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December 15, 2022

Kuwait energy company KIPIC empowers employees to become citizen developers with Microsoft Power Platform

Leading oil and gas company Kuwait Integrated Petroleum Industries (KIPIC) decided to decentralize its IT capabilities across its 4,000-employee network. It empowered employees with Microsoft Power Platform to develop dashboards and use automation and apps to streamline company operations and increase productivity. Since then, deployment employees have created over 50 projects, including apps, dashboards, and automation, and saved approximately 2,000 hours by leveraging the easy-to-use, low-code solution.

Kuwait Integrated Petroleum Industries Company (KIPIC)

Kuwait Integrated Petroleum Industries (KIPIC) is one of the largest complexes for refinishing, manufacturing, and importing petrochemicals and natural gas in the country. Its operations involve 4,000 employees and span six locations.

In early 2021, KIPIC saw an opportunity to enhance productivity by leveraging automation. Many time-consuming manual processes could be easily digitized to save the company time and money.  The company decided to decentralize its IT capabilities. “We didn’t want to overburden our highly skilled IT personnel and take them away from complex jobs to do simple automation. Instead, we expanded our IT capacity to all our employees,” explains Ahmad A. Almulaifi, Information Technology Manager at KIPIC.  

The company added Power BI, Power Apps, and Power Automate to its existing Microsoft infrastructure. “Power Platform requires little coding knowledge to develop intelligent dashboards. This makes it easily accessible to our employees. What happened is that all our employees worked to accelerate KIPIC’s digital transformation. Our employees have created about 50 projects so far with Power Platform,” says Waleed Khaled Al-Bader, CEO of KIPIC. 

“Our employees have created about 50 projects so far with Power Platform.”

Waleed Khaled Al Bader, CEO, KIPIC

Saving time via automation

Today, most processes that took multiple days are completed in a few hours via automation—whether it’s an automated system to authorize vehicles entering the refinery, or an app to monitor the company’s annual walkathon. “If one of our staff has an idea on how to digitally enhance a process, they don’t waste time waiting for someone from IT.  Since these citizen developers are experts in their area, they can create the most efficient solution. This means agility for the company,” says Almulaifi.

Some of the most successful dashboards to date deal with sorting and analyzing information. Coronavirus reporting used to require a dedicated employee to sort through, collate and generate reports. Today, the process is fully automated, reducing the time spent on this task from one day to just 30 minutes. Similarly, KIPIC’s training department no longer spends a week corresponding with multiple groups and logging data to keep track of personal development plans. Instead, it scans and generates the necessary reports in under three hours. “We’ve saved approximately 2,000 hours across the group since introducing Power Platform,” says Khaled.  

Making data-driven decisions

KIPIC is leveraging Power BI to make strategic decisions as well via a visual dashboard that’s updated weekly with key information. “This dashboard displays what’s happening at KIPIC and in the market from crude input to production profile to refining prices. We as executives no longer waste time sifting through countless excel sheets,” explains Abdullah Fahad Al-Ajmi, Deputy CEO of Petrochemicals and LNGI at KIPIC.  

The large volume of data collected also means the company can use it for predicting trends. One such dashboard tracks employees’ health, including the type and frequency of sickness. Based on its forecast, KIPIC now knows in advance when to prepare for flu outbreaks.

According to Al-Ajmi, KIPIC is ready to empower its citizen developers with more tools and products. “We want to push everything a little bit more. This means exploring artificial intelligence from a non-IT personnel point of view and merging it with our existing Power Platform and Azure Analytics solutions to maximize productivity. That’s our strategy for the future.”  

“We've saved approximately 2,000 hours across the group since introducing Power Platform.”

Waleed Khaled Al Bader, CEO, KIPIC

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