SME Advisor 138

ISSUE 138 MONTHLY FOCUS: THE FUTURE

DRONE DISRUPTION: INSIDE RABIH BOU RASHID'S MASTER PLAN

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NOVEMBER 2017

D U B A I

JW MARRIOTT MARQUIS

SME BEYOND BORDERS 2017 LET’S TAKE A GLIMPSE INTO THE FUTURE. Can you imagine a time when you will travel to work in a driverless taxi, manage your schedule with the help of your digital assistant, structure transactions using blockchain, consume content produced by AI and get treated by a robotic doctor?

Now, what if we say that this can happen four years from now? And, that this is just scratching the surface?

Presenting SME Beyond Borders - 4X, an event designed to transport you into the future and explore the trends that will impact your business four years from now.

The Future of Country

The Future of Industry

The Future of the World

Join us to hear the world’s top policymakers, industry leaders and futurists tackle some of sthe biggest developments of the future.

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SME Advisor Middle East is aimed at business owners and senior executives across the GCC. Armed with practical advice, it has been highlighting key business issues for the small and medium enterprise segment since its launch in 2005.

The magazine addresses real issues faced by business decision makers, without resorting to jargon.

We understand that often, in small and medium enterprises, specialist business decisions are made by the owners and not by an army of c-level executives. At the same time, our content is equally relevant and useful for specialist, senior executives in mid-level enterprises.

The magazine style is consumer, conversational and colourful.

From the web

What happens to Expo 2020’s Dubai site after close?

Addressing a critical question about the legacy of Expo 2020 after it closes its doors in April 2021, Marjan Faraidooni, Senior Vice President of Legacy Impact and Development at Expo 2020 Dubai, said: “The question that everybody has asked me when I’ve been speaking about Expo has been: ‘So, what happens after Expo 2020’s doors close in April 2021? His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum (Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai) set us two main tasks after we won the right to stage the 2020 World Expo back in 2013: deliver an Expo that will amaze the world while leaving a meaningful and impactful legacy.”

Find out more, please visit: http://www.expo2020dubai.ae/ Co Founder and CEO Nadeem Hood

Co Founder and COO Georgina Larsen

Editor in Chief Rushika Bhatia rushika@cpibusiness.net

Design Team Solomon Arthur solomon@cpibusiness.net Juzer Karbalai juzer@cpibusiness.net

Video Producer Murtaza Yousuf murtaza@cpibusiness.net Relationship Manager Freshia Mistry freshia@cpibusiness.net Web Developer Aneel Sarwar aneel@cpibusiness.net

Published By: CPI Business FZ LLC Office 111, Building 4 Dubai Media City Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Assistant Video Producer Farzan Akmal farzan@cpibusiness.net Event Coordinator Zainab Murtaza zainab@cpibusiness.net Printed by Print Well Printing Press Contact Details: Tel: +971 4 433 2446 Email: info@cpibusiness.net Web: www.cpibusiness.net

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© Copyright 2017 CPI Business.

All rights reserved.

While the publishers have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of all information in this magazine, they will not be held responsible for any errors therein.

New co-working space to open within a luxury hotel NEST, an innovative and unique shared workspace concept, unveiled its plans to open doors in Dubai this autumn. It will be located within the new TRYP by Wyndham Dubai. Mariano Faz, Head, The First Group Asset Management said: “The key to successful co-working spaces is an idea of community, of shared values and mutual inspiration. We feel that Dubai, as the region’s innovation hub, is sorely in need of more collaborative centers, where innovation, creativity and wellness can thrive. We are excited by our partnership with TRYP by Wyndham Dubai as a brand with the unique vision to target the modern urban traveler and meet every last expectation for work and leisure.”

To read more, please visit: http://nestdubai.co/

Exclusive VAT for SMEs conference to be held in Dubai South

Dubai South Business Park has organised an exclusive conference called VAT for SMEs that will be held on September 26, 2017, at its HQ. The event will include interactive presentations by a prestigious line-up of experts to ensure that regional businesses are on track to achieving VAT success. It will address critical areas such as: the overall implications of VAT on companies; technology required to comply with the VAT regulations; preparing business functions to deal with VAT compliance requirements; and understanding its impact on cashflow.

To read more, please visit: https://www.dubaisouth.ae/en/Leasing/Business-Park/Overview

Editor’s Note

RUSHIKA BHATIA EDITOR

DIFFERENTIATION IN THE DIGITAL AGE As local companies march towards the future economy, the reality is that they can no longer operate with their current business models.

Technological advances are disrupting traditional business models and revamping industries. Digital transformation has become an imperative for not just businesses, but for the economy as a whole. And, simply integrating new technologies within your business isn’t enough. What really matters is using these technological capabilities to create a differentiating factor for your business.

Our issue outlines strategies to help local enterprises innovate and scaleup while maintaining an open mindset that is ready for challenges of the future. The underlying message is: to adapt, experiment and partner with stakeholders to continue preparing themselves for the future economy.

This month, as per tradition, we are also featuring success stories of businesses that are designing solutions for the future economy with the aim to maximise business operations, improve customer experiences and reduce costs.

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60

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Smart Labour: This company has mastered the art of making a difference, while still staying financially sustainable. Its unique business model has set it apart from other growing businesses in the region - and this is only scratching the surface. Find out about its achievement on pg. 66.

Eila: This young start-up is bringing the concept of chatbots to life with its fun, interactive technology. More importantly, it is helping companies rethink the way they interact and deal with customers. Enjoy excerpts from our chat with the company’s co-founder Samer Tarazi on pg. 60

Enjoy reading this issue of SME Advisor! Until next time…

Falcon Eye Drones: Ambitious plans, bold targets and an eye for the future define Rabih Bou Rashid as an entrepreneur. When we sat down with him, we were fascinated by how quickly his company is gaining traction in the drone services market.

Turn to pg. 72 to learn about his growth strategy.

Twistar: Sleek, stylish and functional - Twistar’s device ticks all the right boxes. So it’s no wonder that the company is reaching new heights of success. In a conversation with its founder, we discover what’s next on the company’s growth agenda On pg. 54, we share detailed insights.

Contents

Economist’s view 018/ Shaking up the innovation ecosystem 022/ Commuting in a smart city

VIP Majlis 028/ An interview with Mika Yamamoto

Future of business 034/ Blockchain and IoT: made for each other

Industry focus 040/ Gen Z: Are retailers there yet?

046/ Transforming the physical store experience

030/ CHATBOTS ARE AN APPEALING CONCEPT SIMPLY BECAUSE MESSAGING PLATFORMS ARE BEING USED MASSIVELY EVERY SINGLE DAY

BY CONSUMERS OF ALL AGES AND ARE TAKING OVER THE MOBILE ECOSYSTEM.

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IN FIVE YEARS FROM NOW, ROBOTS WILL BE BETTER THAN US AT DOING THINGS LIKE DIAGNOSING CANCER OR BABYSITTING KIDS. Infographic of the month 052/ AI’s impact across industries

Top change makers 054/ Twistar - A device that will transform customer experiences 060/ Meet Eila, the newest AI chatbot 066/ Smart Labour - igniting possibilities for blue-collar workers 072/ Falcon Eye Drones - An eye for the future

Organisation and structure 078/ Are you asking the right question?

Technology for business 084/ AI is an opportunity, not a threat

Disruptive invention 090/ Invention of the month: Welbi

Tracking the progress of an entrepreneur and his quest to reach new heights.

72 84

A round-up of AI’s opportunities and threats, with a special focus on its practical implications for businesses.

60 Eila is among one of many chatbots seeking to change the way we interact with each other.

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Cities around the globe are in the midst of a smart revolution, but how will it impact the day-to-day experiences of citizens?

With Gen Z set to become the world’s largest consumer demographic, what should retailers know about their preferences?

78 Do business owners truly assess what’s driving their business? Here’s what we think...

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CONTENT CURATORS

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Presenting this month’s portfolio of industry specialists and thought leaders, who played a critical role in producing the feature content of our magazine and ensuring that we were more topical than ever.

JEAN-LUC SCHERER FOUNDER AND CEO, INNOOPOLIS

““ NICK MARSHALL FOUNDER AND CEO, TWISTAR

SME ADVISOR

Blockchain and IoT can be used jointly to ensure accurate data is provided to the insurance company when processing claims: i.e. timestamp of incident from alarm, pictures of damages, police reports.

Within the industry, it is apparent that voice/ AI has the potential to revolutionise customer research to a staggering extent.

C O N T E N T C U R ATO R S 017

““ SAMER TARAZI FOUNDER EILA

The AI market will be as important as the internet was in the 90s and as big as mobile is today.

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The technology already exists to allow mass use of drones; the challenge is the need for effective regulation.

RABIH BOU RASHID MANAGING DIRECTOR FALCON EYE DRONES

““ JOSE BERENGUERES ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, UAE UNIVERSITY

Although a lot is being written about AI, think there is still a lack of understanding among SME owners as to how they can fully benefit from this revolution.

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Shaking up the innovation ecosystem The truth is that the social, economic and commercial progress of any city is defined by the efficiency of ecosystems that lie within it. It, therefore, becomes imperative to ensure that these ecosystems are being built on sustainable models that are designed to deliver collective impact. Here, Abdulaziz AlJaziri, Director, Area 2071 presents his compelling case…

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he innovation ecosystem consists of many stakeholders from corporations, investors and start-ups, who create many point solutions in the form of incubators, accelerators and studios.

Each individual programme, organisation and initiative exists to solve specific, localised problems.

There is of course a need and space for this distributed model. However, the consequences of this model are ‘more of the same’ solutions and acceptance of the high failure rates in anticipation of one or two ‘winners’. It would take decades or centuries to start to change entire systems and sectors.

Despite occasional wins in the form of disruptive solutions, those which reshape entire industries or markets, significant and lasting change remains slow or unachievable. We thus need different models - models that are not centred on individual impact, but ones that are designed to deliver collective-impact.

Why: A model that owns and serves systems-change questions, not single entity change Less of: The current model is largely focused on ‘my’ – my organisation, my industry or my problems. This incessant focus on ‘my’ is because there needs to be a clear path from idea to revenue or funding. As any start-up founder knows, efforts to address behavioural change or to educate customers or investors are more than often doomed for failure. Furthermore, the issue with systemwide problems is that no single entity owns

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them. If there is no owner, chances are good that there is no immediate customer. With no customer, there is less likely to be an investor. As such disruptive experiments, which challenge fundamental questions, assumptions, relationships or norms, mostly die prematurely.

