Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny visited Saudi Arabia recently to boost bilateral trade relations in areas, including health care, software, ICT and agricultural industry.

At the Irish ambassador's residence at the Diplomatic Quarter, the premier met Abdullah M. Bin Jebreen, president of Abana Enterprises Group Co. (ABANA), and discussed the partnership of ABANA with a world-class Irish company Escher to modernize Saudi Post.

ABANA, an industry leader with over 30 years of experience in providing technology and service solutions to leading enterprises, has joined forces with Escher, a world-leading provider of outsourced point-of-sale software to the postal industry, in a project to modernize Saudi Arabia's Post Office (Saudi Post).

As part of the project, ABANA and Escher have teamed up to provide point-of-service postal industry software, to ensure the optimum value to Saudi Post, and will also provide 800 operational workstations to Saudi Post with full service and maintenance.

Bin Jebreen said: "ABANA and Escher are developing a roadmap for future services, including the implementation of special solutions, which will help strengthen Saudi Post's business operating model and support its aim to provide more value-added services to its customers. This will help support Saudi Post's ambitious plans to introduce financial, loyalty and other services across its national network.".

He added: "We are grateful to Saudi Post for giving us their trust and confidence on this significant project."

The solution offered to Saudi Post is currently being used by postal operators across the globe and underpins a demanding number and variety of transactions. Part of the scope of the project is to integrate Escher's software with Saudi Post backend solutions. ABANA will also provide installation and maintenance services for POS terminals, and scales in more than 600 branches and agencies of Saudi Post Kingdomwide.