Emerald Emerging Markets Case Studies

Emerging Technologies, UAE

Jawahitha Sarabdeen Kamal Jaafar

Downloaded by SHAHEED ZULFIKAR ALI BHUTTO INST OF SCI & TECH KARACHI At 03:46 28 September 2016 (PT)

Article information:
To cite this document:
Jawahitha Sarabdeen Kamal Jaafar, (2011),"Emerging Technologies, UAE", Emerald Emerging Markets Case Studies, Vol. 1
Iss 1 pp. 1 - 4
Permanent link to this document:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/20450621111110276
Downloaded on: 28 September 2016, At: 03:46 (PT)
References: this document contains references to 0 other documents.
To copy this document: permissions@emeraldinsight.com
The fulltext of this document has been downloaded 585 times since 2011*

Users who downloaded this article also downloaded:

(2011),"Economic Zones World (EZW) supply chain strategy", Emerald Emerging Markets Case Studies, Vol. 1 Iss 1 pp.
1-5 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/20450621111097588
(2011),"Hay Group in the Middle East", Emerald Emerging Markets Case Studies, Vol. 1 Iss 1 pp. 1-4 http://
dx.doi.org/10.1108/20450621111110302
(2011),"Dream or doom dome?", Emerald Emerging Markets Case Studies, Vol. 1 Iss 1 pp. 1-6 http://
dx.doi.org/10.1108/20450621111110654

Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by emerald-srm:543736 []

For Authors
If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service
information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please
visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information.

About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.com

Emerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of
more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online
products and additional customer resources and services.
Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication
Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation.
*Related content and download information correct at time of download.

Emerging Technologies, UAE

Downloaded by SHAHEED ZULFIKAR ALI BHUTTO INST OF SCI & TECH KARACHI At 03:46 28 September 2016 (PT)

Jawahitha Sarabdeen and Kamal Jaafar

Jawahitha Sarabdeen is an
Associate Professor in
Faculty of Business and
Management, University of
Wollongong in Dubai
(UOWD), Dubai, United
Arab Emirates. Kamal
Jaafar is an Associate
Professor in the Faculty of
Computer Science and
Engineering, University of
Wollongong in Dubai,
United Arab Emirates.

n 3 December 2009, Sassine Mazraani, the Chief Executive Officer of Emerging

Technologies analysed the challenges and the achievements the company had in
the past. Even if he was happy about the achievements of the company, the greater
challenge he thought was to lead his company to capture billion worth of Gulf Market. He
was in the process of preparing his strategic plan for future so that he could submit to the
shareholders soon.

Company background Emerging Technologies

Emerging Technologies was the first United Arab Emirates software application developer of
Arabic (also available in English and Hindi) voice recognition solutions. Emerging
Technologies developed and deployed fully automated voice recognition applications to
meet specific business wants and needs. With a vision to make a difference at a regional
level, Mr Saeed Al-Romaithi, Chairman of Cassells Group founded Emerging Technologies
in 2001. The company was incorporated in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The dedicated executive
management had since been striving to achieve the companys vision and long-term
objectives. The company relied on a group of highly talented, professional, certified and
self-motivated individuals whose main focus was to design, develop and deliver high quality
voice applications that significantly enhance the callers experience.
With Emerging Technologies voice-enabled solutions, people could use their natural voice,
language, dialect and accent to make telephone enquiries at anytime from anywhere. The
state-of the-art applications brought an end to the frustration customers usually experienced
with the traditional touch-tone menu systems.
According to the web site of the company:
The voice applications allow callers to check their bank account balance, transfer funds, book a
flight, make reservations, get stock quotes, trade, find business information, send and receive
emails, access voice portals and much more, using only a telephone at anytime from anywhere.

Today, it further said that many businesses in the region depended on voice recognition
solutions to give them the competitive edge they desire.

Disclaimer. This case is written

solely for educational purposes
and is not intended to represent
successful or unsuccessful
managerial decision making.
The author/s may have
disguised names; financial and
other recognizable information
to protect confidentiality.

