Emerald Emerging Markets Case Studies Emerging Technologies, UAE Jawahitha Sarabdeen Kamal Jaafar
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Article information: To cite this document: Jawahitha Sarabdeen Kamal Jaafar, (2011),"Emerging Technologies, UAE", Emerald Emerging Markets Case Studies, Vol. 1 Iss 1 pp. 1 - 4 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/20450621111110276 Downloaded on: 28 September 2016, At: 03:46 (PT) References: this document contains references to 0 other documents. To copy this document:
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Emerging Technologies, UAE Downloaded by SHAHEED ZULFIKAR ALI BHUTTO INST OF SCI & TECH KARACHI At 03:46 28 September 2016 (PT)
Jawahitha Sarabdeen and Kamal Jaafar
Jawahitha Sarabdeen is an Associate Professor in Faculty of Business and Management, University of Wollongong in Dubai (UOWD), Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Kamal Jaafar is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Wollongong in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
n 3 December 2009, Sassine Mazraani, the Chief Executive Officer of Emerging Technologies analysed the challenges and the achievements the company had in the past. Even if he was happy about the achievements of the company, the greater challenge he thought was to lead his company to capture billion worth of Gulf Market. He was in the process of preparing his strategic plan for future so that he could submit to the shareholders soon.
O
Company background – Emerging Technologies Emerging Technologies was the first United Arab Emirates software application developer of Arabic (also available in English and Hindi) voice recognition solutions. Emerging Technologies developed and deployed fully automated voice recognition applications to meet specific business wants and needs. With a vision to make a difference at a regional level, Mr Saeed Al-Romaithi, Chairman of Cassells Group founded Emerging Technologies in 2001. The company was incorporated in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The dedicated executive management had since been striving to achieve the company’s vision and long-term objectives. The company relied on a group of highly talented, professional, certified and self-motivated individuals whose main focus was to design, develop and deliver high quality voice applications that significantly enhance the caller’s experience. With Emerging Technologies’ voice-enabled solutions, people could use their natural voice, language, dialect and accent to make telephone enquiries at anytime from anywhere. The state-of the-art applications brought an end to the frustration customers usually experienced with the traditional touch-tone menu systems. According to the web site of the company: The voice applications allow callers to check their bank account balance, transfer funds, book a flight, make reservations, get stock quotes, trade, find business information, send and receive emails, access voice portals and much more, using only a telephone at anytime from anywhere.
Today, it further said that many businesses in the region depended on voice recognition solutions to give them the competitive edge they desire.
Disclaimer. This case is written solely for educational purposes and is not intended to represent successful or unsuccessful managerial decision making. The author/s may have disguised names; financial and other recognizable information to protect confidentiality.
DOI 10.1108/20450621111110276
The value proposition of the company was: ‘‘To be recognised as the world’s leading expert provider of high quality, human-like, multi-accent and multi-dialect Arabic (also available in English and Hindi) voice recognition solutions’’. Sassine Mazraani, who joined the company late 2003 as CEO, explained the main benefit of the main product of the company: interactive voice response (IVR) system. According to him the cost of setting up call centres that run efficiently and effectively was quite considerable in terms of time, money and effort. Even when this was achieved, a live call agent was still humanly limited to the number of calls he or she could handle and answer accurately during
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working hours or within certain time frames. Yet, the majority of customers still preferred to speak to a live representative rather than to interact with a traditional IVR system. This, however, was very costly for most businesses. The main challenge that businesses face in an increasingly competitive marketplace was the ability to offer high quality and cost effective customer support to all customers, all the time. This was only possible with the automation of as many parts of the customer support process as possible in order to handle large call volumes on a regular basis, while maintaining the human aspect of the experience.
The past performance
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Emerging Technologies targeted big enterprises in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region so that it would be able to show the market in the region that the technology that was in USA could be adopted even locally. In this venture, the company successfully introduced the IVR in Al-Jazeera News. Subsequently, it managed to introduce the system to various companies in UAE and other countries in the region. They were proud to say that their clients included the largest corporation in the region such as, Etisalat, Aramco, Dubai Airport, Dubai Financial market, Dubai Municipality, Doha Security market, Saudi Telecom (see the clients’ list). Clients and partners: Emerging Technologies have been able to secure some of the most resputable organizations in the region as its clients. They take great pride in sharing a sample of our valued list of clients who trusted Emerging Technologies with their speech solutions requirements: B
Abu Dhabi Securities Market – UAE.
B
Abu Dhabi Judiciary Department – UAE.
B
The Dubai Mall – UAE.
B
Ajman Municipality – UAE.
B
Aramex – UAE.
B
Doha Securities Market – Qatar.
B
Dubai Civil Aviation – UAE.
B
Dubai Financial Market – UAE.
B
Dubai Municipality – UAE.
B
Etisalat, UAE Telecom Operator – UAE.
B
Government of UAE, Ministry of Interior – UAE.
B
Kuwait Finance House – Kuwait.
B
Kuwait National Petroleum Company – Kuwait.
B
Saudi Telecom – KSA.
B
Shuaa Capital – UAE.
The company’s success in introducing and capturing the Gulf market in speech recognition technology was attributed, according to Sassine Mazraani, to various factors. They are:
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B
Firm belief and personal interest in the technology and innovation.
