Al-Futtaim Group is a leading family-owned business conglomerate operating across the regional automotive, financial services, real estate, retail, and health markets, representing over 200 brands and services to customers across Asia and Africa. The company has been updating its infrastructure and migrating to the cloud in the last four years. Himanshu Shrivastava, Al-Futtaim Group’s Chief Technology Officer, believes this will enable the company to leverage data analytics across all its business lines, further fulfilling its mission of enriching people’s lives through quality services.
Established in the 1930s as a trading business, the Al-Futtaim Group is one of the most diversified and progressive family-owned businesses in the United Arab Emirates. It offers services in finance, retail, automotive, real estate, and health care across 20 countries.
Upgrading to a cloud platform
Al-Futtaim Group has strived to enrich daily life for its customers for many years. However, its legacy system of on-premises data centers and internally managed private cloud that supports its operations had become too complex and resource-intensive. The cloud was the obvious next step in Al-Futtaim Group's evolution.
The group’s Chief Technology Officer, Himanshu Shrivastava believes moving to the cloud will significantly change how Al-Futtaim Group operates. “With this migration, we’ll be able to transform Al-Futtaim Group into an intelligent data driven organization that uses data in every aspect of our businesses. We can adapt this data to personalize customer experience,” he says.
“With this migration, we’ll be able to transform Al-Futtaim Group into an intelligent data driven organization that uses data in every aspect of our business. We can adapt this data to personalize customer experience.”
Himanshu Shrivastava, Chief Technology Officer, Al-Futtaim Group
Al-Futtaim Group turned to long-term partner Microsoft to resolve the problem and found the agility, cost-effectiveness, and service continuity the company needed. Today, the company runs its x86 workloads and is migrating and transforming its SAP landscape to RISE with Azure, in partnership with SAP. “This enables Al-Futtaim Group to leverage SAP’s expertise in regional automotive, financial services, real estate, retail, and health markets, and Microsoft Azure’s comprehensive cloud infrastructure to achieve operational excellence,” says Zakaria Haltout, Managing Director for SAP UAE.
Since the migration, the group has reduced its overall power consumption by a third across its data centers. “We now have a robust technology platform on Azure supporting our business. With it, there’s better stability, security, and flexibility to expand and manage our diverse technology landscape,” explains Shrivastava.
Empowering employees to do more
Working with Microsoft’s Unified Support, Jarrod Brown, Group Head of Enterprise Platform Services at Al-Futtaim Group, set up a Target Operating Model and governance system to fit the company’s business needs. This involved upskilling the IT team to enable them to take on more complex tasks and roles. “We saw long-term benefits from the move. Our strategy was to reinvest into the upskilling and reskilling of our people. This means that we’re actually able to do a great deal more with the same resources that we had prior to the migration,” Brown shares.
“Our strategy was to reinvest into the upskilling and reskilling of our people. We’re now able to do a great deal more with the same resources we had prior to the migration.”
Jarrod Brown, Group Head of Enterprise Platform Services, Al-Futtaim Group
Offering better services to customers
One of the biggest successes for Al-Futtaim Group was ensuring uninterrupted service to customers during the migration. “We had minimal disruptions while migrating over 530 servers to Azure because we had support from Microsoft Engineers who guided us through the process and helped my team get up to speed efficiently,” says Shrivastava.
The support from Microsoft also helped Al-Futtaim Group’s IT team navigate the security risks of moving to a much larger cloud solution. This enabled the company to offer its customers more security and reliability. All departments at Al-Futtaim Group now have improved security monitoring and automated patching of published vulnerabilities. “We now have better reporting and better control compared to what we did before,” explains Brown.
Leveraging data to enrich customer experience
Shrivastava and his team are planning to use the data they now collect via the cloud to boost customer experiences. “We’re collating multiple customer touchpoints to build a single customer view. For instance, a customer may have purchased a vehicle from us and later visits another store for a flatpack wardrobe. We can then link those two interactions and any other experiences they’ve had with us to offer a unique and personal experience to this customer,” he explains.
The next step in Al-Futtaim Group’s transformation journey is ensuring continued growth for the company by maximizing cloud services. Brown is confident this will help set the company apart. “I want to leverage services like AI and IoT and look into new technologies that will amplify what we can do with the cloud even further,” he says. “This will enable us to build even more personalized customer experiences across our brands. It’s what will help us get ahead and stay ahead.”
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