We need less of models that serve single-entity problems, programmes or interventions that are here one year, but due to shifting priorities, disappear next year.

More of: We need a model that is focused on ‘our’ system-level problems. Some of these system-wide problems persist because there they have no “owner”. Take for example of the empty-mile-problem, where vehicles return ‘home’ empty after dropping off passengers or cargo. Individually this is a small waste. Collectively, this constitutes a billion-dollar system waste. We need a home to these types of system-level problems.

On the other hand, not everything can be framed as a problem or a need.

There are opportunities to experiment on the redefinition of entire industries. For example, how do we create or leverage new distribution channels to reach the last billion, who are often in rural communities?

Again, no single entity owns this problem.

Yet, solving for this opportunity is of interest to the entire system, from healthcare to consumer goods organisations.

Who: Centred on experimenters, not start-ups Less of: When designing a micro or macroecosystem, it is all too easy to say it serves everyone. This usually results in no one

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Very often, experimental ideas might take years to move forward, but we as a collective ecosystem need to and can help remove bottlenecks to make progress in weeks.

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being served and a loss of clarity and purpose. We need less of serving of individual entities – start-ups, corporates, investors, or the government.

Let’s face it, there are plenty of ‘providers’ serving at the entity level. Of course, there needs to be value that each of these entities give and take from the ecosystem, but they are not at the centre.

More of: Ultimately everything is a people problem. The people we need to serve are the experimenters. Regardless of the entity in which they sit. These are individuals or teams, who are already working on systemschange (the why). Some are working as selflabelled start-ups, others may be ScaleUps, government departments or corporates, and yet others may have hacked a homemade solution. However, their progress is stifled by regulation, lack of expertise, investment, customers etc. Very often, experimental ideas might take years to move forward, but we as a collective ecosystem need to and can help remove bottlenecks to make progress in weeks.

Most incubators and accelerators would not give these Experimenters a second look, because they either lack ‘traction’ or an immediate customer.

We need a model that actively seeks out these experimenters the great minds, hearts, and hands - who seek to change the system, who are beyond the ideas stage and are

out there making themselves vulnerable to failure, who need legitimacy and a different model of support than that is currently offered to them. This leads us neatly to the ‘how’.

How: Deliver value through cocreators, not incubators Less of: The world of accelerators and incubators is well established. They all largely follow the same model. They ‘accelerate’ or ‘incubate’, they take equity stake, and they are centred around a three-month program. The goal of almost every incubator is to help their portfolio of start-ups (bets) to get to so-called ‘nextstep’ – the next investment or the next target growth level. They are organised into themes, technologies, or markets. They rarely ever have the remit of changing the systems or sectors. Then there are Startup Studios, which come in many flavours. One such flavour is that corporates outsource the design and development of new businesses, because they lack in-house potential, riskappetite, or short term strategy alignment; StartUp studios do everything in-house. We do not need more incubators or accelerators, nor do we need more of ‘in-house’ models, if we are to serve a different ‘why’.

More of: We need a co-creator model.

A backbone organisation which exists to co-create collective-impact. A model

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which mobilises the entire ecosystem, with each party doing what it does best, but for a collective purpose of systems-change.

However, one cannot just throw many entities together without defining their roles that they will play for the benefit of the entire ecosystem.

Therefore, we need to create common goals, common outcomes and common indicators. We need to analyse and share data to track progress, visible to all stakeholders.

We need to facilitate relationships through co-creation, over ‘networking’. We need to identify and then drive actions to address critical points of failure that are stopping systems-changing experiments from achieving scale. We need to create new roles that the ecosystem needs. All this, cannot and should not be done alone.

We need to co-create programming that is tailored to deliver on the ‘why’ of systems-change. Therefore, a 3-month cookie cutter approach won’t work. We need a longer program that support all the different transitions between an experiment (SearchUp) to a ScaleUp. We need programming that delivers not ‘mentorship’ but outcomes, a virtual-team model that co-creates, and experiences that expand the Experimenters’ mindsets to what is achievable.

The value of co-creation is higher than the value of money. If money (investment)

was the answer, we would see many more successful start-ups. If incubators were the answer, we’d see many more successful startups. The point being, there is no one single answer. The answer lies in bringing together programming value from all ecosystem stakeholders, so that the experimenters can choose their own cocktail mix that is important and urgent for them.

The What One of the enablers to systems-change, is in the design and execution of SystemChallenges. Although the type of SystemChallenges we are focusing on will vary from year to year. Here is a sample: ϭϭ Food: How might we feed the next billion? ϭϭ Health: How might we systemise the distribution to the last billion? ϭϭ Transport: How might we solve for the billion-dollar empty-mile problem? ϭϭ Aviation: How might we create free air travel? ϭϭ Education: How might we create an education system without school buildings? ϭϭ Retail: How might we create a zeroownership model?

These challenges are at the intersection of global, billion people+ needs and business needs. Each System-Challenge is driven by a corporate sponsor. Why? Because our

hypothesis is that if big organisations have already validated the system-problems that they care about, for which they are willing to become early adopter customers, then this serves an incentive and clears the path for experimenters in SearchUps, StartUps, Corporates, and other organisations in the value chain to engage with the problem.

In short, most corporates do not have the in-house capability and capacity to deliver on such experiments for their industry.

Therefore, what’s needed is an external experimentation platform.

The future In the first iteration of building an alternative model of collective-impact – we are asking ourselves how we leverage an entire ecosystem to serve systemlevel problems, questions, needs and opportunities. We shall start with the implementation of the System-Challenges.

Once we have codified this, we will address other more complex questions. For example, almost every start-up follows the equityfunding model, even those who are initially bootstrapped. We need to ask alternative systems-changing questions, such as how might we develop an open-source start-up model?

In a nutshell, Area 2071 exists as a home to experiments that have the potential to deliver on systems-change.

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Commuting in a smart city How does it feel like to live - and commute - in a smart city? Marcin Budka, Principal Academic in Data Science, Bournemouth University, paints a realistic picture...

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EDITOR’S PICKS 01. It may sound like fiction, but truth be told, most of the data required to make this day happen are already being collected in one form or another.

02. Although the technology is already there, our data remains siloed with different organisations, and institutional obstacles stand in the way of attaining this level of service.

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he alarm on your smart phone went off 10 minutes earlier than usual this morning. Parts of the city are closed off in preparation for a popular end of summer event, so congestion is expected to be worse than usual. You’ll need to catch an earlier bus to make it to work on time.

The alarm time is tailored to your morning routine, which is monitored every day by your smart watch. It considers the weather forecast (rain expected at 7am), the day of the week (it’s Monday, and traffic is always worse on a Monday), as well as the fact that you went to bed late last night (this morning, you’re likely to be slower than usual). The phone buzzes again – it’s time to leave, if you want to catch that bus.

While walking to the bus stop, your phone suggests a small detour – for some reason, the town square you usually stroll through is very crowded this morning. You pass your favourite coffee shop on your way, and although they have a 20 per cent discount this morning, your phone doesn’t alert you – after all, you’re in a hurry.

After your morning walk, you feel fresh and energised. You check in at the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-enabled bus stop, which updates the driver of the next bus. He now knows that there are 12 passengers waiting to be picked up, which means he should increase his speed slightly if possible, to give everyone time to board. The bus company is also notified, and are already deploying an extra bus to cope with the high demand along your route. While you wait, you notice a parent with two young children, entertaining themselves with the touch-screen information system installed at the bus stop.

Once the bus arrives, boarding goes smoothly: almost all passengers were using tickets stored on their smart phones,

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Personal devices aside, the rise of the Internet of Things with distributed networks of all sorts of sensors, which can measure anything from air pollution to traffic intensity, is yet another source of data.

so there was only one time-consuming cash payment. On the bus, you take out a tablet from your bag to catch up on some news and e-mails using the free on-board Wi-Fi service. You suddenly realise that you forgot to charge your phone, so you connect it to the USB charging point next to the seat. Although the traffic is really slow, you manage to get through most of your work e-mails, so the time on the bus is by no means wasted.

The moment the bus drops you off in front of your office, your boss informs you of an unplanned visit to a site, so you make a booking with a car-sharing scheme, such as Co-wheels. You secure a car for the journey, with a folding bike in the boot.

Your destination is in the middle of town, so when you arrive on the outskirts you park the shared car in a nearby parking bay

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(which is a member’s unused driveway) and take the bike for the rest of the journey to save time and avoid traffic. Your travel app gives you instructions via your Bluetooth headphones – it suggests how to adjust your speed on the bike, according to your fitness level. Because of your asthma, the app suggests a route that avoids a particularly polluted area.

After your meeting, you opt to get a cab back to the office, so that you can answer some e-mails on the way. With a tap on your smartphone, you order the cab, and in the two minutes it takes to arrive you fold up your bike so that you can return it to the boot of another shared vehicle near your office. You’re in a hurry, so no green reward points for walking today, I’m afraid – but at least you made it to the meeting on time, saving kilograms of CO2 on the way.

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our smart phone Y is able to track your location, speed and even the type of activity that you’re performing at any given time – whether you’re driving, walking or riding a bike.

Get real It may sound like fiction, but truth be told, most of the data required to make this day happen are already being collected in one form or another. Your smart phone is able to track your location, speed and even the type of activity that you’re performing at any given time – whether you’re driving, walking or riding a bike.

Meanwhile, fitness trackers and smart watches can monitor your heart rate and physical activity. Your search history and behaviour on social media sites can reveal your interests, tastes and even intentions: for instance, the data created when you look at holiday offers online not only hints at where you want to go, but also when and how much you’re willing to pay for it.

Personal devices aside, the rise of the Internet of Things with distributed

networks of all sorts of sensors, which can measure anything from air pollution to traffic intensity, is yet another source of data. Not to mention the constant feed of information available on social media about any topic you care to mention.

With so much data available, it seems as though the picture of our environment is almost complete. But all of these datasets sit in separate systems that don’t interact, managed by different entities which don’t necessarily fancy sharing. So, although the technology is already there, our data remains siloed with different organisations, and institutional obstacles stand in the way of attaining this level of service. Whether or not that’s a bad thing, is up to you to decide.

