Tuesday 13 / May / 2025
Muscat: To accelerate business outcomes across its group companies, leading conglomerate The Zubair Corporation (Z-Corp) has announced a digital transformation initiative that will strategically position the organisation for the future.
To power, the digital transformation journey Z-Corp has selected leading global company Siemens Advanta as its partner.
To formalise the partnership Al Zubair M Al Zubair, Vice Chairman, The Zubair Corporation recently signed an agreement with Claudia Vergueiro, CEO, Siemens Advanta Consulting, Siemens at Z-Corp head office in the presence of senior management executive.
Commenting on the digital transformation initiative, Al Zubair M Al Zubair, Vice Chairman, The Zubair Corporation said, “Over the past few years, digital transformation has moved to the top of the agenda of virtually every large corporation. The importance of the topic is undisputed, and major efforts are underway to create strategic and organisational capabilities that enable companies to compete successfully in the digital domain. The transformational journey can be fundamental and massive, and it touches multiple stakeholders inside the corporation and beyond.”
He added, “Being a leading conglomerate, operating in a dynamic and competitive environment, Z-Corp understands the significance of digital transformation as a strategic business enabler to streamline, integrate and standardise our business processes and overall operations.”
Welcoming Siemens as partners, Al Zubair M Al Zubair said, “During its four months’ engagement, Siemens will focus on our current business management, planning, processes, reporting systems, and ERP capability of selected business units, with the intent to implement a common group-wide ERP platform and adopt unified processes and procedures, and propose a way forward and an implementation plan.”
Abdullah Al Balushi, Board Advisor, The Zubair Corporation who is heading the Zubair Digital Transformation project team said, “Digital transformation is affecting most of the businesses whether they are government or private sector. Globally we have seen that over the last five years many companies were negatively affected by not reacting to digital disruption. We have seen established company disappear and new companies come in. The changes were all based on how leadership adopted digital transformation in the way ran their businesses. Taking positive action, in 2019 Zubair conducted a consultancy study through Ernst & Young to access our digital maturity. In January 2020 Ernst & Young came with the recommendation about the level of information technology adoption in different businesses. Based on the recommendation the board of directors decided to set up a project team headed by me to look after digital transformation.”
In June 2020 The Zubair Corporation drafted a requirement for digital transformation for the group. In July it floated a tender for consultancy tender to invite top consultancy firms to draft a clear road map for digital transformation.
Abdullah Al Balushi said, “We selected Siemens to be our partner for this journey after a rigorous competitive evaluation. Siemens are not only a consultancy company but an industrial group and have adopted the journey in their businesses. We are delighted to welcome them as our strategic partner for our digital transformation.”
Speaking of the most essential aspects of digital transformation, he said, “Digital transformation though it might sound by its name that it is related to only IT but it is a mindset. The mindset is how people will utilise information and collaborate with others to achieve their goals. While IT is a platform to do that collaboration, but it is more a mindset. Digital transformation enables and empowers individuals to cooperate and collaborate from very far distances from across businesses within the same group to work towards a single goal. Part of the digital transformation goal is for us is to work towards a unified computer platform. The idea is we unify all information under a single database so anybody from anywhere across the group can have access to this data.”
Expressing confidence, he said, “We are very optimistic about our ability after the transformation that we will empower employees to utilise the information and technology in their hands to come up with better ideas.”
He further added, “In phase one we are preparing group companies internally to raise the level of digital maturity to the same level across the group. In the second phase, we will interact with our customers through, digital form. We witnessed this during the Pandemic that those companies that have better access to customers through their social media were able to survive. We are building the platform internally to prepare all employees to be able to work with our customers through digital platforms.”
Dr Oliver Elbracht, Managing Director/Office Head, Siemens Advanta ME said, “We are extremely honoured by the trust the Zubair Corporation has placed in Siemens Advanta as their partner of choice to define and co-lead their digital transformation journey. The endeavour we are now embarking on will be carried out very hands-on and in close collaboration with Zubair leaders and employees across multiple businesses and functions. Our overarching goal is to unlock the digital future of Z-Corp by reinventing its current operating model and organizational setup through digital technologies, people development and enablement, and pragmatic change management.”
Commenting on the most important elements of digital transformation, he said, “Too often, digital transformation is approached with a very strong, if not sole, focus on introducing the latest digital technologies and services. Not surprisingly, such programmes usually fail to achieve the expected objectives, leading to strong frustration. For us at Siemens Advanta, digital transformation is more than just an implementation of a new IT solution. That’s why the programme we plan for Zubair will do more: It will fundamentally change Zubair’s way of working, customer interaction, and supplier collaboration. To achieve this, we will work very closely with all businesses across TZC. We will enable and coach them on how to best adapt to adjusted business processes and how to most effectively use new technology solutions for their daily work.
Technology, such as a group-wide ERP system, will be part of the transformation. However, this will be only one of several enablers for this change and not the change itself. We will set a strong emphasis on change management and people development and training to equip the staff of Zubair with all required skills and confidence to adapt to an entirely reinvested way of work and collaboration.”
On how transformation is going to affect Z-Corp, Dr Oliver Elbracht said, “Z-Corp is looking back on an impressive history of growth and success for more than five decades. Since the early stages, the group has adopted Information Technology to support their business operations and the development of the Sultanate in a broader sense. However, with increasing growth Z-Corp has inherited a relatively large and complex legacy IT, adopted around dated processes, functions and technologies. The effort of undergoing this transformation will revamp the company’s strong foundation with state-of-the-art business processes based on global best practices, cutting-edge technology which will enable enhanced data management and analytics, and a fully trained workforce in the required new capabilities. We envision Z-Corp to emerge strongly out of this transformation – well equipped to proudly serve their customers better than ever before.”
