Business Review Middle East magazine - July 2016

July 2016 • www.businessreviewmiddleeast.com

How the supply chain is at the heart of Kudu Corp’s extensive plans for expansion

TECH

PROFILE

Interview with Natalie Crampton, founder of The Event Company

What’s next for money?

E-commerce in the Middle East

SPECIAL REPORT Providing services beyond traditional telecoms

IN THIS ISSUE

EDITOR’S COMMENT

W E L C O M E T O T H E J U LY issue of Business

Review Middle East. This month, we are looking at lots of varied success stories from businesses throughout the region. Our cover feature is an interview with Kudu, one of Saudi Arabia’s leading fast-food restaurant chains. And we interview Noor Al Qatami, founder of Saveco – Kuwait’s innovative new supermarket. Continuing the food theme, we also have an interview with Shakespeare and Co., a UAE-based restaurant and patisserie business that has seen phenomenal growth throughout the Middle East and beyond.

Other features in this issue include a profile of Natalie Crampton, founder of The Event Company, and a round-up of the most popular Middle Eastern destinations for the Muslim travel market.

We do hope you enjoy the issue, please send your feedback to @BusinessRevME on Twitter.

Lucy Dixon Group Editorial Director lucy.dixon@bizclikmedia.com

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Our Capabilities Our People Blueprint Technologies (www.bpterp.com) is an ERP company of professionals focused on providing services on SAP and SAP related services on cloud. Started in the year 2010 with Headquarters in Bangalore, India, with offices in Chennai and Dubai. Blueprint Technologies has partnered with Al-Russaid Technologies(www.al-rushaid.com) in Saudi Arabia and Bin Butti International Holdings(www.bbih.ae) in Abu Dhabi. Blueprint Technologies is a preferred SAP vendor for Companies in Saudi Arabia with strong SAP delivery capabilities. Blueprint Technologies has successfully executed end to end complex SAP projects and have extensive experience in providing SAP solutions for various industrial verticals like Oil & Gas, Petrochemical, Manufacturing, FMCG, Real Estate and Construction. With a strong understanding of the market requirements in various industrial verticals.

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+91 8032 550 345 | 46

info@bpterp.com www.bpterp.com

India | UAE | Saudi Arabia

F E AT U R E S

8

The main event:

TEC, one of Dubai’s leading event agencies

Top travel destinations for Muslims in the Middle East

16

What’s next for money?

26

Company profiles

30

KUDU CORP Supply Chain

DU Supply Chain

86

52 98

SAVECO Supply Chain

Dynamic Attractions Construction

ABDUL LATIF JAMEEL MACHINERY Construction

114

72

FRIESLANDCAMPINA MIDDLE-EAST Supply Chain

158 128

SHAKESPEARE AND CO. Food & Drink

FONTERRA BRANDS MIDDLE EAST Food & Drink

170

MINISTRY OF HEALTH - ISRAEL Healthcare

146

ROYAL COMMISSION FOR JUBAIL Public Sector

186

UFC GYM Healthcare

PROFILE

The main event Starting out as an event management freelancer, Natalie Crampton now runs TEC, one of Dubai’s leading event agencies. Business Review Middle East reports W r i t t e n b y JESS SHANAHAN

9

PROFILE

10 July 2016

AFTER FINISHING AT Leeds Metropolitan University (now Leeds Beckett), Natalie Crampton decided to take her career into her own hands as the recession hit the UK. She moved away from her home in England to Dubai, somewhere she’d lived previously, with a degree in event management and was able to capitalise on being a freelancer in a competitive market.

It was from here that her business grew and The Event Company was born, since then it has been rebranded as TEC to reflect the diverse range of services it can now offer.

Crampton says: “There were no opportunities for me in the UK because in the summer of 2008 everything crashed. It made sense to go to Dubai, which did crash but not until a few months later so when I went there, there were still opportunities.

“The great thing about it was that I started off as a freelancer and the companies that would be my competitors today went out of business because they had massive overheads such as big offices and lots of staff.

I was just on my own so my rates were a lot cheaper than an agency.

I was in the fortunate position to 11

PROFILE be able to take on projects and only really had to worry about making ends meet for myself – I didn’t have an army full of people in an office depending on me for their monthly salary.”

Once things had calmed down in Dubai, The Event Company was still growing and the switch from freelancer to agency came quite organically as Crampton explains: “I would love to say I had a very carefully thought out business plan, with growth for the next five years forecasted but that is not the case. Things just snowballed. I found myself getting busier and busier and before I knew it I needed an office and staff and it all just grew from there.

“We now have offices in Dubai,

12 July 2016

Kuwait, Qatar and Singapore. Initially when I started the company we were an agency working with a lot of different suppliers who made sure we had audio equipment, furniture and so on for all our events. Over the years our collection of stock, props and décor has grown and we have a 5,000 square foot warehouse in Dubai. We don’t rely on suppliers anymore, which is quite unique. We are the only agency with its own equipment and stock, which puts us in a great position and makes us really competitive on budget.”

Working within so many industries, TEC has structured its business to be able to cater to the differing needs of those sectors, as well as to each region.

Crampton says: “Our head office is in Dubai and we have teams split across different regions and industries. For example, we’ve got a really strong team handling financial services and another handling automotive. Often, if one of our other offices is busy, staff from Dubai will go out and support.

We do all our training in Dubai too.”

The company recently rebranded from The Event Company to TEC. Over the years the business has evolved to do so much more than events and that needed to be reflected in the brand. Crampton said: “Our services over the years have changed.

