» FOCUS ON A TECH-DRIVEN FUTURE

FOCUS ON A TECHDRIVEN FUTURE

Jayesh Maganlal, CIO at DAMAC Properties elaborates on how he strives to keep up with Damac’s vision of having a tech driven future for a smoother customer experience.

How has the IT landscape changed in the last 2 years?

With technology moving forward at a rapid pace, there is a need for organisations to keep pace and remain relevant. DAMAC’s vision for a tech-driven future emphasises readiness, speed, and agility of technology by reengineering its processes and building a robust integration layer, resulting in a smoother customer experience.

When it comes to envisioning the future and maintaining a competitive edge, a brand cannot afford to just resort to tried-and-tested methods. It must drive innovation at every possible junction of its journey and encourage open discussion with its customers, form virtual teams with active participation from business users, and employ collaboration tools.

We have recognised that technology is no longer only a driver of business, but it is the business and we have implemented a tech-driven blueprint for growth that we take very seriously. Currently, we are committed to fast-track our digital transformation agenda. IT has become the forefront of our business operations, and we are ensuring that technology is engrained into every single process and business function.

What is the next phase of digital transformation requirement? How far have you reached in the initial digital transformation journey?

Our next phase of digital transformation is Total Experience (TX). TX is all about operating experiences without vacuum/silos. It seamlessly combines and overlaps employee experience, customer experience, user experience, multiple experiences and so on.

The streamlining of customer experience is paramount to the progress of all our developments and consolidates its position as a futuristic company. We are invested in the latest technological trends towards elevating its services and empowering the sector to adapt to the modern age.

We have made significant progress in addressing customer experiences through new digital touchpoints, changing the user experiences to simplify ways of communicating and interacting with our customers and digitising the journey of all our processes across the organisation.

As part of this process, we offer residents, tenants and prospective clients, 360-degree views of its ready apartments to help them get a feel for the premium quality of its homes. In addition, customers can also virtually customise their apartments/villas through Jayesh Maganlal

CIO, DAMAC Properties

this virtual viewing experience to suit their preferences so that they may begin to experience what it would feel like to live in Malou Toft their future homes. Our DAMAC Living app has been recently VP EMEA, Milestone Systems launched for community-related services for residents and tenants — which seeks to make several services and processes easier and more seamless for homeowners — from settling payments to uploading documents for property handover, making amenity bookings and getting special discounts on services, among others.

With massive digital transformation occurring across the region, what were the major challenges faced by you?

Managing demand from the business is a challenge as all requirements are important and expectations to deliver remains high and urgent. Having a tactical plan, a coherent framework and a digital roadmap we can help plan this out. It also helps to ensure being equipped with the right digital talents that can help in making the execution more efficient.

What is your cloud strategy? Do you have hybrid cloud strategy in place? Are you looking at multi-cloud adoption for leveraging the best of cloud?

Hybrid multi-cloud is the strategy going forward and it is something that we adopt, and have planned for. This allows flexibility for the customers to choose and decide based on their specific needs. With more solutions relying on SaaS and PaaS platforms, multi-cloud is the way forward.

What is your IT agenda for this year?

Our goal for this year is to continue our focus on driving Total Experience across all our touchpoints from customer management, employee management, sales management and simplifying the back-office operations. By employing advanced innovations, we will continue to enhance our services by offering residents and potential buyers premier experiences and advanced technologies that cater to their lifestyles.