DOI 10.1108/20450621111110276

The value proposition of the company was: To be recognised as the worlds leading expert
provider of high quality, human-like, multi-accent and multi-dialect Arabic (also available in
English and Hindi) voice recognition solutions.
Sassine Mazraani, who joined the company late 2003 as CEO, explained the main benefit of
the main product of the company: interactive voice response (IVR) system. According to him
the cost of setting up call centres that run efficiently and effectively was quite considerable in
terms of time, money and effort. Even when this was achieved, a live call agent was still
humanly limited to the number of calls he or she could handle and answer accurately during

VOL. 1 NO. 1 2011, pp. 1-4, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 2045-0621

EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES

PAGE 1

working hours or within certain time frames. Yet, the majority of customers still preferred to
speak to a live representative rather than to interact with a traditional IVR system. This,
however, was very costly for most businesses. The main challenge that businesses face in
an increasingly competitive marketplace was the ability to offer high quality and cost
effective customer support to all customers, all the time. This was only possible with the
automation of as many parts of the customer support process as possible in order to handle
large call volumes on a regular basis, while maintaining the human aspect of the experience.

The past performance

Downloaded by SHAHEED ZULFIKAR ALI BHUTTO INST OF SCI & TECH KARACHI At 03:46 28 September 2016 (PT)

Emerging Technologies targeted big enterprises in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
region so that it would be able to show the market in the region that the technology that was
in USA could be adopted even locally. In this venture, the company successfully introduced
the IVR in Al-Jazeera News. Subsequently, it managed to introduce the system to various
companies in UAE and other countries in the region. They were proud to say that their clients
included the largest corporation in the region such as, Etisalat, Aramco, Dubai Airport, Dubai
Financial market, Dubai Municipality, Doha Security market, Saudi Telecom (see the clients
list).
Clients and partners:
Emerging Technologies have been able to secure some of the most resputable
organizations in the region as its clients. They take great pride in sharing a sample of our
valued list of clients who trusted Emerging Technologies with their speech solutions
requirements:
B

Abu Dhabi Securities Market UAE.

Abu Dhabi Judiciary Department UAE.

The Dubai Mall UAE.

Ajman Municipality UAE.

Aramex UAE.

Doha Securities Market Qatar.

Dubai Civil Aviation UAE.

Dubai Financial Market UAE.

Dubai Municipality UAE.

Etisalat, UAE Telecom Operator UAE.

Government of UAE, Ministry of Interior UAE.

Kuwait Finance House Kuwait.

Kuwait National Petroleum Company Kuwait.

Saudi Telecom KSA.

Shuaa Capital UAE.

The companys success in introducing and capturing the Gulf market in speech recognition
technology was attributed, according to Sassine Mazraani, to various factors. They are:

Firm belief and personal interest in the technology and innovation.

Right vision and mission.

Readiness of the shareholders to invest in innovative projects.

Readiness of the shareholders in expecting long-term benefit/profit.

Hard working and energetic group of staff.

Right marketing strategy.

PAGE 2 EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES VOL. 1 NO. 1 2011

Downloaded by SHAHEED ZULFIKAR ALI BHUTTO INST OF SCI & TECH KARACHI At 03:46 28 September 2016 (PT)

Those factors helped to earn the reputation as the leading provider of Speech IVR in the
region. The system, Mazraani said, was cost-effective and successfully deployed
human-like voice recognition solutions that were designed to offer business the following
main benefits:
B

Provide a fully automated human-like customer support process in Arabic (also available
in English and Hindi).

Add real value by eliminating the high levels of frustration that users normally experience
with traditional push-button IVR systems.

Significantly reduce the time it takes to handle incoming calls and queries, thus saving
your business valuable time, money and effort.

Free up a good portion of your work force to attend other important business needs.

Provide your customers a 24-hour service, all year long.

Differentiate the company from the competition by offering a new and highly effective
voice enabled customer support solution.

Satisfy and even delight your customers with the new and unique support service.

Improve customers perception of ones business.

Increase the number of referrals to the business.

Increase overall business productivity.

Through this the companies would be able to cut their production cost. For example, CEO
Mazraani explained in referring to telephone service providers that:
With Speech Agents the possibilities are endless. Telcos can now increase their productivity and
responsiveness by more than 50% while reducing their operating costs by over 30%, resulting in
better profit margins, and differentiating them over the competition.

