Petroleum Development Oman Boosts Employee Productivity ...



Overview

Country or Region: Sultanate of Oman

Industry: Energy—Oil & gas

Customer Profile

Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) is the major exploration and production company in the Sultanate of Oman. It supplies about 90 per cent of the country’s crude oil and nearly all of its natural gas.

Business Situation

PDO needed to modernise its controls over information and content to improve the productivity of its information workers, create efficiencies, and better protect its intellectual property.

Solution

Working with Microsoft® Services and Microsoft Gold Certified Partner KalSoft, PDO agreed to participate in the 2007 Microsoft Office system Rapid Deployment Programme.

Benefits

■ Increased employee productivity.

■ Better interaction between people and processes.

■ Enterprise-wide rollout planned for 2008.

■ Better-informed decision making. | | |“We learned a lot by working closely with KalSoft and Microsoft. They enabled us to take early advantage of the functionality and business benefits of the 2007 release.”

Saif Al-Naaman, Head of IT Support, Petroleum Development Oman

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| | | |Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) wanted to improve information flow in order to increase the |

| | | |productivity of its information workers and better manage its intellectual property. In pursuit of |

| | | |these goals, the oil exploration and production company decided to take part in the EMEA Rapid |

| | | |Deployment Programme for the 2007 Microsoft® Office system. Working with Microsoft Services and |

| | | |Microsoft Gold Certified Partner KalSoft, PDO rolled out the new system in just 10 months. The |

| | | |project, which involved 80 to 100 users in the PDO IT department, provided an introduction to the |

| | | |2007 Microsoft Office system, which the company plans to roll out in 2008. |

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Situation

Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) is the major exploration and production company in the Sultanate of Oman. It employs more than 4,500 people and accounts for about 90 per cent of the Gulf state’s crude oil production and nearly all of its natural gas supply.

The company’s IT department deals with application development, support-desk enquiries, network infrastructure, and other IT services at PDO. To carry out its operations the department needs to access information from various locations and in different forms.

The IT department, which has 260 employees, currently uses Microsoft® Office XP. Saif Al-Naaman, Head of IM&T Customer Support at PDO, says: “The absence of any central platform for access and control of business information had a negative affect on individual and team productivity.”

In addition, the geographical distribution of individuals and resources made it difficult to collaborate across different sites, and there was also a need to protect the intellectual property of the IT department—including files, records, and other critical information—through defined central policies. PDO is keen to address these challenges to increase overall efficiency and ensure success across the organisation. The company was therefore eager to participate in the 2007 Microsoft Office Beta testing programme.

Solution

Akhter Zaib, Technology Solution Manager at KalSoft, says: “Our objective was to help minimise duplicate and redundant information by implementing the 2007 Microsoft Office system, including Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007, through the EMEA Rapid Deployment Programme (RDP). End users log on to a portal from which they can access information, search for documents, and collaborate with colleagues, and everything is just a mouse click away.”

Al-Naaman says: “We chose Microsoft as our enterprise-wide principal business product. So whenever a new product comes along, we need to understand how it aligns with our business objectives and then use these insights to help improve productivity and stay ahead of the competition.”

Microsoft Services helped KalSoft with a proof of concept using just three machines. Mutaz Abu Ghazaleh at Microsoft Services Gulf says: “We provided second-tier support to allow the partner to focus on the customer-facing aspect of its role. We have worked with KalSoft and PDO since the programme was deployed using pre-release and beta products. As part of our commitment to both parties, we have provided the necessary support and information at such early stages of the product release life cycle to ensure the success of this programme. In addition, we helped with the coordination of the deployment and the resolution of any technical issues that arose.”

The 2007 Microsoft Office system was implemented in five phases over just 10 months from project set up to deployment. PDO is planning more training for its employees who are first to use the new infrastructure as they are faced with several unfamiliar tools.

Al-Namman says: “We learned a lot by working closely with KalSoft and Microsoft. They enabled us to take early advantage of the functionality and business benefits of the 2007 release.”

Benefits

With more controlled and regulated information, PDO will improve employee productivity and better protect its intellectual property. The more efficient use of workflow will also streamline business processes.

Better Interaction Between People, Content, and Processes

The outcome of the 2007 Microsoft Office RDP will help the IT department enhance its organisational effectiveness and optimise the way its people, content, and processes interact. There are several features that the PDO pilot community are using for the first time—such as content control, e-mail delegation and escalation, privacy of personal or sensitive information, access to interactive spreadsheets, and conversion of documents into Web pages.

Al-Naaman says: “As the training develops, users will become aware of how much more they can do with the new functionality to improve efficiency. Choosing to participate in the 2007 Microsoft Office system RDP was a right strategic move for us.”

Eventual Company-wide Rollout Will Benefit All Employees Across PDO

The success of the rollout has confirmed the company’s plan to deploy the 2007 Microsoft Office system. Abu Ghazaleh says: “PDO was very happy with the RDP and will continue to work with KalSoft and Microsoft Services for future projects, including deployment of the new generation desktop operating system Windows Vista.”

PDO was one of four companies in the Gulf to take part in the 2007 Microsoft Office system RDP in 2006. The other companies included two educational organisations and a private-sector logistics company. Abu Ghazaleh says: “After the success of the PDO implementation, KalSoft has become a key Microsoft partner for deployments of the 2007 Microsoft Office system in the Gulf states.”

Microsoft Office System

The Microsoft Office system is the business world’s chosen environment for information work, providing the programs, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact.

For more information about the Microsoft Office system, go to:

office

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| |Software and Services

■ Microsoft Server Product Portfolio

− Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 |

■ Microsoft Office System

− Microsoft Office InfoPath 2007

− Microsoft Office Visio 2007

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“Our objective was to help minimise duplicate and redundant information by implementing the 2007 Microsoft Office system, including Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007, through the EMEA Rapid Deployment Programme (RDP).”

Saif Al-Naaman, Head of IT Support, Petroleum Development Oman

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This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published November 2006 | | |

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:



For more information about KalSoft products and services, visit the Web site at:



For more information about Petroleum Development Oman products and services, visit the Web site at:

pdo.co.om

“As the training develops, users will become aware of how much more they can do with the new functionality to improve efficiency. Moving to the 2007 Microsoft Office system was the right strategic move for us.”

Saif Al-Naaman, Head of IT Support, Petroleum Development Oman

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credit info

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“We chose Microsoft as our enterprise-wide principal business product. So whenever a new product comes along, we need to understand how it aligns with our business objectives and then use these insights to help improve productivity and stay ahead of the competition.”

Saif Al-Naaman, Head of IT Support, Petroleum Development Oman

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