration among modules streamlines invoicing, time and expense reporting approvals, and reporting, helping you drive strategic direction.

Fine tuning the distribution cycle was another major advantage. From forecasting to delivery, Microsoft Business Solutions–Great Plains also helpS the company accelerate sales order processes and lower costs per transaction. The integrated applications allow better management of inventory and fill orders faster, all of which help drive superior customer service.

The financial and operational departments of IRSHAD are not the only ones to benefit from the ERP system. A case in point is the HR department, which has increased flexibility now, thanks to eKAWADER, a comprehensive Human resources and payroll management information system that allows enterprises to reduce the associated costs while ensuring procedures and best practices are followed according to local UAE labor laws.

The company strives to attract the best new employees, manage all personnel-related processes, implement and track meaningful benefit programs, manage payroll, offer employee self-service capabilities, and deliver the information your managers and executives need to make better informed decisions faster. The ERP solution offers all these functionalities and also integrates with leading payroll service providers, so employee information and payroll data can be easily shared.

The benefit

Apart from the ERP solution, ITAQN also implemented iMaint to monitor the maintenance plans and processes. This comprehensive Enterprise Asset Management system allows IRSHAD to plan, control, and monitor all their maintenance activities, from each individual site to their complete regional network. It also provides accurate and timely maintenance tracking, cost-effective inventory control, and thorough and in-depth reporting and analysis.

In addition to a Windows-standard graphical user interface, iMaint has a web module that's fully web architected using active server pages. With this module, any user with Internet Explorer can have access to the full functionality of iMaint. Windows and Web interfaces share the same look and feel for ease of use. Easy to learn, administer, and maintain, iMaint was the perfect solution for ADDPOC as it allowed multiple locations to be monitored without the need for the IT department to travel around the Emirate.

ITQAN identified that multiple sights and countless vessels had to be connected with the maximum security with the greatest speeds and offering the greatest efficiencies.  To meet this need an integrated Citrix WAN, LAN, VPN, firewall, router with wireless connections was implemented by ITQAN.

While the new software solutions were ideal to improve efficiency, ITQAN also revamped the network hardware to ensure reliability and speed.  A combined solution of 3Com and D-Link was suggested.

3Com was chosen as a vendor because they specialize in straightforward solutions that lower the costs of network ownership and accelerate the return on networking investments. The 3Com’s renowned reputation for multi-vendor compatibility was an important criterion for IRSHAD’s system. 3Com solutions promote open network architecture to help the enterprise move fast, save money, and select the best solutions on the market. And because 3Com deliberately designs its products to decrease network complexity the total solution requires less of IRSHAD’s IT administration time.
D-Link was also chosen by ITQAN to provide wireless connections across IRSHAD.  By installing the latest, cutting-edge wireless network solutions ITQAN was able to ensure that the remote users had the quickest connections with the best possible reliability.

Tying it all together

ITQAN also chalked out a blueprint for IRSHAD’s total IT architecture that was standardized, virtualized, and easy to manage. With its business processes, applications, and infrastructure aligned, the company has now gained a high level of business agility that allows fast, flexible responses to change.

IRSHAD’s IT foundation is now built on three integral elements – industry-standard architectures, modular components, and consistent implementation.  The backbone to this was HP servers and personal computers.  The HP solution that ITQAN delivered is scaleable to meet a broad range of needs throughout the Abu Dhabi Petroleum Ports Operating Company (ADPPOC) now and in the future. The HP servers, running Microsoft Windows, delivers excellent price/performance and value for all IRSHAD’s applications and databases as well as Internet infrastructure  at the edge of the network. The hardware solution provides benchmarked industry-leading performance, flexibility and reliability for large-scale, mission-critical databases and applications – ideal for the company’s new database systems.