IFS Champions are customers that have been nominated by their peers as exemplary individuals making great things happen with their IFS software. I recently spoke with Vardans Saribekjans, who is the Business IT Application Manager at international drilling contractor, Borr Drilling and now, an IFS Champion.
Nice to meet you Vardans, what is your story?
My name is Vardans Saribekjans and I’m a Business IT Application Manager at Borr Drilling. I’m operationally located in Aberdeen, UK but my home office is in Norway. Borr Drilling is a company providing offshore drilling services to the energy industry, we are shallow water focused business with a fleet of 20+ modern jack-up rigs.
I first joined Borr Drilling in 2018 when the company was going through its IFS ERP implementation, just a few months shy of going live, which served as a good introduction to the company and its IT landscape. Our ERP project went very smoothly, and I worked with a great team. Just by looking at the six-month implementation timeframe we had, from the signature to go live, there was a lot of effort that went into the project and everybody put 110% on the table.
What does a typical day look like for you working at Borr Drilling?
That’s the beauty and the curse of my role – I don’t have a typical day at work! My day revolves around IT and efficiency and effectiveness. I always start my day thinking what can be improved now, and where can I contribute? I have my responsibilities by all means; I’m responsible for the complete IT portfolio, including IFS & IFS AMS.
A good working day for me is when I can dedicate a certain amount of time to try and unravel the mysterious ‘black boxes’; projects or tasks that bother me as I cannot get my head around them, so I take time to understand them.
What does great service mean to you?
From implementing IFS at Borr Drilling, I learned that there are three basic components that come together. There needs to be people involved, even though there are digital services and chatbots etc, there is still a person behind these services. Then you have a purpose, which always needs to be present, and passion. These are my three P’s, and if they are not present for services that I receive then I wouldn’t even consider them as good experiences. Sometimes a service can have great people working for the same purpose, but they lack passion, and it is hard to engage with a brand that doesn’t go the extra mile. Then you see services with good, passionate people but there is no purpose to the service they are offering, it’s a balancing act. Great service to me means when I can feel those three P’s working in harmony. You don’t see this often, and when I think about the service we receive from IFS and how you are developing your product, it is obvious to me that you want the users of your software to always achieve more from it, for us to be able to use our time more efficiently with it, and I think this is where great service bottles down to.
Can you define what the Moment of Service at Borr Drilling is?
As I understand the Moment of Service concept it is when for example in our business, on the rake someone may have a broken component, and it needs replacing, so you register the work order, you register the fault report, and it goes through all kinds of cycles in the system until one day you see a box arriving just as you requested, on time.
It is the passion, people, and purpose that Borr Drilling has which enables us to beat expectations in the drilling industry, without compromising the safety of an operation. This is our Moment of Service, working on the same focus with the same amount of passion, delivering something that is above expectations. It’s at this point of time, you feel that you’ve achieved more that you have. You’ve had your Moment of Service.
What do you like to do outside of work?
As IT is a hobby of mine as well as my job, sometimes I spend time outside of work getting enjoyment from looking at the ‘black boxes’ that I described before, having recently taken about six hours looking at one to do with a BI project I am working on. The IT landscape changes rapidly and it’s almost humanely impossible to be aware of all the changes that are happening in the industry which grates on me, so if I have spare time, I will use it for getting rid of these annoyances, these black boxes, just for my own personal satisfaction.
I also take care of my health – I always find it strange when people spend more money on their car than they do on their health! I try to get my family to think about nutrition, to not forget that it’s an important part of being healthy. I exercise and have set personal goals for exercising which I’ve been maintaining for about two years now.
Living in Norway, I enjoy nature and with COVID-19 restrictions relaxing more we have some family and friends visiting from Latvia soon; we will take them out on a few hikes to popular local places. Even though the winter season is settling in now, we say here that there is no such thing as bad weather – just bad clothing!
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