B
Right vision and mission.
B
Readiness of the shareholders to invest in innovative projects.
B
Readiness of the shareholders in expecting long-term benefit/profit.
B
Hard working and energetic group of staff.
B
Right marketing strategy.
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Those factors helped to earn the reputation as ‘‘the leading provider of Speech IVR in the region’’. The system, Mazraani said, was cost-effective and successfully deployed human-like voice recognition solutions that were designed to offer business the following main benefits: B
Provide a fully automated human-like customer support process in Arabic (also available in English and Hindi).
B
Add real value by eliminating the high levels of frustration that users normally experience with traditional push-button IVR systems.
B
Significantly reduce the time it takes to handle incoming calls and queries, thus saving your business valuable time, money and effort.
B
Free up a good portion of your work force to attend other important business needs.
B
Provide your customers a 24-hour service, all year long.
B
Differentiate the company from the competition by offering a new and highly effective voice enabled customer support solution.
B
Satisfy and even delight your customers with the new and unique support service.
B
Improve customers’ perception of one’s business.
B
Increase the number of referrals to the business.
B
Increase overall business productivity.
Through this the companies would be able to cut their production cost. For example, CEO Mazraani explained in referring to telephone service providers that: With Speech Agents the possibilities are endless. Telco’s can now increase their productivity and responsiveness by more than 50% while reducing their operating costs by over 30%, resulting in better profit margins, and differentiating them over the competition.
He further clarified: Imagine having as many multilingual agents with working knowledge of over 25 languages, receiving and dialling out calls continuously 24 hours a day without the need for breaks or any ongoing monthly expenses like salaries or seats. Impossible! [. . .] Not anymore.
He continued explaining that for Telco speech recognition technology offers an unparalleled solution. The first immediate impact realised is over 25% increase in automation, lower queue times as the Speech Agents handle all incoming calls simultaneously in the most natural way the callers would expect. Mazraani added ‘‘Speech opens new frontiers of automation, whereby automating any contact center features which were not possible before even with touch tone platforms’’. He continued: As an example, Etisalat adopted Speech Agents for their one and only Directory Enquiries (181) aiming to transform it to an automated self-service center whereby the caller can retrieve information in any language, dialect and/or accent all in less than a minute – which is operating live now for all land line and soon for mobiles too.
The past few years were very successful and exciting years for the company and the people including the CEO where the company’s product managed to penetrate into various sectors of UAE, Saudi Arabian, Qatari and Kuwaiti businesses.
The future direction Recently, the Emerging Technologies together with Nuance’s SpeechMagic Solution started of providing speech solution for the medical industry. The future direction for the company, Mazraani thought, would be bright if the following changes could be addressed: B
Educating the people: what, why and how this technology works.
B
Introducing this technology to the broader Arab world.
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Keywords: Strategic management, International business, Brands, Innovation, Retail management
B
Introducing this technology to metropolitan UAE in particular.
B
Removing the misconception of this technology being able to recognize Arabic.
B
Proving them it was better way of communication and it could work in the Gulf.
B
Finding right customers/clients.
B
Providing customers’ requirements.
As the company positioned itself as a leading provider of Speech IVR System, Mazraani was wondering what type of strategic plan was the best for the company’s growth so that he could be able to explain to the shareholders soon in the upcoming meeting. He was analysing the following options: whether to get more funds through joint ventures or just continue the business in the current setting without any partners. He was also looking at the possibility of focusing more on public listed companies as they have enough resources to adopt the technology in greater scale or diversify the growth into various sectors and products. Another possible option was to go for franchise.
About the authors Jawahitha Sarabdeen is an Associate Professor in Faculty of Business and Management at University of Wollongong in Dubai (UOWD). She spent seven years teaching and researching in Malaysia and a year in KSA before joining UOWD in 2007. She was previously Head, Law Unit and Chairperson, Centre of Excellence for Cyberlaw in Faculty of Management at Multimedia University, Malaysia. She is specialised in law and HRM. She is an award-winning and well-acknowledged faculty member for her excellence in both teaching and research at UOWD. She chairs the UOWD Disciplinary Committee. She is currently teaching law, business ethics and HRM for both undergraduate and postgraduate students while being actively engaged in several research projects, collaborations, consultancy, and editorial commitments for conferences and journals. Her extensive research has produced more than 40 research papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings. She has received many a prestigious research grants and awards. She has conducted a number of training and expertise exchange programmes on ICT legal issues, IP law and regulations, Corporate Governance, and Islamic Banking and Finance. She has also contributed to drafting legal policies and papers on Data Privacy and IP laws. Clients include international NGO’s, government agencies, ministries and educational institutions. Jawahitha’s principal research interests include legal and ethical issues of ICT and HRM, adoption of e-government, and Islamic banking and financial products. Jawahitha Sarabdeen is the corresponding author and can be contacted at:
[email protected] Kamal Jaafar is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering, UOWD. He has a PhD in Structural Engineering from Cambridge University. Approximation Theory. His areas of expertise are optimisation, logistics and supply chain management, operating systems, organizational planning and management, design studies and design theory.
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