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INTERVIEW WITH

MIKA YAMAMOTO

CHIEF DIGITAL MARKETING OFFICER, SAP

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Several new initiatives and customised applications are indicative of SAP’s continued focus on the SME market.

SME Advisor reports…

QQ

You are the gatekeeper of SAP, as a brand, within the SME space. How do you see yourself positioned in this segment?

Much of our outreach programmes and what you see of our brand appears to be focused on larger corporations. So, it’s natural to assume that our solutions are too complex or expensive for the SME world. A lot of service providers tend to take the solutions they build for large corporations, strip them down of the expensive components and then offer them to SMEs. But, that’s not the case with SAP. Of course, that’s not the approach we take; our solutions are built to cater to the specific needs of the SME market. We take every small detail into consideration while creating these solutions like affordability, functionality, capability of business processes, size of the IT team and so on. We are also mindful of the cost of implementation, not just the cost of ownership because it’s not just affordability to buy the solution, but also to run it.

One of the most important aspects we consider is ‘time to value’; if you are going to make an investment, you sooner or later want to see its business value and how it’s going to impact on your cashflow. So, we are mindful of the implementation time frames.

Our solutions are built keeping in mind that we want to maximise the business owner’s time and free them up to concentrate on their core operations.

MIKA YAMAMOTO CHIEF DIGITAL MARKETING OFFICER, SAP

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Our solutions are built keeping in mind that we want to maximise the business owner’s time and free them up to concentrate on their core operations.

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QQ

SAP is renowned for its network of partners. How does your partnerled approach add value to the SME offering?

We go to market with our partners because it gives us a footprint of service and support.

Customers can be in Dubai or anywhere else in the world and our partners can converse with them in their local languages, while understanding the local regulations and their micro verticals. We understand that each vertical and geography has its own needs and requirements, so even though the base application remains the same, our partners customise our solutions for individual businesses.

To add, we are partner-led because our partners provide local support and enhance the true functionality of our solutions.

These partners customise our applications to ensure that they fit your vertical, boost relevancy, improve efficiency and help drive the business results that you care about most.

We rely on our partners heavily to build SME relationships and to actively nurture them. Our partners know their markets best.

We spend a lot of our efforts on enabling our partners by making available to them information that is critical to understanding SAP and its solutions.

QQ

What is SAP’s current imperative for the SME market?

We want to continue updating our customer base and focus on building an innovation roadmap to cater to the needs of that customer base. We bear in mind the trends of the segment while building our platforms and continue to innovate where the market is headed in terms of SME sector.

Of course, we also evaluate where SAP, as a company, is headed with technology and its new developments – whether its analytics, machine learning or IoT. We understand that this kind of terminology can seem overwhelming to SMEs, that’s exactly why we focus on integrating these technologies into the applications we build for SMEs so that they can benefit from them without having to deal with the complexities of it all.

Another area that we’re looking at is supporting SMEs as they scale up. We know that an end-to-end solution can be quite daunting for any size of business for that matter. With our solutions, businesses can start with one application and grow into another solution as they scale up.

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Business owners want to be able to reach out to potential customers in a proper way, then attract them to their offering and finally retain them as long-term clients.

QQ

QQ

One of the biggest challenge is customer acquisition, regardless of industry or geography. Business owners want to be able to reach out to potential customers in a proper way, then attract them to their offering and finally retain them as long-term clients. This is something we’ve noticed small businesses are finding difficult commonly across all verticals and geographies.

These are some questions I would suggest any business owner to ask: Do they work with companies of my size; Do they work with companies that are growing at the same pace as me; and Do they work with companies within the same verticals as me.

Most importantly, I would assess if they have a technology and business roadmap that is mindful of trends in the market and one that makes their solutions futureproof. I wouldn’t make an investment into a solution that isn’t safeguarded against the constantly evolving market dynamics. our reach and, ultimately, our success, exponentially.

Based on your learnings from interacting with SMEs, what are some key challenges that these businesses still face?

What are the essential checkpoints that any SME owner needs to consider before selecting a technology service provider such as SAP?

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Our solutions are built to cater to the specific needs of the SME market. We take every small detail into consideration while creating these solutions like affordability, functionality, capability of business processes, size of the IT team and so on.

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QQ

QQ

We know that an end-to-end solution can be quite daunting for any size of business for that matter. With our solutions, businesses can start with one application and grow into another solution as they scale up.

Firstly, the SME market is dynamic and full of possibilities. Moreover, it’s exciting to be able to take SAP’s applications, supplement them with other solutions available in the market, and support the growth of burgeoning businesses. Our mission is to become obsessed with finding solutions to the needs of our customers and eventually develop long-term partnerships with them.

How are your solutions helping SMEs scale up?

Finally, what excites you the most about working within the SME market?

Pitch@Palace Global aims to help entrepreneurs gain access and build connectivity around the world. Pitch@Palace is an initiative that serves as a global platform for entrepreneurs seeking new markets, partners and investors. It enables growth, expansion and creation of new opportunities.

Established by The Duke of York, in less than three years Pitch@ Palace has helped over 350 businesses grow. In fact, some are now enjoying global success.

The Duke of York has partnered with Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development to bring Pitch@Palace Global to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The first Pitch@Palace UAE event will take place in October 2017.

The Khalifa Fund for Enterprise Development aims to create a new generation of Emirati entrepreneurs by instilling and enriching the culture of entrepreneurship and innovation in the country.

It also looks to support the development of small and medium enterprises.

For more information, please visit www.khalifafund.ae.

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Blockchain and IoT: made for each other?

Blockchain and IoT provide several tangible benefits as individual technologies, but to really unlock their potential it is important to understand how they work together. Jean-Luc Scherer explores the myriad benefits of their convergence‌ SME ADVISOR

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EDITOR’S PICKS 01. The most immediate applications of blockchain are in businesses where there is huge administrative overhead, whenever there is a lot of paper work and communication that is needed across different systems or different organisations.

02. Blockchain and IoT can be used jointly to ensure accurate data is provided to the insurance company when processing claims: i.e. timestamp of incident from alarm, pictures of damages, police reports.

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oT is everywhere. Almost every object, every asset has nowadays a virtual, a digital representation. And that representation is often obtained by collecting data from an IoT Device, an IoT sensor that allows us to characterise, to quantify that real-world object.

Digitising the world around us allows us to better understand it. It allows us to better understand our businesses. By collecting data about key elements of these businesses, we can analyse them, forecast, identify trends and patterns. All of this helps us to get more insights and ultimately take better decisions. A few years ago, Mc Kinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm, reported that by 2025 the overall yearly impact of IoT on the global economy would be in the range of 4 to 11 trillion dollars. With such an impact, it is fair to assume that in the years to come everything that benefits from a connection will be connected.

IoT scalability and security concerns But IoT has many limitations as well, in terms of security and scalability, and this might make it difficult to capture the abovementioned opportunity. Here are some of these issues: • The IoT device and platform market in itself is very fragmented, with many standards, many vendors. This slows down adoption, since there is uncertainty about the technology, the vendors, the solutions.

• There are also concerns about interoperability and the solutions implemented often tend to create new data silos. Again, slowing adoption.

• Data being the biggest asset, the solutions offered do not necessarily protect data through its lifecycle.

Data is often securely stored in the

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cloud, but these solutions do not cater for compromised integrity of devices and tampering of data at the source.

• Using technologies like PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) to encrypt the data and store it in the cloud creates a tremendous load and has serious scalability limitations.

• Finally, the centralised architecture of most IoT solutions, means that there are serious resiliency issues.

All transactions are processed in the cloud and unavailability of these cloud resources could lead to a complete stop of your business operations.

Why blockchain will save IoT This is where blockchain comes to the rescue. Blockchain being a distributed ledger, it can be used to distribute computation, it can be used to log transactions and business operations.

KSI (Keyless Signature Infrastructure) blockchain is a technology that can be used to provide integrity of all assets, cloud and devices included.

• With KSI, a cryptographically secure hash is created for each asset that we need to protect and it is stored in the blockchain. This allows us to perform audits to see if any data has been tampered with. Every change is logged and unwanted changes in data can be detected and acted on.

At any point in time, anybody can validate what the truth should be.

• By using KSI blockchain, we can log not only data changes in the cloud, but we can also log software changes and configuration changes at the device level. We can make sure that any change on our IoT device is logged and any unwanted changed

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Keyless Signature Infrastructure blockchain is a technology that can be used to provide integrity of all assets, cloud and devices included.

can be acted upon. With blockchain we can make sure secure the data throughout its entire lifecycle.

• With the distributed architecture of blockchain we also remove the limitations that we have with centralised cloud architectures, both in terms of computation as well as resiliency.

IoT will speed-up adoption of blockchain While blockchain will potentially provide a solution to IoT’s scalability and security issues, IoT will also help blockchain.

Blockchain, as you probably know by now provides a distributed ledger, it provides a truth that cannot be altered, that cannot be hacked. Blockchain’s big, big benefit is that it creates trust among untrusted parties (without the need of a trusted third party in the middle). Blockchain can be used to store a common, unalterable truth. It can provide traceability of transactions, truth of what

happened. Blockchain has applications in almost any business, since businesses are all about transactions.

The most immediate applications of blockchain are in businesses where there is huge administrative overhead, whenever there is a lot of paper work and communication that is needed across different systems or different organisations.

The blockchain is really useful to store contracts and the conditions related to these contracts.

The Distributed Ledger can also include clauses that should be executed if a certain condition is met. This leads us to what we call smart contracts. Contracts that are executed if certain conditions are met.

Still when clearances are done manually, there could be a delay until a transaction is logged in the blockchain. This is where IoT comes to the rescue, it allows you to perform automation. IoT could be used to measure

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2. The blockchain can be used to store Electronic Health Records. These can easily be updated by adding sensor data from various medical devices. When physicians access the health records they can tie a prescription to the patient’s EHR. When going the pharmacy scanners can be used to verify that the medication is not in contradiction with any known allergies that are stored in the EHR. Reimbursements can also be automated.

changes that pertain to the conditions of the contract and log these in the blockchain.

Here are some examples where IoT helps increasing the efficiencies targeted with blockchain.

JEAN-LUC SCHERER FOUNDER AND CEO, INNOOPOLIS

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1. Supply chain and logistics. A Distributed Ledger can for instance allow to log when goods are leaving the factory, when they are loaded on a ship, unloaded, when they pass customs, are reloaded on a truck and ultimately delivered to the customer.

