Seal upgrades save over US $3.4million in seven years

By Murthy Buddha

How was contact with this company initiated?

We initially requested a meeting simply through cold calling, and as the meeting progressed, we learned about the issues they are dealing with. We asked to have the seals inspected, and we also looked at the OEM’s previous inspection reports.

The reports showed that there was an accumulation of dirt in the cavity between the pump shaft and inboard seals. As the product was on the inner side of the seals, the centrifugal action pushed the solids into the sliding contact area of the dynamic O-ring. This led to ‘hang-up’ of the dynamic O-ring and opening of the seal faces. We were able to locate the primary cause of the failure right away thanks to AESSEAL’s expertise and experience in reliability improvement.

We convinced the company that the existing seal design was unsuitable for this application. Initially the client was considering alternative designs such as a dual rotating metal bellows seal or a specialized slurry type dual seal configuration (SLM-6200). However, AESSEAL proposed the most economical solution with a change in design to AESSEAL CAPI Dual Face to Back Design, which could be fitted without requiring any modifications either in the pump or piping orientation.

Was AESSEAL already known to this particular company? Was it difficult to get the first order, given that companies are sometimes reluctant to change from existing suppliers?

In the beginning, it was challenging. The majority of new clients have a habit of ignoring new vendors or suppliers. However, you have to keep knocking on doors. After a few tries, they agreed to meet us, and things progressed from there.

MOC was initially a problem for them and they were hesitant to switch to alternative suppliers, but this was just customer mindset. A few customers noticed that replacement seals that are like-for-like are never included in the MOC. The technical proposal submitted by AESSEAL was ROI-based and supported by the necessary data, so it was easy to convince the company management and get approval.

What were the main difficulties involved in the installation of the new system?

The priority was to gain the trust of the customer. Due to the many years of experience and the advanced technical ability of people like Rob Waites and Riaan Joubert, who were the main initiators of the installations, we had very few problems. The only minor issues we faced were in modifications to our seal design by adding an extra sleeve/shaft O-ring as a safety precaution, modifications which were carried out at the request of the customer. This proves how vital technical ability, paired with good sales strategies and customer relations, can be to the success of AESSEAL in the Middle East Region.

Is the customer satisfied with the way the product has been working over the past seven years, and has it led to new contracts with this company, or with other companies which may have learned about AESSEAL as a result?

Due to the ongoing success of the new implemented AESSEAL design, many of the pumps with the same application have now, over the years, been converted to AESSEAL mechanical seals. With no negative feedback from the customer, we have received and are maintaining further business. With many companies in the Oil and Gas industry having experienced the same or similar issues, we have been able to use the experience gained from this contract to propose the same conversion to other potential customers.

Success stories of such conversions from the UAE, Oman and Qatar continue to prove how effective these conversions have been, leading to more contracts with many of the biggest companies in the region and a growing reputation for AESSEAL within the industry. Not only has this valuable information been shared within the Middle East region, but also globally, through AESSEAL’s Oil and Gas director Richard Smith.

How did you go about establishing AESSEAL as a presence in Oman and Qatar?

I recently completed ten years of service with AESSEAL Middle East, progressing from sales engineer to regional sales manager during this time. As the person responsible for sales and service operations within the region, working in conjunction with our sales team, my role is to develop and implement sales business plans and strategies to maximize revenue growth, increasing market share and positioning the business as a strategic supplier with key accounts in the region.

In the early days, very few customers, if any, were aware of AESSEAL. My current GM, Suvish Viswanathan, has consistently pushed me to have the AESSEAL flag raised with every end-user. It was challenging to establish contacts during the initial phase. However, after a few attempts, we found that customers would always give us a chance, and then it was up to us to take advantage of the situation and demonstrate our product capabilities.

In my experience in the Oil & Gas sector in this region, most of the upstream companies will have a technical support engineer as point of contact to deal with the vendors. He will be the point of entry for our business, and an extremely valuable resource. The aim is to establish a good relationship with him in order to take us to the next level, and to begin to generate business.

Now we are in a situation where most customers prefer AESSEAL as the best alternative supplier to OEMs, and AESSEAL is given priority when it comes to achieving improvements in reliability.

How important is it to establish personal relationships with the client companies?

Personal relationships are always key to growing the business. You may have a vision of your brand becoming successful, but without making an effort to cultivate relationships with customers, this is much harder to achieve. If you approach your client like a business, your relationship will only be a transactional, which is to say, there is no relationship at all.

It’s not enough to just have a great brand and product in the cutthroat business environment of today. It’s equally important to interact personally with clients, develop relationships with them, and discover their true needs. It’s not so difficult to build personal relationships, and there are several ways to go about it. Understanding your customers’ problems, going above and beyond to solve them, being adaptable or flexible, and showing empathy, will always give you an advantage over your rivals in relationship building.

How competitive is AESSEAL in terms of pricing? How important is pricing when bidding for a contract in Oman and Qatar?

We are very competitive with our pricing. However, with AESSEAL being awarded more and more high value contracts with large customers in the region, we have noticed and been told that our competitors have dropped their prices significantly when bidding for projects or contracts, with the idea of taking AESSEAL out of the picture. This will present challenges in the future when it comes to bidding for the larger projects and contracts. Our approach to this is to maintain a strong professional relationship with our customers, and to provide them with the best service possible, so that they do not feel the need to look elsewhere.

Finally, how well established is AESSEAL in the region? Do customers approach you when they have a problem, or for more information about your products and services?

We started off as a small operation, but AESSEAL is now well-established, and has a strong reputation in the region. We pride ourselves in maintaining very strong relationships with our customers and because of this we are first to be contacted whenever they face problems. As a result, we have been able to grow our installation base and market share significantly over the years, and our reputation for high quality service has meant that we have been able to establish relationships with many new customers. By doing this we have been able to cross-sell and introduce our full product range to the region. We now provide long-lasting solutions to companies that had been dealing with the same problems on a regular basis, and who had not received adequate support from our competitors. Our ability to provide excellent reliability improvements to our customers has not gone unnoticed in the Middle East region, and because of this we expect to see continued growth and success, and to establish AESSEAL as one of the biggest names in the market.