Among his many achievements, Al Faifi led the opening of SAP’s first public cloud data centres in the kingdom as part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, in a bid to accelerate digital transformation across various government entities.

Moreover, under his leadership, SAP’s pool of talent not only expanded significantly but also gained the company the title of ‘Top Employer’ for three years in a row as it was certified by the Top Employer Institute for its excellence in 24 countries and four regions. SAP, which is headquartered in Walldorf, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, boasts offices in 180 countries.

Under Al Faifi, SAP has trained over 400,000 students through its Young Professionals Programme, with graduates also going on to work for different companies, according to the SVP. In addition, Al Faifi is focussed on gender equality, maintaining a 50/50 male-female team, while also employing 40 percent Saudis in a bid to support the Saudisation scheme and 37 percent of staff under the age 30 to back youth employment. SAP KSA works with 28 university partners and two academies that specialise in talent development, with Al Faifi telling The Business Year that the company plans on developing more training centres in the future, particularly for shorter technology courses.

The SVP was formerly the chief operating officer of telecoms giant Zain KSA, having supervised the functioning of networks, IT, sales, marketing and customer care, among other operations. Prior to his role as COO, Al Faifi acted as Zain KSA’s chief technology officer, having spent over six years with Swedish telco Ericsson. Al Faifi has also worked as the mobile licensing manager for Saudi Arabia’s Communication and IT Commission, though he had started his career at the Saudi Ministry of Defence and Aviation (MODA), where he spent nearly six years.

Al Faifi holds an MSc in Telecommunications Engineering from KAAU University at Jeddah, a Mobile Technology Diploma from Ericsson, and BSc in Electronics Engineering from King Saud University.