IoT can be used at various points in this supply chain. Scanning devices can automatically log what goods are shipped and when they arrived at an intermediary location, hence automatically releasing the payment to the freight and shipping company. Sensors can also be used for instance to measure the temperature of perishables, and log whenever a temperature contract breach is noticed.

Goods can then be rejected automatically.

3. Getting a proper insurance policy et processing claims is also a very tedious process. With blockchain, a policy can be defined as a smart contract. By adding IoT, the premium for this policy can be lowered because your asset is monitored, and any threat can be acted upon. Blockchain and IoT can also be used jointly to ensure accurate data is provided to the insurance company when processing claims: i.e. timestamp of incident from alarm, pictures of damages, police reports. As information gets added to the blockchain, the insurance has all data necessary to process a claim. This reduces the amount of fraud, reduces costs of operations, and speeds up payout. There are many more examples we could come up with, but the important thing to understand is that businesses have to transform in order to stay competitive, to survive. They need to digitise their processes, their assets to collect more data and get insights. Only with the right insights can a business leader steer his company through challenging times. IoT and blockchain are both key elements in this transformation process. If data has become the fuel to our businesses then IoT and blockchain have become the oil rigs and pipelines to that will keep feeding our business engine with the fuel it needs.

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Gen We talk about Gen Z, write about them and even try to analyse them.

But how often do we get a Gen Z themselves to pen their opinions and express what they really think about the way moving forward?

Well, not that often. That’s exactly why when Malika Alidina offered to share her thoughts on the retail space, we had to feature it.

Are retailers there yet?

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EDITOR’S PICKS 01. Misled by the millennials, the industry is focussing almost too aggressively on shifting online to ensure the loyalty of this generation, which might not necessarily be the right way moving forward.

02. To fully grasp the market, retailers need to steer away from niche celebrityoriented styles and aim for bold and daring ideas that allow this generation to be the innovators and entrepreneurs they aspire to be.

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s you walk through the supermarket or clothing store, you will most definitely come across tweens and young adults armed with their mobile phones looking for styles that are quite unorthodox to you and me.

Meet Generation Z. This is the generation that has grown up not knowing what the world looked like without the internet, smartphones or digital devices.

It’s no secret that the retail industry is currently attempting to evolve to cater to the needs of this new demographic. Misled by the millennials, however, the industry is focussing almost too aggressively on shifting online to ensure the loyalty of this generation, which might not necessarily be

the right way moving forward. Let me explain why.

It is evident that much of the Gen Z population is glued to its mobile devices and spends free time online and therefore not surprisingly, 25 per cent of respondents claimed they were online for five hours or more each day according to an IBM and National Retail Federation executive report. But since they are so familiar with the technology, there are very high expectations that need to be met, which is not currently the case with many online stores.

Currently, online clothing stores are somewhat difficult to navigate with apps being ‘too slow’ or not engaging

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The retail industry just needs to refine the online shopping experience to ensure that it becomes transparent and seamless whilst maintaining an immersive experience for the young shoppers.

enough to match the expectations of the demographic.

Due to this, the study found that only 17 per cent of Gen Z consumers use their mobile devices for online shopping and the primary use for the device is texting or chatting. Right now, the online shopping world is in its foetal stage and needs to be heavily modified to ensure that websites can be navigated easily and apps can be downloaded quickly, however currently, the digitalisation of the retail industry is not up to par with a real-life shopping experience.

An executive report by IBM and the National Retail Federation on the subject, which included a study of over 15,000 consumers aged 13-21 years from 16

different countries, highlighted that technology isn’t the only thing what Gen Z is looking for.

Protect their privacy Generation Z has been very uniquely described a “digitally-native, high-spending demographic”, who are aware of mistakes made by the previous generation and have learnt to be more cautious over their security and privacy rights. In the digital world, there is an abundance of online shopping websites that do not ensure the security and privacy of personal information which means that often the young adults steer away from buying online and would much rather go to a store

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where their privacy is not jeopardised. This resulted in 97 per cent of the total surveyed to prefer shopping at a store, instead of online. Therefore, for a retailer to ensure that their customer will come back and use their digital platform, 61 per cent of Gen Z need more information on how they will store their personal data as well as needing secure storage and protection of that data. If the brand does not demonstrate sufficient transparency in protecting sensitive personal information, moving from stores to online websites will be an unnecessary venture.

44%

17%

of Gen Z individuals want to have a chat section on websites, where they can receive further information about products.

of Gen Z consumers use their mobile devices for shopping as it’s primarily used for texting or chatting.

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Quality over quantity With Generation Z mostly spending their money on clothing, their view on the amount of money worth spending is juxtaposing to the view of previous generations. The young adults will happily pay more money if the quality of the product is better and will shop at several different brands rather than one. This is

contrasting to the viewpoint of millennials who lived through the facade of “cheap and cheerful”. Online shopping as a market has not grown the way it has predicted to grow because often the prices are much lower than store bought items. Since it is cheaper it causes the demographic to doubt the quality of the product and therefore returns to a shop with the quality can be assessed.

Loyalty?

When the entire market is at their fingertips, brand loyalty is somewhat archaic to Gen Z and therefore when it comes to shopping, they look for styles that are new, exciting and different from your clichéd business attire and generalised t-shirts. To fully grasp the market, retailers need to steer away from niche celebrityoriented styles and aim for bold and daring ideas that allow this generation to be the innovators and entrepreneurs they aspire to be. For example, when American Eagle Outfitters debuted a range of lingerie

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Generation Z enjoys a hands-on shopping experience; the retail industry will need some technological changes to truly captivate the demographic that is predicted to make up almost half of the total global population.

entitled Aerie, they used ‘natural’ models that were not heavily edited and the company received a 21 per cent increase in sales.

Personalise the experience Further to this, what retailers need both online and in stores is a more immersive shopping experience that allows their market to interact with the brand. 44 per cent of Gen Z individuals wanted to have a “chat” section on websites, where they could share their experience and receive further information on products. As retailers are moving online, what needs to be taken into consideration is that the shopping experience still needs to be personalised and have the same effect of shopping at a store. Several successful companies now have a team that works specifically for the online website as sales executives and each time new person logs into the website, the person can get help from a sales executive, very

like real life, creating a trustworthy and transparent site.

So, does the digital-native Generation Z want to shop online?

The current truth is that they simply do not. This is because digital shopping does not have the same experience as going to a store and trying on clothes and interacting with sales employees. But, what needs to be clarified is that just because they currently do not want to shop online doesn’t mean that they will not. The retail industry just needs to refine the online shopping experience to ensure that it becomes transparent and seamless whilst maintaining an immersive experience for the young shoppers. Whether that retail evolution involves having robot sales executives or virtual reality headsets that allow the customers to virtually browse stores, technology is in abundance, the retail industry just needs to use it effectively.

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Transforming the physical store experience : With a large proportion of customers still opting for in-store shopping, it might be worth giving traditional retail stores a technology upgrade. Here’s how to go about it‌

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EDITOR’S PICKS 01. Revamping in-store processes and shaking up customer experience can be quite a daunting (and expensive) task.

02. Using beacon technology, retailers can target customers when it matters the most.

4/10 retailers are at the risk of shutdown if they don’t consider digital transformation according to Cisco.

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85% of retail executives are considering launching in-store digital initiatives, reports Capgemini research.

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s one of the most customer-centric industries, the retail sector faces a tough choice: transform in-store experiences with digitsation or continue using legacy systems that will very likely result in poor market share. Research undertaken by Cisco, in fact, predicts that four out of 10 retail brands are at the risk of shutdown by 2020 if they fail to transform themselves using digital strategies.

Having said that, revamping in-store processes and shaking up customer experience can be quite a daunting (and expensive) task.

Retailers need to strike the right balance between physical and digital to achieve success. Experts suggest that a combination of online and offline initiatives will go a long way in reinforcing brand presence. For instance, a report by Deloitte highlighted the following technology trends that will shape digital retail: • Reimagined in-store shopping experience, focusing on inspiration or convenience; • Conversational commerce: adoption of connected devices and voice user interfaces (VUI); • Robotic technologies and AI-assisted shopping; • Applying agile methodologies at scale.

Why the in-store experience is still relevant While customers continue to opt for in-store shopping due to the social and tangible experience it provides, their expectations of a retail store are rising. They want an experience as immersive as online shopping; one that is highly personalised and engages with them at every step of the journey.

In an interview with rsmus.com, John Nicolopoulos, National Retail and Restaurant Sector Leader, remarks: “The benefits of a brick and mortar store include direct consumer interaction, brand promotion and the idea that a physical store truly compliments the online shopping experience. The consumer may research a product online, maybe even purchase it there, but many are having the

product shipped directly to the store for pickup as well. While there, customers may buy additional items at the store, encounter product promotions which furthers brand interaction, experience direct customer service and may receive additional discounts or giveaways. Department store retailers or stores like Target all benefit from a physical space to sell their goods, but other retailers in sectors like entertainment, health and wellness and grocery, for instance, also benefit from the brick and mortar concept. This inperson engagement develops a memorable experience for their consumers, something that is key to building long-standing loyalty.

E-tailers are also seeing the benefits of a brick and mortar as more and more are opening stores to advance in-person engagement where customers can touch, see, try on and experience the products they want.”

Retail innovation So, if you are looking to go down the digital transformation route, here are some technologies to consider 1. Warehouse management systems: Digitization of your back-end systems can improve time to value and boost agility.

A simple move like giving your staff mobile capabilities can significantly boost efficiency and help them with real-time inventory and supply chain management.

2. Mobile Pay: Whether its mobile PoS or self-checkout, customers want easy payment solutions. There is a rapid shift from cashless to cardless and technologies like M-wallets and ApplePay will need to be integrated across retail stores. More recently, Amazon Go’s model has set a new standard for seamless payment. The jury is still out on its successful practical implementation.

3. Beacons and data analytics: Beacons are small devices that use Bluetooth technology to send personalised messages to customers notifying them of offers and deals. According to estimates

by Business Insider, beacons would

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Retailers will need to strike the right balance between physical and digital to achieve success.

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help generate US$ 40 billion in retail sales in the year 2016. Using beacon technology, retailers can target customers when it matters the most. For instance, retailers can target customers when they are in specific locations. Becaons can also provide intelligence on customer behaviour that can help retailers to provide offers that are relevant to them.

