Becoming Adaptable

Andreas Simon, Regional Director, MEA at Jedox, believes that his company’s ability to enable its customers to be ‘adaptable’ when faced with evolving and complex business issues is a key market differentiator for the EPM provider.

Jedox has firmly established itself as a global leader when it comes to enterprise performance management (EPM) solutions. This viewpoint was reinforced following the disclosure by Shelf Drilling that they had reduced the time spent on operational data by 98% following the implementation of a Jedox EPM solution. Can you tell our readers more about this solution and the impact it has had on the operational day-to-day running of Shelf Drilling? 

Shelf Drilling is a leading drilling company headquartered in Dubai, with operations around the world, including India, South East Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Back in 2019, they realised that they needed a new solution to manage the maintenance scheduling of their 30 rigs, which were connected by satellite.

At that time, they were using a large number of disconnected Excel spreadsheets to manage their maintenance schedules.

Robust, efficient maintenance is of critical importance on a rig in terms of financials, time and safety. When maintenance fails or the rigs are offline for maintenance and they’re not drilling, they’re not making any money.

So, the better these systems are managed, the better the company’s operational efficiency. Shelf Drilling is also on a major sustainability drive, which requires them to track the engine hours and fuel consumption across the fleet of rigs. This data was also being captured in various Excel spreadsheets, which took an extensive amount of time.

The company needed more real-time data and faster, better insights to improve the maintenance process and provide large cost, time and operational savings, and to assist the achievement of sustainability goals.

Jedox was able to offer them what we believe is the most adaptable platform on the market. They now have clear visibility of and insights into their data in real time, across all rigs, majorly boosting their operational planning capabilities, and creating huge value for the company in terms of cost and time savings.

All rigs are able to collaborate and contribute to the maintenance schedule, and there is a single source of truth.

There are a lot of companies who claim they can help businesses streamline and simplify their data management processes, but Jedox has proven time-after-time that it can really deliver this with its innovative platform. What is it about Jedox’s product portfolio and offering that really differentiates you from your market competitors? 

We believe that a big part of our difference is the adaptability and integrability of our solutions. People spend vast amounts of time on data collection, cleansing, integration and reconciling.

Jedox systems allow them to use that time in an area that creates more value for their company – data insights and analytics.

Jedox can integrate into each and every IT infrastructure and assist in a company’s digital transformation journey by creating a model for each part of the company – for example, operations, planning, sales, procurement, HR, IT, marketing and production.

Not only can it integrate into the financial planning and analysis (FP&A) processes, but this also extends across extended planning and analytics (XP&A), enabling planning and forecasting across the whole value chain.

It is the most adaptable planning and performance management platform serving the integrated business planning needs of organisations across the world.

We have seen a widespread acceleration of digital transformation across the region, but especially since the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. However, the term digital transformation (DX) is broad. In your expert opinion, what are they key components needed to really execute your DX goals – and what do companies need to avoid when embarking on their DX journey? 

Firstly, companies should have an open mind. There is an IT uplift required at the start of a digital transformation process.

You should make use of new tools and platforms like the cloud, investing in tools and solutions like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.

And educate your staff to take them with you. I always say it’s not a revolution – it’s an evolution, a journey. But you need modern, adaptable tools as old tools are no longer sufficient to meet today’s business demands for speed, accuracy and efficiency.

You shouldn’t follow the needs of a tool – it should follow the needs of your organisation and adapt to the platforms and systems you’re already using.

We know that we live in the ‘experience economy’ – and that if we as consumers have a bad interaction with an application, or a service then the evidence suggests we won’t use it again. Brand loyalty is increasingly becoming a thing of the past; however, Jedox has consistently been named as a ‘leader’ when it comes to customer experience. How are you able to deliver such a high-level of customer experience when demands of consumers are constantly evolving? 

Again, it goes back to thinking of digital transformation as a journey. We normally start by looking into existing landscapes and processes and using tools companies are used to using. We also believe, to paraphrase Gartner, that you can’t just get rid of Excel.

Many companies use it for operational planning, forecasting etc, and it would be near impossible to eliminate it completely. We give companies the capability of working with tools that people are used to using, but we make them more efficient.

We also give people the chance to work with the same tools but to integrate them into a platform, which will automatically collect and reconcile data, creating significantly more value for the company.

Once people see the benefits of Jedox, we find they come to us with new ideas of using IT and automating systems, for example, and we support them in that as the platform is incredibly adaptable. We love working on new ideas together and quickly implementing them. This ultimately makes people more efficient, more successful and happier.

What are your primary goals and objectives for the remainder of the year – and looking ahead to 2023? 

Our team is growing fast, and we now have a lot of people available to support our customers, especially with value creation. We’re now starting to expand outside the UAE into the rest of the Middle East.

Over the next few months and into 2023, our goal is to continue our success in the UAE, but also to become a major player in places such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain.