Riyadh · Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Hisham Alsayed
Twenty years turning IT from a support function into something the P&L can feel — across fuel retail, logistics, construction and banking in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.
- Chief Information Officer
- Digital Transformation
- Enterprise Architecture
About
Strategy that survives contact with operations.
Most technology strategy is written for the boardroom. Mine has to hold up at six in the morning at a fuel station, when the pumps are live and the automation has to answer. That is the test I design for.
Twenty years in IT leadership, PMO and transformation. Today I run the IT division of a national fuel services company: a group-wide move off legacy systems onto cloud-native Microsoft Dynamics 365, a 24/7 smart operations centre using AI analytics for predictive maintenance, and automation across more than 230 stations that took 35% out of operational downtime. Infrastructure rebuilt to 99.8% uptime, a cybersecurity framework aligned to Saudi regulation, and 18% off annual IT operating cost.
Before that: eight years leading technology for a diversified holding group, and a portfolio of regulated banking programmes at the National Commercial Bank. I work in Arabic and English, and I present in both.
Where I add weight
What I am usually hired for.
Strategic IT planning
A technology roadmap built backwards from the business plan: what the company must be able to do in three years, and the sequence of systems that gets it there.
Digital transformation
Transformation measured in cycle times and cost per transaction, not in platforms bought. I start where the process hurts, not where the vendor demo begins.
Cybersecurity & risk management
Controls proportionate to the risk, aligned to Saudi regulatory expectations, and tested — so the board knows what is protected and what is still exposed.
Data & analytics
Getting the data trustworthy first, then building the reporting people act on. A dashboard nobody opens is a cost, not an asset.
IT governance & policy
Governance that speeds decisions up rather than slowing them down: clear ownership, spending thresholds, security standards, and an asset register that is actually current.
Project portfolio management
One prioritised portfolio instead of forty competing projects: ranked by business impact, staffed realistically, and reviewed on a cadence people keep.