Data analytics also plays a pivotal role in giving retailers insights about their customers. Retailers need to use these to understand customer behaviour, create personalised touchpoints and offer tailormade experiences.

4. Chatbots and AI: An article on altexsoft explains: “The growing adoption of artificial intelligence and massive popularity of chat apps unlocks opportunities to automate several routine business processes, such as customer support. Using a smart bot to handle most of the typical issues, like answering standard questions or handling returns, retail companies can reduce staff, while improving efficiency and customer satisfaction.”

5. Virtual reality: Several prominent brands are integrating VR experiences within their showrooms to enable potential customers to enjoy the product’s features before purchase. The beauty of such technology is that it can transform an ordinary physical space into an immersive experience. Moreover, it helps customers visualise how the product or service will fit into their daily lives. For instance, home interior stores are using this technology so that customers can see what a piece of furniture will look like within their homes. Another common example of the implementation of VR is in fitting rooms, where clients can see how clothes and accessories will look on them without having to physically try it on.

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AI’S IMPACT ACROSS INDUSTRIES AI AND THE OVERALL ECONOMY

HEALTHCARE

US$ 1.49 tn 72%

56%

46%

US$ 26bn

66%

22%

TO US$ 2.95 TRILLION IS THE EXPECTED OVERALL IMPACT OF AI BY 2025

TO US$ 39 BILLION WAS THE ESTIMATED INVESTMENT IN AI

OF BUSINESS INDIVIDUALS CONSIDER AI AS A MASSIVE BUSINESS ADVANTAGE IN THE FUTURE

41%

OF COMPANIES ARE STILL UNSURE ABOUT THE BENEFITS OF AI

MANUFACTURING 30%

ROBOTS PER 10,000 WORKERS IS THE AVERAGE RATIO OF MAN TO MACHINE IN CHINA’S INDUSTRIAL SECTOR SME ADVISOR

56%

BELIEVE THAT THE BENEFITS THAT AI ADDS IN TERMS OF PRODUCTIVITY OUTWEIGH EMPLOYMENT CONCERNS

BELIEVE AI CAN IMPROVE OVERALL HEALTH AND WELL-BEING

BELIEVE AI HAS THE POTENTIAL TO FIND SOLUTIONS TO DISEASES LIKE CANCER

SEE AI REPLACING HUMANS AS THEIR HEALTH COACHES

EXPECT AI TO REPLACE THEIR DOCTORS

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EDUCATION

RETAIL

THINK THAT AI CAN IMPROVE THE STATE OF GLOBAL EDUCATION

THINK THAT AI HAS THE CAPABILITY TO PROVIDE A MORE PERSONALISED EXPERIENCE

58%

38%

58%

35%

SEE AI REPLACING TUTORS IN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS

VIEW THE LACK OF HUMAN TOUCH AS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE WITH AI CUSTOMER SERVICE

40%

65%

OF REDUCTION IN LOST SALES CAN BE ACHIEVED BY USING AI TECHNOLOGY FOR FORECASTING

30%

INCREASE IN ONLINE SALES IS POSSIBLE DUE TO AI-LED PERSONALISATION TECHNIQUES

30% - 50%

REDUCTION IN FORECASTING ERRORS IS POSSIBLE USING AI-BASED APPROACHES

OF FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

BY STUDENTS CAN BE ANSWERED

BY VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS

TRANSPORTATION 15%

OF CARS SOLD IN 2030 ARE PREDICTED TO BE FULLY AUTONOMOUS

90%

REDUCTION RATE IN VEHICLE CRASHES IS POSSIBLE BY ADOPTION OF AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES

Sources: ‘India and the artificial intelligence revolution’, S. S. Vempati, Carnegie India, PwC, McKinsey Global Institute’s Artificial Intelligence – The Next Digital Frontier?

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A device that will

transform

customer experiences Nick Marshall of Twistar unveils a new device that is designed to give customer interaction an edge.

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EDITOR’S PICKS 01. Twistar is a new type of Android-based Internet of Things (IoT) mobile device, which is designed for businesses to engage customers in a new and exciting way, from designing beautiful customer surveys to collecting voice and artificial intelligence (AI).

02. For the growth of his product, Marshall has his eyes set on large markets and a diverse range of industries.

W

e all talk about customer service and how critical it is for the overall health of a business.

After all, that’s where the money comes in from. But, how many businesses do something about it? While more than 75 per cent of all businesses now recognise customer experience (CX) as their number one priority; these businesses typically only monitor data from 4 per cent of their customers. This isn’t because they don’t want to, it’s because they are unable to!

This is where Nick Marshall’s Twistar proves to be a tool for disruption. Twistar is a new type of Android-based Internet of Things (IoT) mobile device, which is designed for businesses to engage customers in a new and exciting way, from designing beautiful customer surveys to collecting voice and artificial intelligence (AI). By helping businesses understand who their customers are and how they feel, Twistar is enabling companies to make a deeper and more meaningful connection with customers, to better serve their needs.

Having founded the company in February 2016, the striving entrepreneur has already managed to accomplish so much in so little time. “Six to twelve months is a long time in the start-up world!” laughs Marshall.

“In the past three months, we have seen: multiple patents pending, our public launch, first clients, first pilots confirmed, third generation circuit board production, hardware prototyping and first funding.”

The first prototype As we take a closer look at the device, we discover that it’s sleek and stylish and can fit into any surrounding without creating too much of a distraction. So, this already puts the product leaps and bounds ahead of any other customer feedback system available today.

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In terms of functionality, it’s simple and intuitive. It captures data from customers – and its surroundings – and feeds it back into a back-end system in real time. From a customer’s point of view, it’s appealing because it saves a lot of time and requires just a rating across four criteria: atmosphere, food, service and value. Moreover, its intuitive and engaging interface makes the process of giving feedback fun. (Yes, bid adieu to long survey forms!) On the other hand, the company collecting feedback has the option to develop bespoke customer surveys and loyalty campaigns as well as take advantage of real-time business intelligence and actionable analytic reports. “Instant insight at your fingertips”

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Within the industry, it is apparent that voice/AI has the potential to revolutionise customer research to a staggering extent.

is what Twistar promises in the tagline for its product, and that’s exactly what it delivers.

Beauty and functionality aside, what Marshall believes truly sets his service apart is accurate data. “The key driver has been accurate data; being able to collect data quickly and easily from respondents, better than any other solution globally, gives us a competitive edge. We are the first company to put voice/AI ‘in-themoment’ in this manner,” he quips.

With a solid proposition in his hands, it’s only natural to wonder how far Marshall is from monetising his offer? After almost 18 months of prototyping, Twistar lodged its US & EU patents in mid-May. Since then, Marshall and his team have started

engaging with clients and partners, and the response has been incredible. “We have signed up more than 40 global licence partners and are currently outlining the first Twistar pilot programmes in retail, hospitality and travel industries in the US, EU and GCC. The UAE is a great launchpad for Twistar, and we are receiving great feedback in Europe and the US,” beams Marshall.

Funding to fuel growth For the growth of his product, Marshall has his eyes set on large markets and a diverse range of industries. There’s no doubt that his grand ambitions require some sort of financial backing. The good news that he’s managed to acquire it.

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Established: : Feb 2016

Employees: 3 full time, 6 part-time

Year on year growth: We are the first company putting AI in-the-moment. This presents an amazing opportunity for clients to engage and for companies to understand customers in real-time.

Challenge takeaway: The harder you work, the luckier you get!

“We are now in the final stage of closing a pre-seed convertible funding round,” he shares. Marshall believes this funding will allow him to fast track hardware and platform development work over the next three to six months and to get the best possible performance metrics from pilot programmes.

It’s clear that Twistar has the potential to be used widely across the business landscape, but how did Marshall convince investors to support his nascent startup? “I think there were three factors that played a critical role. Firstly, our team; we are a strong team of proven ‘founders’, who have successfully established, grown and exited businesses previously. Our skill-sets match the project requirements and all our interests are aligned. Secondly, our product; we have developed a great new product with different parts; most significantly our software and AI components offer an increasing value proposition as the business grows. Finally,

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the market we operate in. Our market is enormous and the ‘customer experience management’ sector is growing at more than 25 per cent per annum globally,” he explains.

Not so smooth sailing Despite an encouraging start, Marshall is careful not to ignore the challenges. He opens up about the day-to-day difficulties he faces: “We have a lot of moving parts within Twistar, which makes managing client expectations challenging. They have high expectations of product, service, support and delivery, which is understandable. As a start-up, you are exactly that ‘starting up’ and it’s difficult to satisfy all these needs simultaneously, but it is definitely achievable.”

To move past these initial challenges, Marshall has a straightforward modus operandi. “We are transparent with clients; where we were, where we are, where we’re going! You must be honest and straight

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If your venture is going to require external financing, it will likely take longer to raise funds than you expect.

Collaborate! Reach out to new people, businesses, clients and partners. Twistar could never have gone as far or as fast without this approach and mind-set!

with them because they won’t hesitate to be direct with you! We are always looking to improve our product and understanding of the market, as they continually evolve. Stop ‘selling’, start ‘listening’ – if you don’t really understand your clients, you are never going to be able to provide a worthwhile product or service,” he explains.

He adds: “From an operational perspective, we are dynamic, as we are selecting the newest and most innovative solutions. From a product perspective, research, development and testing are integral considerations as IoT, digital connectivity and AI are constantly evolving. We need to balance future technology opportunities with commercial viability.”

voice/AI has the potential to revolutionise customer research to a staggering extent. The technological advances we are making now, will be considered mainstream in the next four years,” responds Marshall. And, he hopes that the growing interest in the AI technology field will draw attention to his compelling service. “‘Feedback’ is at the heart of what we are offering our clients, and this is at the core of how we want to take Twistar forwards,” he concludes.

Striding forward confidently Beyond the hype, what potential does AI realistically have to make a difference?

“Within the industry, it is apparent that

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MEET EILA, THE NEWEST AI CHATBOT Companies that are working with technologies that have the potential to automate processes, reduce costs and improve customer service will undoubtedly thrive in the future. Samer Tarazi and Odeh Semreen are the Cofounders of Eila, one such concept that promises to shake up customer interaction.

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EDITOR’S PICKS 01. Chatbots are an appealing concept simply because messaging platforms are being used massively every single day by consumers of all ages, and are taking over the mobile ecosystem.