He further clarified:
Imagine having as many multilingual agents with working knowledge of over 25 languages,
receiving and dialling out calls continuously 24 hours a day without the need for breaks or any
ongoing monthly expenses like salaries or seats. Impossible! [. . .] Not anymore.

He continued explaining that for Telco speech recognition technology offers an unparalleled
solution. The first immediate impact realised is over 25% increase in automation, lower
queue times as the Speech Agents handle all incoming calls simultaneously in the most
natural way the callers would expect.
Mazraani added Speech opens new frontiers of automation, whereby automating any
contact center features which were not possible before even with touch tone platforms. He
continued:
As an example, Etisalat adopted Speech Agents for their one and only Directory Enquiries (181)
aiming to transform it to an automated self-service center whereby the caller can retrieve
information in any language, dialect and/or accent all in less than a minute which is operating
live now for all land line and soon for mobiles too.

The past few years were very successful and exciting years for the company and the people
including the CEO where the companys product managed to penetrate into various sectors
of UAE, Saudi Arabian, Qatari and Kuwaiti businesses.

The future direction

Recently, the Emerging Technologies together with Nuances SpeechMagic Solution started
of providing speech solution for the medical industry. The future direction for the company,
Mazraani thought, would be bright if the following changes could be addressed:
B

Educating the people: what, why and how this technology works.

Introducing this technology to the broader Arab world.

VOL. 1 NO. 1 2011 EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES PAGE 3

Downloaded by SHAHEED ZULFIKAR ALI BHUTTO INST OF SCI & TECH KARACHI At 03:46 28 September 2016 (PT)

Keywords:
Strategic management,
International business,
Brands,
Innovation,
Retail management

Introducing this technology to metropolitan UAE in particular.

Removing the misconception of this technology being able to recognize Arabic.

Proving them it was better way of communication and it could work in the Gulf.

Finding right customers/clients.

Providing customers requirements.

As the company positioned itself as a leading provider of Speech IVR System, Mazraani was
wondering what type of strategic plan was the best for the companys growth so that he
could be able to explain to the shareholders soon in the upcoming meeting. He was
analysing the following options: whether to get more funds through joint ventures or just
continue the business in the current setting without any partners. He was also looking at the
possibility of focusing more on public listed companies as they have enough resources to
adopt the technology in greater scale or diversify the growth into various sectors and
products. Another possible option was to go for franchise.

About the authors

Jawahitha Sarabdeen is an Associate Professor in Faculty of Business and Management at
University of Wollongong in Dubai (UOWD). She spent seven years teaching and researching
in Malaysia and a year in KSA before joining UOWD in 2007. She was previously Head,
Law Unit and Chairperson, Centre of Excellence for Cyberlaw in Faculty of Management at
Multimedia University, Malaysia. She is specialised in law and HRM. She is an award-winning
and well-acknowledged faculty member for her excellence in both teaching and research at
UOWD. She chairs the UOWD Disciplinary Committee. She is currently teaching law, business
ethics and HRM for both undergraduate and postgraduate students while being
actively engaged in several research projects, collaborations, consultancy, and editorial
commitments for conferences and journals. Her extensive research has produced more than
40 research papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings. She has received many
a prestigious research grants and awards. She has conducted a number of training and
expertise exchange programmes on ICT legal issues, IP law and regulations, Corporate
Governance, and Islamic Banking and Finance. She has also contributed to drafting legal
policies and papers on Data Privacy and IP laws. Clients include international NGOs,
government agencies, ministries and educational institutions. Jawahithas principal research
interests include legal and ethical issues of ICT and HRM, adoption of e-government, and
Islamic banking and financial products. Jawahitha Sarabdeen is the corresponding author
and can be contacted at: JawahithaSarabdeen@uowdubai.ac.ae
Kamal Jaafar is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering,
UOWD. He has a PhD in Structural Engineering from Cambridge University. Approximation
Theory. His areas of expertise are optimisation, logistics and supply chain management,
operating systems, organizational planning and management, design studies and design
theory.

PAGE 4 EMERALD EMERGING MARKETS CASE STUDIES VOL. 1 NO. 1 2011