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For NCOC, all its employees are part of one family, from its directors to its contractors. During the pandemic, the company has been working tirelessly to care for the mental health of all its employees and ensure their health and safety. “Our key to success is definitely people, their attitude, their commitment, their focus, and the fact that we just love our company and love our country and we want to keep producing to support the economy of Kazakhstan,” Taylor says. “That's the main key to success, not only in this pandemic but in general, in any kind of crisis.” On March 13th 2020, Mansur Nazarov, NCOC’s Communications Manager was preparing to leave the country. He was getting everything ready for his trip when he received a call from the company informing him that all business trips had been banned and that he would have to begin working from home.

Nazarov was frustrated when he heard the news, but now he’s glad he was able to stay with his family and is thankful for the support that the company has provided through the crisis, not only through financial means but by providing personal support. For people like Nazarov, more than the salary rises and the broadband provisions, it is NCOC’s preoccupation with employees’ families that he is most thankful for.

“My family is also part of NCOC,” Nazarov says. “That’s how we work. The allowances, the extra rates and additional payments are, of course, good. But there's something that you cannot buy, and it's how my company treats my family.”

Given the fundamental role that people play in any company’s success, one of NCOC’s key priorities was ensuring that its employees received the support they needed to reach their full potential. This was one of the drivers behind the HR transformation project, which looked to create a single HR platform where data was meaningful and easily accessible.

“NCOC needed an integrated system to manage all HR applications to maintain data integrity and financial exposure, in order to study the company’s HR needs,” says Assel Nakhimova, IT Project Lead at NCOC.

To achieve this, Nakhimova’s team combined the power of cloud-based solution Success Factors and the company’s on-premise system to create one single HR platform. Although it is still early to gauge the success of the project, NCOC has already been able to reduce its siloed systems, increase process efficiency and transparency, promoting data integrity across the company. “Success Factor allows employees to manage their own personal data and take responsibility for their own development,” Nakhimova says. “They can track and manage their career path in a more efficient way, and the solution gives a lot of opportunity from the transparency perspective, interaction with the employees, and to optimise most of the HR processes.” It is because of NCOC’s commitment to people that, when it came to choosing a partner to support NCOC’s HR transformation project, the company immediately turned to TerraLink. The international IT and business consulting company has a very strong presence in Kazakhstan - it has the largest SAP team in the region - as well as an approach that focuses on developing local talent, that perfectly aligns with NCOC’s mission.

TerraLink was present throughout NCOC’s transformation from a consortium into a single company in 2013, when it helped it merge the IT system of all its subsidiaries and address the issues that came with duplicated data and information systems. Since then, TerraLink has provided NCOC with support in the areas of SAP consultancy, support, maintenance, development and enhancement services, but also in relation to information management, consultancy and service provision, becoming a key partner in NCOC’s entry into the digital era. “TerraLink has been a fantastic partner for NCOC for a number of years,” Lowmass says. “They’ve been supporting us primarily through the IT function, and more recently, getting involved in the digital transformation side of things. Without them, I don't think we could have transitioned to remote working and kept business continuity going the way that we did during the pandemic. Their experience and expertise were essential in protecting the value created by NCOC.”

In addition to HR transformation and the transition to remote work, another area where digitalisation directly impacts people’s lives is related to safety., Taylor’s vision is to use digital tools to track every step of the supply chain, and utilise drones to conduct specialised monitoring of pipelines, thereby reducing the technician’s exposure to toxic fluids or ultra-high pressures. “Hardware and software tools can protect the environment, people and company assets,” Taylor says. “The digital space gives us plenty of opportunities worldwide, you know, to simplify, to stay safe, and to grow.” This concern for employee safety was present before the pandemic. Until February 2021, the company was a couple of days short of reaching its goal of going one full year without a single injury recorded on its sites, which Nazarov considers “a great achievement”.

"Data is at the heart of digital. Access to quality-assured data, and building analytics capabilities is key to enabling any digital transformation." - Roelant Kas

Kas adds: “It’s all about people: how they adapt, continue to learn and improve. In NCOC we have great teams working together in an ecosystem of industry partners, suppliers, and government stakeholders.” With its digital transformation projects, NCOC wants to be an example for Kazakhstan, and it aims to support the country’s goal of becoming more digitally advanced. Moreover, the company is passionate about training its country’s youth, to ensure that the new generation of Kazakhs has the necessary skills to drive the country forward into the digital era. “NCOC definitely leads that agenda and very much drives it, in combination with a couple of the other international operators in western Kazakhstan,” Lowmass says. “That collaboration with the Ministry of Energy, the Ministry of Digital and other parts of the government have really helped make sure that NCOC's strategy is aligned to that of the government. “Kazakhstan is a very dynamic developing country with lots of young talent, particularly interested in digital. So it's a very bright future, not only for NCOC but also for Kazakhstan as a whole.”