02. Eila has launched two version of the bot service and stood second place in Facebook’s Bots for Messenger Challenge in the MENA and Sub-Saharan Africa region.

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ila is a chatbot that helps businesses sell their products on Facebook Messenger through chat. Intriguing?

Well, that’s not it. Eila’s service is offered through a chatbot-as-a-service model, to automate sales with artificial intelligence using conversational commerce.

“Chatbots are an appealing concept simply because messaging platforms are being used massively every single day by consumers of all ages, and are taking over the mobile ecosystem. These facts simply mean that businesses will either need to serve their customers where they exist or risk losing them to a competitor that does. Moreover, employment costs are constantly rising and businesses are always struggling with talent management. At Eila, we automate certain tasks for businesses. This means our services will be able to reduce, or eventually replace, an employee and will end up saving businesses quite a bit of money. It will in fact also enable them to open more business opportunities as they will start being able to serve customers 24/7 with minimal investment,” remarks Samer Tarazi, Cofounder and CEO of Eila.

The kind of milestones that Tarazi’s team has managed to cross in only eight months of running the business speaks volumes about the potential of their concept. Eila has launched two version of the bot service and stood second in Facebook’s Bots for Messenger Challenge in the MENA and SubSaharan Africa region. More recently, Eila joined hands with the well-known fast-food brand Domino’s Pizza to offer a pizza pickup and delivery service using chat! Tarazi and his team have been able to automate up to 15 per cent of sales of some of his customers.

Seeing that the company is ticking all the right boxes that a one should at the start-up stage, we wonder if Tarazi and his co-founder are looking at funding. “We have had investor interest, but we haven’t raised any money

so far. We are completely bootstrapped.

We undertake third party projects to bring in some cash, and we’ve used that to mainly grow the team and build our core,” he explains.

Building a dream team Eila’s growth has been phenomenal given the nature of its offering. Even so, there are challenges that are currently stifling its tremendous potential. “Finding, hiring and keeping skilled employees, who have the right mind set to push the start-up forward, is definitely our biggest challenge,” remarks Tarazi. “Many tech companies have positioned their technical centres in Jordan and that has caused the salaries to significantly increase, making it quite challenging for start-ups/SMEs to keep up and hire. The rest of the resources that remain in the market usually lack the needed skills and professionalism to push the start-up forward. Start-ups would usually get over those hurdles by luring employees in through the culture and equity, however in our part of the world, people don’t really seem to be interested in owning a chunk of what “could be”. Very few start-ups have grown to become truly successful, and thus it is a challenge to build the right team within our region.”

“We find young people with extremely high potential, we instantly infuse the highly agile and productive culture of start-ups within them and give them the space to learn and explore to become truly useful to the start-up. Of course, this does not apply to all people and not everyone is capable of learning and growing especially at such a young age. So, what we do is we start the search with a massive filtration process where employees need to earn an interview, for example, we create a developer treasure hunt to find our latest hire and we asked developers to solve the code to find answers

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The AI market will be as important as the internet was in the 90s and as big as mobile is today.

that qualified them to the next round and on to the interview. Another very important decision that we’ve made is that we no longer confine ourselves to a geo-location and are open to hiring people from all over the world, and work using truly agile methodologies that help us become driven by progress rather than time,” explains Tarazi.

This strategy has helped him find quality people, who have the core skills to become a beneficial member of the team.

Taking quantum leaps ahead Despite the inherent challenges he is facing, Tarazi continues to focus on moving forward.

Speaking about his plans for the future, he says: “We already have customers in Jordan, Iraq and the UAE and are planning to

expand internationally by joining a strategic accelerator that can open those doors.

In terms of operational strategy, we are currently super focused on two things. First is polishing our product and making sure we provide real value to our customers every single day. Second is exploring potential markets to find our sweet spot and aim to establish our HQ in that specific market and we believe that this will start by finding the right accelerator that can help us expedite this process and open those markets rather than starting from scratch.”

Tarazi also shares that agile methodologies are strongly implemented within the dayday processes at Eila. Each member of the team sees and understands the big picture.

Teams are then set on 2-week sprints and

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The AI industry will boom and more than 85 per cent of customer/business interaction will be done through some form of automated software saving time and money.

aim to achieve certain goals within those 14 days. Especially since Eila’s team works completely remotely, it has helped them stay aligned.

This team spirit combined with the speed of execution is what Tarazi believes will take his company forward. “This is the only way we can stay on top of the competition, we focus on speed whether in polishing the product, testing marketing approaches, or even launching new features. If you’re faster than your competition, even if you make mistakes, you will eventually end up first. In the NLP field in specific, things are rapidly getting updated and modified. The entire Messenger platform is getting major features every couple of months and this means we need to keep improving, especially at this early stage, from adding a simple emoji to simplify the user’s perception of choices, to enabling customers to pay directly from within the bot. As technology and the entire ecosystem evolves, we constantly need to keep up,

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otherwise, we will most definitely be left behind,” he adds.

Challenging convention There’s absolutely no doubt that technologies such as Eila point to the future of customer interaction, and will completely revamp the sales and marketing functions within businesses. Looking to the future, Tarazi believes that the AI industry in general will boom and that more than 85 per cent of customer/business interaction will be done through some form of automated software that will save time and money.

“It is a very new market and nobody still has the real facts; exploration and an open eye is crucial at this stage. Having said that, I think whoever goes into the chatbot, and more broadly AI, market will end up being a winner as I truly believe that businesses of all sorts will find value in automation and this will grow to become one of the most major markets in the tech industry in the next five years.”

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SMART LABOUR: IGNITING POSSIBILITIES FOR UAE’S BLUE-COLLAR WORKERS

Abu Muadh has taken a whole new approach to making a difference, and it’s proving to be impactful.

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EDITOR’S PICKS 01. Smart Labour is the first exclusive platform for labourers and aims at making the two million blue-collar workers in the UAE happier, smarter and more productive.

02. Smart Labour also has a platform for residents to contribute minutes, data and vouchers, thereby introducing a new currency to do good.

03. The platform has integrated the Dubai Smart Government’s happiness meter into our platform

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The UAE Government’s support towards entrepreneurs like us has been a key enabler of growth.

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here are many technologies available to us today that provide support to those in need. Several innovative services and platforms are on a mission to: improve the state of elderly-care, provide education in rural areas, enable access to better hygiene and much more. Yet, it seems like not enough is being done. When the young and ambitious Abu Muadh stepped into the world of entrepreneurship, he felt the same way.

The passion to make a difference was intense and he wanted to combine it with his technological acumen to create something that had the capability to make a large-scale impact. Months of research led him to a glaringly obvious gap: the personal development of blue-collar workers. So, on May 1, 2016, he launched Smart Labour – an exclusive platform

for labourers that aims to make them happier, smarter and more productive.

“We help organisations with blue-collar staff to improve their productivity via tailored educational content in multiple languages and through digital engagement by encouraging blue-collar workers to submit feedback, suggestions and report security incidents via voice notes (in their language) and via pictures. Our platform has a full-fledged video course to teach basic English. The idea is to improve things at their workplace by eliminating any language and communication barriers. Have you heard of technology that allows a construction worker, for example, to provide feedback/suggestions in his language with one click? We all subconsciously look at a blue-collar worker as a doer and not a thinker! Many of them have great ideas and suggestions, but

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lack the communication skills to express themselves,” explains Muadh.

The business of giving Smart Labour recently crossed the 10,000 registered users mark and currently has a phenomenal user base of 12,500 blue-collar workers on its platform. It was one of 575 participants in the Expo Live Innovation Grant Programme, and secured US$ 100,000 in funding by the Dubai Expo 2020 team as part of the initiative. Muadh plans to use this amount towards improving his application and promoting it even further. Beaming with pride, he says: “We applied to the Expo Live Innovation Grant Programme and being part of this initiative really boosted our credibility. A panel of experts evaluated our business model after we provided detailed information about our plans, operational

mechanics and financials. What set us apart was that we could demonstrate a viable business plan that had clear milestones and KPIs with a huge social impact. Moreover, our offering is unique as no one has created a technology platform that is tailor-made for blue-collar workers!”

Funding aside, there are many more feathers in Muadh’s proverbial cap. His company was a semi-finalist in MIT’s Pan Arabian Awards 2017. He has also managed to sign a contract with Dubai Taxi to help their drivers using his platform.

“We’ve developed a bespoke application for Dubai Taxi to reward their drivers and help them better understand regulations and customer service principles. We are focusing on a strategic objective that can potentially bring a direct benefit to the blue-collar worker and the employer. Like in the case of Dubai Taxi, we are focusing

on improving the driver’s soft skills with a strategic objective of reducing their fines and black points,” shares the entrepreneur.

More recently, he launched a food service in Ramadan, where labourers put in a request for food, residents then buy the food online and labourers pick up the food by showing a voucher code at partner restaurants.

Smart Labour also ran a competition on Facebook asking people to nominate a blue-collar worker, who could win a smartphone. “We received many nominations and the final winner was a housemaid in Abu Dhabi whose mother in India did not have a phone and was always inconvenienced by talking to her daughter from a neighbour’s house. She sent the smartphone to her mother so that she can talk to her easily and see her via the Internet. I went to Abu Dhabi to give her

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Established: : May 1, 2016

Employees: 8

Year on year growth: 0 users – 12,500 users in 15 months USP: The first exclusive Smart Platform for blue-collar workers and labourers Challenge takeaway: Being involved in a business that is filled with goodness and empowering people is the most satisfying feeling.

the phone and the lady was overwhelmed and it felt so good to connect her to her family,” Muadh reminisces.

Motivated by impact These achievements and small joys drive Muadh to continue pursuing his single mission: leave a lasting impact on UAE’s blue-collar workers and contribute towards the country’s happiness agenda. “I close my eyes and dream of a day when every blue-collar worker will use a smartphone and will be fluent in basic English and Arabic. This thought motivates me every day to do more for Smart Labour. I can’t imagine what kind of impact we could create by technologically-enabling 52 per cent of UAE’s current workforce!”

Through his work as a social entrepreneur, Muadh hopes to inspire more people to identify gaps and come up with new ideas and services that could have a social impact.

