DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION | LEARNING & DEVELOPING ON THE RISE

IAPCO member ICOM (Egypt) tells us about their journey

Author: Marwa Emam, ICOM

Digital Transformation should be at the forefront of every organization’s mind, and is defined as “the adoption of digital technology to transform services or businesses, through replacing non-digital or manual processes with digital processes or replacing older digital technology with newer digital technology”. However, this easily digested definition is not so simply implemented in the workplace. There are challenges to overcome before the benefits of digital transformation can be realized by an organization.

ICOM Group has 200+ employees who have been at the forefront of digital transformation from both research and execution perspectives have collectively harnessed the power of digital transformation to stay at the head of our business.

There is no doubt that the Events industry has been majorly affected by the COVID-19 outbreak since the beginning of 2020. Due to this drastic shift during the pandemic, all the Events Industry Leaders acted quickly aiming to address this issue and came up with several new scenarios to sustain the industry, until this massive attack of the pandemic vanishes away, hopefully soon.

And since we are walking through a new phase, ICOM Group adapted new strategies to shift all its events from the physical to the virtual & hybrid forms after convincing our stakeholders with the benefits of the New Normal Templates. We worked hardly for several months to come up with reliable & professional platforms to provide successful events. And thanks to the efforts of ICOM teams, we managed to stand up quickly against all the challenges.

Adjusting the mindset of the team to embrace the new digital era was not easy process though, as it required understanding, persuasion and resilience.

Adjusting the mindset of the team to embrace the new digital era was not easy process though, as it required understanding, persuasion and resilience. These were the main 3 key ingredients that helped our organization break all boundaries of change and achieve breakthroughs in no time!

Our Technical and Operation Teams though made their homework and spent nights working on developing advanced software aiming to deliver a seamless live streaming experience, as our main priority was to ensure the audience’s satisfaction and guarantee their total engagement.

“The tragic hit of the pandemic was devastating for all businesses and we needed to find a quick and effective solutions to protect our business interests. I am so happy and proud, for being able with the help of the team to create a solution that would facilitate events experiences”, said Jailan Ibrahim – Web Solutions Assistant Manager

“As organizations continue their journey towards digital transformation and application modernization, our team worked for more than 5 months to help the company acquire modern business solutions that are both powerful and easy to operationalize”, said Ahmed Magdy – Web Solutions Executive

One of the most overlooked elements in digital transformation is the role of training new employees and providing ongoing professional support to existing ones.

One of the most overlooked elements in digital transformation is the role of training new employees and providing ongoing professional support to existing ones. And since we completely understand the idea of continues education, ICOM Group has been organizing a series of in-depth trainings and workshops for the employees addressing the topic of “Digital Transformation” and emphasizing its necessity in our modern world specially during this critical time of the pandemic. We always aspired to combine our experience as a PCO with digital know-how to deliver best in class digital events solutions.

Our Management Team is fully aware that Digital Transformation is certainly not something that happens overnight and it takes a large sum of investment and believes that “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. “ICOM employees are fully dedicated & oriented to drive our business to embrace this change. As we know that the benefits an organization can expect once transformed are tremendous”, said Walid Menessi - Chief Operating Officer

The good news is most organizations are already digitally transforming because the environments around them are already in motion. And we are sure that ICOM’s global experience and dedication to learning and development will enable the company of delivering unique, customized business experience.