ALKHOBAR, 10 February — Saudi Aramco has announced the launch of its upgraded website. It is calling the website its “new online face to the world.” The company said that over the next six months, Saudi Aramco’s Public Relations Department will be gathering user feedback on the new site and adding more improvements.
Abdullatif A. Al-Othman, executive director, Saudi Aramco Affairs said, “The new website, with its ultramodern look and feel is designed to reflect a global perspective and highlight the role of energy in the advancement of mankind.”
According to Al-Othman the site was upgraded to position Saudi Aramco as a pacesetter in the online oil and gas community and to lay the groundwork for e-commerce.
The site contains a new feature called “My Saudi Aramco” which enables users to register their particulars and then personalize their online experience. Registered users can change the look of their pages and receive instant alerts about content of special interest to them.
The site offers improved navigation with mouse-over effects and dropdown menus. It also contains a number of animated features including the interactive, “Energy to the World,” which explains through the use of simple language and graphics where petroleum comes from, how it is extracted from the earth, processed and then delivered to the marketplace.
The upgraded saudiaramco.com homepage is a gateway to major content sections of the site including: Our Business, News and Media, Life with Us, At a Glance and e-Business. The website also connects certain registered users with the company’s Extranet and other Saudi Aramco sites, such as Employment, Sales and Marketing, Contracting and Purchasing.
For the many readers of Saudi Aramco’s publications the site is a boon. Through the site the company has made available PDF versions of its publications, past and present. There is also an extensive and constantly expanding Media Library of downloadable photos and videos. Visitors can also download screensavers showing some of the paintings and drawings from Saudi Aramco’s yearly Children’s Art Contest. Saudi Aramco plans to develop an Arabic version of the website later this year and they may add other languages as circumstances warrant.
So much for the PR; now it’s time for a little reality. The upgraded site is acceptable from a technical standpoint but Saudi Aramco’s old site opened with vibrant colors and the new opening is terribly drab. It’s as if the site is trying to be so non-offensive that it’s almost lifeless. The upgraded homepage is a sad production. There is hardly any indication on the homepage that this is a company based in Saudi Arabia. Yes, it’s a fact that the world’s premier oil company is Saudi, and it appears from their homepage that Saudi Aramco is ashamed of that. On the homepage there is a faded, unpleasant grouping of small photographs. One of the illustrations is a generic picture of a child, a little boy perhaps. In the photo, his head is twisted at an odd angle and his limbs are cut off. The child’s image has been so deformed that he appears to be suffering from some sort of disability. Exactly what message is this spastic child trying to convey in regards to his relationship with a petroleum company? I can think of one, but it’s not positive at all so let’s forget it. Can anyone please tell me what would have been wrong with using a photo of a beautifully smiling child in traditional Saudi dress if a child’s image was desired?
I also noticed that an American company, BroadVision of Redwood City, California, provided the software, structure and consulting services for the upgraded website. FutureBrand, Saudi Aramco’s corporate identity consultant, developed the homepage design and the site’s “look and feel.” Why couldn’t a Saudi company have designed the website? Website design is not extraordinarily complicated — like an SAP implementation for example. We have several qualified web design companies here in the Kingdom and plenty in the Arab world. Perhaps a Saudi or Arab consultant could have helped to create a truly unique site that clearly conveyed the idea of a Saudi company as a proud, global leader.
Another point is that the company has persisted in using the address, saudiaramco.com. Why didn’t they use saudiaramco.com.sa? Shouldn’t the Kingdom’s largest company be pleased to use the national suffix — sa? There isn’t even a redirect from saudiaramco.com.sa. Entering that URL brings up the message that the site doesn’t exist.
Saudi Aramco is extremely involved in bringing information technology into all of its operations and one portion of the upgraded website discusses these efforts. It reads in part:
“The dependence of company business on IT will become even more pronounced over the next decade. Here are some of the trends:
* The corporate Self-Development program, initiated in 2001, relies heavily on the Intranet and other distance learning methods.
* The corporate Integrated Learning System is heavily dependent on IT solutions such as computer-based training, Internet- and Intranet-based distance learning, interactive multimedia, and desktop and room-based video conferencing.
* Process automation enhancements in refineries and other plants include many IT solutions such as SAP and multi-variable control.
* The Hawiyah and Haradh gas plants will rely on IT for exchange of operational information.
* In its international activities, Saudi Aramco is deploying IT solutions that gather, organize, share and deliver information, and automate many routine business processes to achieve productivity improvements.
* Upstream, the quest for new hydrocarbon resources, as well as their production and reservoir maintenance, require enhanced computer simulation modeling, visualization centers and improved plant operations through IT solutions.
* Electronic commerce is being developed to streamline purchasing operations and reduce costs.
* All of the company’s business lines consider the Internet and Intranet as vital business information and knowledge-sharing tools for enhancing productivity and efficiency.
“To enable this business environment, Saudi Aramco’s IT strategy seeks to create synergy between technology and human talent to excel and innovate in all company endeavors. Value-added IT solutions will be provided, with an infrastructure that is robust, reliable and scalable. This infrastructure will allow the creativity of users to provide innovative business solutions. Knowledge and information will be brought to employees’ work locations anywhere, anytime, to increase their contributions to the company.
“Saudi Aramco will continue to invest in developing and enhancing the IT knowledge of its workforce, so that employees become more effective agents of technological change, more skilled at identifying IT solutions and rapidly deploying them.”
On a recent visit to the company’s Dhahran headquarters I noticed that Saudi Aramco is trying to reach out in every way and every place to educate its employees on the company’s new IT initiatives. Across from the Saudi Aramco post office was a display of 11 brochures on the company’s SAP implementation.
For those of you who may be unfamiliar with SAP, I’ll let the Saudi Aramco brochure called, “Make SAP Work for You,” provide a little guidance.
The brochure explains that SAP is a German acronym that translates into English as Systems, Applications, and Products in Data Processing. The brochure goes on to say that SAP is an Enterprise Resource Planning software that allows a company to automate and integrate the majority of its business processes. The brochure continues in very simple language explaining why the company needs SAP and assuring the reader that once SAP is fully implemented, Saudi Aramco will have one integrated business system, rather than numerous smaller systems. The SAP brochure gives out an overall message that SAP is good for both the company and the employees, and ends on a positive note offering training information and SAP knowledge resources.
Another brochure in the SAP series discussed SAP training in more detail but still the language used was so simple and totally lacking in jargon that any employee would feel confident in working with the new system. Other brochures told about how SAP would make a difference in Saudi Aramco’s operations and departments. There was a very interesting brochure describing the Business Information Warehouse, which the company is creating by collecting and centralizing all the data required for reporting and analysis. In the future, the collected corporate SAP data, sometimes combined with data from other sources, will be used to help form the basis of business decision-making and analytical queries.
Only time will tell if SAP lives up to the hopes invested in it. However, the SAP brochures are excellent tools to encourage Saudi Aramco employees to embrace the new ERP system through straightforward education at the community level. It’s obvious that the brochures were developed to meet specific needs and they serve the objective well. They inspire confidence, pride and a sense of purpose in the reader. Through the use of high impact graphics, audio, and other multimedia effects the upgraded Saudi Aramco website could have had the same impact. Instead, it merely informs.
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