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A labour of love Smart Labour is facing some tricky challenges such as getting labourers to sign up and convincing employers of the app’s tremendous impact. “Since Smart Labour is a completely new concept, we are facing a challenge in identifying employers who are willing to give us a chance to show them how we can help them make blue-collar workers happier and more productive. Also, social entrepreneurship is relatively nascent and it is taking some time for people to understand what we stand for and what we are trying to achieve,” he says.

Muadh worries that it may take him longer to implement Smart Labour in the UAE and that may potentially delay his plans of venturing out to other countries in the Middle East. To get around this he is actively seeking partnerships with government entities, embassies, telecom providers, money exchange houses,

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As a social enterprise, don’t undermine the importance of being financially viable and sustainable. People are more likely to invest in a social business if they see you standing on firm ground.

restaurants etc. Speaking of the various other steps he’s undertaking to move past his challenges, he adds: “We are trying our best to benefit from all the great initiatives from the UAE Government to support entrepreneurs. We are making a conscious effort to be more active on Social media and our reach has grown considerably over the last few months. We tell employers that Smart Labour can help them finish their buildings faster as we strongly believe that happy and smart blue-collar workers will positively impact productivity. Reaching out to employers to give Smart Labour a chance to be one of their ‘Year of giving’ initiatives is another thing on our agenda.”

Building a path for the future Abu Muadh has given himself two years to achieve a tough milestone: reach 2.2 million blue collar workers across the UAE and get them onto his platform. One reason for his confidence is that his solution is currently undergoing significant updates that will bring in wider benefits for its users. For instance, his team is going to launch an online rewards store that will offer residents and employers multiple options to reward workers based on the progress they make towards learning objectives and work targets. The application will broaden its range of rewards to include toys, electronic devices, groceries, telecom packages and much more. “We are currently working closely with relevant partner associations to see how we can offer the most enticing incentives. Imagine gifting a toy to a worker that is going on a vacation back home or giving him a 50 per cent discount on air tickets; all with a few clicks! Most importantly, we are revamping our platform based on actual feedback from labourers and their employers. We are offering free POCs to employers with blue-collar workers with a guaranteed productivity improvement and to expand adoption,” he explains.

His team is working towards providing core services to a labourer from any smartphone’s web browser. They are looking to provide multiple deployment models via tablets, kiosks etc. with flexibility for large consortiums to track blue-collar productivity across various organisations. They are also considering introducing technology like artificial intelligence and blockchain soon once they have a reasonable critical mass in terms of users. “We have also ventured into providing bespoke software, especially for blue-collar workers. For instance, an employer has asked us to develop a simple voice based task management system to track factory production more effectively.

In the short term, we are focusing on the UAE market – particularly within the government, construction and hospitality sectors. We want to put the UAE on the map for doing something completely different and innovative for blue-collar workers. In the long-term, we want to venture out to the other countries in the Middle East. We also want to collect data about workers and provide a 360-degree view of the blue-collar workforce. This can provide deep insights and predictive analytics tremendously helping in the areas of health, safety, workforce planning and more. For example, we want to be able to alert the central office of a taxi company in real time that a driver may have a heart attack so that they can take immediate action and prevent an accident,” he adds.

Aspire to inspire Abu Muadh’s work provides a powerful testament about the potential of technology to transform lives and offer widespread solutions to improve general wellbeing.

“There are real challenges for the bluecollar workers, and we need to unite using relevant technologies to tackle them,” he concludes.

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KEEPING AN EYE ON THE

FUTURE Rabih Bou Rashid seems to be testing the limits on how much he can achieve with drone technology. We explore his growing ambitions...

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EDITOR’S PICKS 01. Falcon Eye Drones (FEDS) was the first business in the Middle East established to offer drone only services for the purposes of mapping and inspections.

02. Drones are evolving at a great rate and continuing to bring the world’s best drones and services to the UAE and GCC is our mission.

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alcon Eye Drones or FEDS was one of the first businesses in the Middle East to use drone technology for mapping and inspections. Today, it is one of the top service companies operating high-end drones and making major advances in its field. “It is not a big secret how we established ourselves as one of the top drone service providers.

We always aim to deliver exceptional customer service and have developed some world class applications. We are growing at 600 per cent from last year, driven mostly by the rapidly international spread of drone use. We have developed a unique application that is proving to be very efficient for our clients and is now in very high demand,” beams Rabih Bou Rashid, the man at the helm of the fastgrowing start-up.

The work on Rabih Bou Rashid’s drone services is in an early stage of its growth. Yet, he has been able to close multiple long-term projects with local governments: the kind of contracts that allow for financial stability and support his expansion plans. In fact, it has enabled him to set up a second office in Abu Dhabi.

Such financial stability is especially important to Rabih Bou Rashid since he hasn’t raised any external funding so far.

“We haven’t had any external funding rounds yet. So far, all our funding has come from our original shareholders. We might seek additional funding next year to accelerate our expansion. We are using current funds for expansion, including hiring and would use additional funding to accelerate this. I should add here that our shareholders are very happy with the expert, international team we have built, the quality of our work and the reputation we’ve gained. They put a lot of trust in me as the Managing Director to lead the

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The technology already exists to allow mass use of drones; the challenge is the need for effective regulation.

company in the right direction and spend their money wisely.”

Managing turbulence Rabih Bou Rashid is working with a nascent technology so raising awareness and educating customers of its vast potential is a challenge. “We spent a long time in the beginning just explaining what drones are, what they can do and how much our services could save companies in terms of time and money. As drones have become more widely known and understood in the recent past, things have turned around and now we have

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Established: August 24, 2014

Employees: 7 Year on year growth: We create world class drone services, customised to meet our customers’ needs.

USP: We create world class drone services customised to meet our customers’ needs.

Challenge takeaway: Even in a robotics business, human connections is the number one key to success.

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many companies approaching us for our services,” he explains.

Rabih Bou Rashid adds that regulations are also a huge challenge for him. When he set up the business they were nonexistent and since then there have been four or five revisions to the laws governing drones. Having to constantly adapt to stay aligned to the latest standards is proving to be costly for his young business.

He adds: “We support the need for effective regulation of drones by the government, but we would like to see improvements in the efficiency of the processes. For example, obtaining approvals to fly involves multiple authorities and the procedure takes a long time, which can cause us to lose business. The time required to receive approvals and the high cost of these

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also partnering internationally with big names in the industry to help us maintain the high standards we aim for. We have evolved our services because of new advances in drones and related software.”

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The industry is still in its infancy and there is so much room for growth.

permits are deterring some of the early adopters of our technology.” To get around these challenges, Rabih Bou Rashid and his team are now working closely with the relevant authorities to help improve the overall use and regulation of the technology. And, he believes his hard work and dedication has paid off. The ease of drone regulations in most countries has positively impacted investment in drones and more companies are using it to improve their offer.

External challenges aside, he is also focusing on keeping his systems on par with the global developments. “We are constantly in training mode and regularly updating our systems. Drones are evolving at a rapid rate and continuing to bring the world’s best drones and services to the UAE and GCC is our mission. We are

Sky is the limit So, what’s next on Rabih Bou Rashid’s agenda? “Our goal was always to be the number one drone company in the Middle East and we are on track. The next step is being one of the top companies across the world. We already operate in the GCC and are in talks for projects in the wider Arab world. We have plans to go international towards the end of next year or 2019.”

Given the dynamic and fast-paced nature of the sector that Rabih Bou Rashid works in, what does he reckon the future of his industry will look like four years from now? “This is a very interesting question. I truly believe that in four years we will be seeing drones buzzing everywhere: look outside your window you will see a stream of them. The technology already exists to allow mass use of drones, the challenge is the need for effective regulation. We just don’t have the airspace for it yet nor do we have enough landing pods or parking spaces. The biggest change will be transportation, for both humans and goods. Drone transport really makes sense: reduced congestion, reduced CO2 foot print, cheaper/faster mass deliveries. In four years, I will be flying to work in a fully automated flying machine. The industry is still in its infancy and there is so much room for growth.

This region has its unique challenges, but persistence will eventually pay off,” he concludes.

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ARE YOU ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTION?

Almost every entrepreneur knows all too well that it’s important to address the how, what and when of starting a business. But, are they missing the obvious?

Binod Shankar of Kaplan Genesis Institute opines…

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EDITOR’S PICKS 01. Binod co-founded the financial training company Genesis Institute in Dubai nine years ago.

02. Why? This is the most important question you must answer before toddling off into the challenging world of entrepreneurship.

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t’s a eureka moment! Your friends and family think that your latest brainwave on the business front is the next best thing since sliced bread. Do you -

• march ahead, all inspired?

• laugh at them?

• think about this a bit more?

I think we all know the answer. But, what is there to think about I hear you chorus?

I am not talking about crunching the numbers and thinking of profits and cash flows at this stage. It’s not about preparing the business plan. No Sir. Not yet.

Spreadsheets come last, although a lot of the time I find people ultra-keen to start working on the “model”. Some people like the look of a neat, well written, professionally bound business plan at the outset, supported by some impressive looking numbers. I mean, “Net revenue of US$ 5 million in Month Three, increasing at a CAGR of 5.3 per cent for the next 24 months” looks precise and hence both compelling and comforting. Excel is …err…. seductive.

But stop right there.

I am talking about WHY you started, not WHAT you will do or WHEN or HOW. This is the most important question you must answer before toddling off into the challenging world of entrepreneurship.

And, please don’t say passion. I swear if I had a dollar for every time a wannabe entrepreneur said that word I would now be the owner of several islands in the Caribbean.

BINOD SHANKAR MANAGING DIRECTOR KAPLAN

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Think I’m being too harsh? Let me explain.

The conventional wisdom goes like this. Find something you are passionate about. Then you will become a success. And, success will lead to fulfilment. A simple, elegant formula

that apparently applies to careers as well as entrepreneurship.

Hmm. Let’s examine this.

At various stages of my life, I have been passionate about being a jet fighter pilot, a special forces soldier and a rock star.

That doesn’t mean I would have been even half decent at any of these. Lots of beach fanatics are passionate about surfing but I doubt whether they can make a living out of riding the waves. The globe is generously littered with people who were passionate about something, naively started a business founded on passion and bombed big time.

Research has shown a feeble link (if at all) between your interests and success.

So, passion alone doesn’t cut it.

What about being passionate AND good?

