Ali Bin Ali (ABA) Holding’s FORWARD application has already gone live in 12 different divisions and is stabilizing at an impressive pace. Now, Beverages – one of the most important business divisions of the Group – is gearing up for the rollout early next year, and the team is taking all possible steps to make it foolproof.
As the first step towards the implementation of the solution in ABA Beverages, the FORWARD team and consultation partner Intrasoft organized a one-day workshop on November 11, 2018. This will be followed by around three weeks of User Acceptance Testing (UAT) on the ABA Beverages premises.
The workshop was led by the senior management of ABA Beverages along with support from the ABA PMO team and Intrasoft. The main purpose of this workshop was to explain the methodology and the approach to UAT itself.
The occasion was also used for communicating some directives to the Beverages staff, from Executive Project Sponsor Mr. Mohamad A. Ebrik, General Manager Mr. Marc Karam and the PMO in general. The UAT will be an overall orientation explaining the whole ERP process before they Go Live in February 2019.
Welcoming everyone to the FORWARD journey, Mr. Ebrik said: “You should be proud of being part of the team/ project that will, for the very first time in Ali Bin Ali Holding, transform the manufacturing process.”
Mr. Marc, who has been very enthusiastic about the project, said: “Embracing change is one of the critical components of success and the foundation of progress. The change and progress project FORWARD is bringing will fuel the success of ABA Beverages for years to come. It will also transform you as professionals. FORWARD will provide you with critical experience and contribute to your personal development. Don’t miss that opportunity to reinvent yourselves.”
During this testing phase, the ABA Beverages employees will be assigned different functions of the solution process. They will be covering the functions that are more vital to their business and also have not been implemented earlier in the previous ABA divisions that have gone live.
The ERP solution at ABA Beverages is a little different from the one used in other divisions of ABA. In Beverages, FORWARD will be focused on four processes – Supply Chain Planning, Manufacturing & Maintenance, Distribution and Finance.
In the first process of Supply Chain Planning for the division, proper planning will be carried out for providing the resources that are needed to produce the beverages products. For example, determining the number of bottles needed according to the demand in the market during a specific time-frame.
The second process of Manufacturing and Maintenance involves the bottling of the beverages products as well as the maintenance of the overall fleet machinery.
The Distribution process will help in planning and handling the delivery cycle of manufactured products. During the whole production phase, Finance comes into the picture with transactions to and fro during most of the other processes.
Implementation of these four processes will make their lives easier as it is automating all major daily operations. Around 150 test cases will be tested by 35 users who are expected to generate 500-1,000 transactions across these four processes. An equivalent of 2,600+ man hours are expected to put in during this three weeks of UAT.
