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In addition to getting many more people in the company using NetSuite on a daily basis to improve efficiency , Al Zahrawi is looking next at adding more CRM capabilities , including accessing customer information on mobile phone apps .

Abdulrahman Ramadan , Vice President – Commercial , Zahrawi Group , tells Intelligent SME . tech more about the implementation .

When did you implement NetSuite and why did you decide to work with this vendor ?

Our NetSuite journey began in the United Arab Emirates in 2012 , and over time has grown to help Zahrawi Group manage operations and subsidiaries across other Gulf Co-operation Council ( GCC ) countries including KSA , Oman , Bahrain and Qatar .

Our healthcare business was expanding rapidly , and we needed a cloud ERP partner with a solution that we could use to manage our accelerating growth . NetSuite ticked many boxes for us . It is robust , agile and multi-disciplinary , and we use it to manage everything from finance to logistics and customer service , to sales and forecasting , while also navigating multiple currency and compliance regulations and performing consolidation across the group .

Being cloud-based , NetSuite allows us to seamlessly collaborate with our teams in other countries , while also helping avoid the excess costs and resources needed with legacy ERP systems .

What challenges were you looking to address ahead of selecting this solution ?

Our previous ERP solutions only dealt with very basic financial and inventory requirements , and as we grew our sales and operations , we were starting to feel the pain of our back office limitations . Processes were very manual and in different countries we used separate ERP technologies that were disconnected , making it a challenge when we wanted to standardise and consolidate our data to help with decision making .

We needed to empower our employees with data at their fingertips – whether in the warehouse , with a customer or on the road – and NetSuite has allowed us to achieve that . We used to spend days going between different departments to generate simple reports but now with NetSuite , it is ready and accurate at all times .

How are you using the technology currently – what phase of the project are you at ?

NetSuite flows through our organisation and has for several years , but we are on a continuous cycle of improving and refining as our needs evolve . We have recently integrated our e-commerce platform with NetSuite to recognise online sales data in the system and are working to do the same with our CRM data . NetSuite ’ s customisation capabilities make that possible . It is an adaptable system .

One of the powers of NetSuite is the automatic updates . In recent years , we ’ ve strongly benefitted from NetSuite ’ s advanced inventory capabilities to help us manage our supply chain and logistics . When NetSuite was acquired by Oracle in 2016 , we also benefitted from enhanced resources focused on helping businesses in the Middle East . It is a case of driving even more efficiency on a daily basis .

Tell us about the role of Crowe and how it ensured smooth implementation ?

Crowe has been an important part of our NetSuite journey , helping provide local support . Crowe was effectively part of our steering committee and partnered with us to deliver training and resources to get our different departments benefitting from the system quickly , as well as helping us tackle some complexities with our data migration and customisable reports .

Previous page : Abdulrahman Ramadan , Vice President – Commercial , Zahrawi Group

BEING CLOUD- BASED , NETSUITE ALLOWS US TO SEAMLESSLY COLLABORATE WITH OUR TEAMS IN OTHER COUNTRIES , WHILE ALSO HELPING AVOID THE EXCESS COSTS AND RESOURCES NEEDED WITH LEGACY ERP SYSTEMS .