Surely a combo of liking something and being good at it must count! Turns out that being merely “good” isn’t enough. Because these days you must be outstanding, insanely good, exceptionally great, to stand out and succeed. The difference between you and the competition should be 50 per cent or more for word of mouth to gain traction. And if you can’t do this better stay at home and watch TV. Even if you are brilliant and succeed that doesn’t mean you will find meaning and purpose in your life. Why? Because you can fall in love with and succeed in building and selling widgets, the world’s biggest widget maker with millions stashed in a raft of properties, stocks and bank accounts. But I know quite a few self-made millionaires who didn’t quite get the fulfilment they were hoping for. The alchemy for transforming money into meaning is not available on Amazon. Not yet anyway.

Hence, the math of “Passion + Ability = Success” and “Success= Fulfilment”, the recipe for success in life that most of us grew

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Look at your past, and identify the times where you were naturally at your best, where everything went perfectly when even though it wasn’t a commercial success, you loved being a part of it.

up believing, rarely works in the long-term in a career or in entrepreneurship.

So, what works? This whole passion thing is very inwardly focused, almost selfish.

Who gives a toss at what you are passionate about? Or even good at?

What really matters is how valuable is your product or service? What big problem does it solve? What gap are you filling? In other words, will people pay good money to buy your products or services? Why does your company exist?

The WHY is so important.

Simon Sinek talks about this a lot. Why is Apple such a phenomenally successful brand? Because they are driven by something more fundamental than success.

In the case of Apple, the quality of the user experience has always been the top priority.

If Apple were like everyone else, they would say, “We make great computers, they’re beautifully designed, simple to use and user-friendly. Want to buy one?”

Instead, Apple says, “Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use, and user-friendly. We just happen to make great computers. Want to buy one?”

Massive difference.

This is the WHY, the DNA of Apple. It’s the purpose, the cause that inspires them. If you know the WHY, you will figure out the

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What really matters is how valuable is your product or service?

What big problem does it solve? What gap are you filling?

WHAT and the HOW. The HOW (simplicity, attention to detail, owning the technology etc.) is simply the way Apple makes the WHY happen and is hence secondary.

When I co-founded the financial training company Genesis Institute in Dubai nine years ago, financial success was the last thing on my mind. Of course, I was passionate about training and was pretty good at it, having tried my hand on a part time basis for 12 years. The WHY was to make a big impact on students studying for the CFA exam. The HOW was mainly delivery of high-quality classes and a far superior learning experience. Commercial success came, as it usually does because we were fanatically and consistently focused on achieving the WHY, whether it was in rigorous faculty selection or the close monitoring of student feedback.

There are many upsides of knowing your WHY. It makes decisions so much simpler, because your constitution, the charter, has already been set. It also makes hiring

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and retaining the people easier. And it gives you resilience and endurance; as the Philosopher Frederick Nietzsche, once said: “He who has a ‘why’ to live can bear almost any how”.

All that is fine. But how do you find out the WHY? Big fat hint: It’s NOT about making money.

Look at your past, and identify the times where you were naturally at your best, where everything went perfectly when even though it wasn’t a commercial success, you loved being a part of it. The times that made you come alive. You may find that there is a pattern. You may find that the thing that was driving you in each of those times was the same. This is your WHY. So, close the spreadsheet, kick back your heels, and spend some time journeying into your past and thinking about how you can make an impact.

Trust me, it is worth it.

Why AI is an opportunity not a threat, for businesses Jose Berengueres, Associate Professor at UAE University, answers the question that is currently on everyone’s mind‌

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EDITOR’S PICKS 01. The refusal to embrace the use of AI today is like refusing PC in the office in 1999. It will hurt you at the end.

02. In five years, robots will better than us at things from diagnosing cancer to babysitting kids.

JOSE BERENGUERES ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UAE UNIVERSITY

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fter 20 years in the doldrums, the art of making machines think for us is experiencing a renaissance. Two decades of drops in the cost of the computing power of Nvidia cards have enabled machines to finally be better than humans at some specific tasks such as classifying cats on YouTube, recommending Netflix movies and programming cars to drive. However, it does not stop there. In five years, robots will better than us at things from diagnosing cancer to babysitting kids.

And our laptops will have IQ equivalent to 25 points. So naturally, things will change a lot.

Some companies are already taking steps to prepare for this up and coming revolution.

One example is Uber. A company currently valued at an estimated US$ 70billion.

Three years ago, Uber woke up to this AI epiphany and sent someone to the robotics department at Carnegie Melon University (one of the best in the world in robotics).

Three months later, Uber had recruited the whole department to work in their newly formed self-driving division. Of course, not everyone at CMU was happy about that because the department became deserted and that created some PR issues. Uber later made a US$100 million donation to CMU. Guilt apart, Uber knows that their current business model is not sustainable in the end.

Uber has the best transport app available today, but the problem is that users don’t mind switching to a rival app (such as Lyft).

In other words, the Uber app is not as sticky as the Facebook or Instagram app. As sad as it sounds, the only way forward to keep its customers in the future is to be the cost leader and human drivers are in the way of that vision. That is why they are betting the whole company strategy on developing selfdriving technology. So far, compared to Tesla it is not going well, but the jury is still out.

This, and hundreds of other examples (See Google vs. Levandosky case and others...)

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Although a lot is being written about AI, there is still a lack of understanding among business owners as to how they can fully benefit from this revolution.

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have exposed the hunger for AI talent. This is good for us as it brings funding, industry collaboration and attracts talent to the field. To give a sense of how competitive the field has become just note that the top four AI academics in the world: Geoff Hinton, Andrew Ng, Yan LeCun and FeiFei Li all have been recruited by Fortune 500 companies.

This year, the former Stanford professor Andrew Ng just tweeted “the opportunities in #AI field are larger than the talent available”. And it is true. Colleagues are leaving academia and joining transnational companies thanks to sweet salaries, exciting challenges and excellent computing infrastructure that universities usually cannot afford. For example, Google Deep Mind spends the equivalent of AED 300 to 1,000 million on computing credits per year.

However, there are downsides too. Bright students are being snatched up too. One of

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the students I mentor scored a world record at Atari Pac-Man game challenge hosted in August by www.open.ai, a website that is the equivalent of the Olympics of AI. Four days later, he had been hired by {sourced.tech}, an AI start-up based in Madrid.

However, although a lot is being written about AI, I think there is still a lack of understanding among SME business owners as to how they can fully benefit from this revolution. The number one advice is that you don’t need to be Amazon or Uber to take advantage of the coming AI wave. As Michio Kaku said, AI will be available on tap.

Just like electricity is today. The second advice is to realise that data is the new oil.

For example, Facebook makes US$ 10 or revenue per user per year. All of it is thanks to the AI that makes Facebook one of the most targeted and effective ads systems in the world. Facebook is already an AI-driven

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““

Companies have data but the knowledge to make it useful in some cases is so new that is not found inside them yet.

company, but it would be nothing without the data. Same goes for Airbnb, booking. com, Tesla and Google. So, if you have data and you are not squeezing every single penny out of it, you are missing out revenue stream and you will die because some competitor will do it. The last lesson can be learned from the revolution that started with AOL in 1996 and ended with the dot-com bust of 1999. Some businesses saw the internet coming and embraced it, others ignored and now they are zombies. Here’s a token that will sound familiar: “Technology by itself is not the real disruptor. Being non-customer centric is the biggest threat to any business.”

Having said that, the refusal to embrace the use of AI today is like refusing PC in the office in 1999. It will hurt you at the end. Here at UAEU, we partner with forwardlooking companies and start-ups that get

this. Together we analyse data and develop predictive models, what is also known as predictive analytics. It is a win-win. We don’t have data but know how to make it useful.

Companies have data but the knowledge to make it useful in some cases is so new that is not found inside them yet. Working with real data allows us to advance the field and publish papers. Companies get a state of the art AI that keeps them ahead of the competition.

In the case of an impresario that wants to learn more about how to use AI here in UAE, where can she go? There are a few venues to keep abreast the latest developments in the field. One of the venues I use to recruit talent is the Dubai Data Science meetup and the PyData meetups worldwide. Both cutting edge and hands on. ** (https://gym.openai.com/envs/ MsPacman-ram-v0)

SME ADVISOR

I n v ention of the month 090

INGENIOUS INVENTION OF THE MONTH:

W E LBI

By using radio waves to record critical health-related data, this up and coming start-up concept is aspiring to make a dent in the healthcare market.

THE CONCEPT: WELBI IS A WIRELESS HEALTH MONITOR FOR THE ELDERLY THAT RECORDS VITAL SIGNS WITHOUT THE NEED FOR ANY CONTACT WITH THE DEVICE. SO, HOW DOES IT WORK? THE DEVICE EMITS RADIO FREQUENCY SIGNALS THAT REACH THE HUMAN BODY AND BOUNCE BACK WITH PATTERNS OF DATA. THE INFORMATION IS THEN RECORDED AND ANALYSED BY WELBI AND IS DISPLAYED ON A MOBILE APP. THE BEST PART ABOUT THE DEVICE IS THAT IT HAS A SVELTE DESIGN AND CAUSES LITTLE TO NO DISRUPTION TO DAY-TO- DAY ACTIVITIES. THE COMPANY IS CAMPAIGNING ON KICKSTARTER. THE CHALLENGE IT ADDRESSES: FOR THOSE THAT WORRY ABOUT THE HEALTH OF THEIR PARENTS, GRANDPARENTS OR OTHER OLD-AGED RELATIVES, WELBI CAN BE A USEFUL MONITORING TOOL. USING ITS MOBILE APP, USERS CAN TRACK VITAL SIGNS LIKE HEART RATE AND BREATHING IN REAL TIME. MOREOVER, YOU CAN RECORD THE VITAL SIGNS OF MULTIPLE PEOPLE SIMULTANEOUSLY. CURRENTLY, THE COMPANY’S PREMISE IS TO HELP A NICHE DEMOGRAPHIC OF ELDERLY PEOPLE, BUT IT COULD EVENTUALLY BE USED ACROSS HOSPITALS AND OTHER HEALTHCARE INSTITUTIONS FOR LARGE-SCALE IMPLEMENTATION.

DO YOU HAVE AN INGENIOUS INVENTION THAT YOU’D LIKE TO SHARE WITH US? TWEET TO US @SMEADVISORME USING #INGENIOUSINVENTION! Find out more about this product at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/welbi/welbi-the- first-remoteno-contact- vital-sign-monit/description.

SME ADVISOR

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