Inroads: Work, Asset, and Infrastructure Management in the Middle East

In April, 2011, Hakim Abid, Cartegraph's Director of International Business Development, accompanied Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison on a business development mission to the U.S.–Saudi Arabian Business Council (USSABC) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The United States is Saudi Arabia’s largest trading partner. Unprecedented public sector spending, large-scale industrial expansion, and growing consumer demand make Saudi Arabia one of the most import-intensive markets in the Middle East. Total bilateral trade with the U.S. exceeded $67 billion in 2008, up from $46 billion in 2007. As America’s 14th largest export market and the biggest market in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia provides excellent growth opportunities for American companies.

In today’s world, buildings, public infrastructure, and industrial facilities are increasingly complex, requiring the right management systems, business processes, and strategies for their smooth operation.

Many of the Middle East’s largest facilities are just as sophisticated — if not more so — as their counterparts in longer established markets and they’re always looking for new ways to improve their operations. Enterprises in the Middle East region have increasingly sophisticated demands for integrating and analyzing asset-related information. There are now many customers across the Middle East and North Africa that will rely on Asset and Maintenance management solutions to track, manage, and maintain their assets and improve business efficiencies including those in the oil and gas sector, utilities, manufacturing and aviation.

Large facilities and infrastructure projects have to manage a wide range of critical assets in order to continue operations. Many of these assets can prove to be critical to the efficient facility management and if not properly inventoried, maintained, and replaced, they can cause significant disruption to daily operations.

Cartegraph software can reduce the number of systems required to manage such assets, freeing up resources and, just as importantly, provide management with a single view of asset management to support smart decision making.

Smarter decisions can mean cost savings, new efficiencies, better workforce management, and better outcomes for our environment. In today's fast moving business world, many large organizations need to continually review and refine their asset life cycle and maintenance management.

Cartegraph solutions continue to evolve in order to meet customers growing business demands while keeping up with smart technologies.