Clients often request social media, PR campaigns and digital marketing for their events. Our name was holding us back as clients didn’t realise we could do all these things.

“There was also an existing The Event Company in Singapore so we needed to change the name as we moved into that region, it was the perfect time to rebrand.

We do a lot more than the original name would suggest.”

The company works with all sorts of large brands on their events in the

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L EPARDOEFRI S LH EIP Middle East and Singapore. They’ve put on events for the likes of HSBC, Google, Dior, Ikea, Vodafone and a range of other well-known brands.

“I have three reasons why we do our projects,” Crampton says. “Firstly to make money, secondly if myself or a member of staff is particularly interested in a brand or event, and the third reason is because we want that client in our portfolio.

“The ones that stand out are those where I’ve been really excited about working with a particular person or brand. We hosted a conference with Mike Bloomberg last year in Dubai. It was great to see him speak and meet him, I was really excited.

Another is the work we’ve done over the last three years with Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton on his Blackberry sponsorship. That’s been really interesting, especially as he’s a British champion who’s been winning a lot. These are the kind of events that really excite me.”

The way TEC works varies from client to client depending on their needs. Crampton says: “Some clients come to us with a really clear cut idea of what they want and we just have to put that plan into action. Other 14 July 2016

15

PROFILE

clients just have a target so we put a plan together that helps them to achieve those goals, from there we create an event around that.”

This personalised approach means that TEC and its staff find it easy to work around cultural differences between the areas in which the company is based.

Crampton explains: “There are cultural differences but because our approach is so bespoke, we don’t see a lot of difference from country to country. We build strong relationships with each client and I’ve worked with some for five or six years. We acknowledge cultural differences but we take the same approach in that we get to know our

16 July 2016

XXXXXXX

clients and build a relationship with a lot of trust and transparency.”

The expansion into Singapore isn’t the end of TEC’s plans for growth.

Crampton said: “We definitely want to keep growing, I would really like us to be one of the leading events companies in Europe so that’s our goal within five years. After that perhaps we’ll look at America.”

It’s the goal of TEC to help its clients achieve big things by setting up the finest events in each industry from concept to completion. This mission statement coupled with the natural skill in this area of Managing Director Natalie Crampton means that TEC will no doubt continue to expand beyond the GCC.

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What’s next

TECHNOLOGY

t for money?

W ri t t e n b y: J O H N K N U F F , V I C E P R E S I D E N T O F G LO B A L E C O S Y S T E M S A T E Q U I N I X

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TECHNOLOGY

The Middle East’s e-commerce market is expanding. We look at how organisations could work together to maximise what technology has to offer MONEY HAS ALWAYS changed with the times and developments in technology.

China’s switch from coins to paper money in 600 BC was driven at least partly by improvements in papermaking. By the time the European explorer Marco Polo visited the country in the 13th century, printing technology was making its presence felt. So much so that where US banknotes today say ‘In God We Trust’ the Chinese imperial notes allegedly carried the threat, ‘Counterfeiters will be decapitated’.

Today, the way payments are made is changing faster and more fundamentally than at any time since the invention of money.

And it is again being driven by technology. Specifically, by the imminent and explosive arrival of the interconnected world.

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July 2016

It’s a real and increasingly visible phenomenon. For example, smartphone penetration is becoming almost universal in G-20 countries and web access worldwide continues to grow at a staggering rate. Over 42 percent of the global population already has internet access, and pundits predict that it will approach 100 percent by 2020.

That picture has serious implications for commerce: especially in the Asia Pacific region, where mobile and online commerce is exploding even faster than in any other region, according to our recent whitepaper, Interconnected Commerce – A Revolution in Value Creation.

Creating an interconnected commerce ecosystem Regulation and innovation have shaken up the traditional payments

W H AT ’ S N E X T F O R M O N E Y ?

JOHN KNUFF Vice President of Global Ecosystems at Equinix John Knuff is the Vice President of Global Ecosystems at Equinix. In his role, John helps companies leverage a comprehensive digital commerce strategy, find partners to meet the coming challenges, and ensure efficient and dependable operations with a dense selection of mobile and cloud service providers

market, creating new revenue streams and purchasing options. The ease and availability of electronic payments have resulted in more customers buying products and services online and mostly through their smartphones. Though the Middle East’s e-commerce market is expanding and expected to rise to $10 billion by 2018, performance of e-commerce portals will remain a crucial benchmark in the sector’s maturation. A widely quoted study by the Aberdeen Group notes that even a one-second delay in page load time can result in 11 percent fewer 21

TECHNOLOGY

‘The benefits could be world-changing, creating a network of commerce enablement that, linked with the payments infrastructure, could actually redefine global commerce for the 21st century’

XXXX

W H AT ’ S N E X T F O R M O N E Y ?

page views, a 16 percent decrease in customer satisfaction, and seven percent loss in conversions.

While the current payments ecosystem is robust, stable, reliable, and mature, it lacks flexiblility, fluidity, and extensiblilty. But one thing is becoming clear: while the core payments processing system is really good at payments, it’s not very good at much else.

Leaders in several different payment organisations have began discussing an interconnected commerce ecosystem for services that support payments and commerce.

The rationale is that, before the introduction of a common protocol, smartphone development was limited to specific devices networks. However, since the arrival of open platforms, smartphone development has exploded, and now millions of apps work across the major mobile platforms.

In much the same way, an open commerce platform supporting commerce and incorporating payments is a logical next step in payments evolution. As currently envisioned, the interconnected commerce platform would be a network of companies, processes, and systems connected on a common, open network.

The network could provide a wide array of capability to every participant in the ecosystem, linking to online and offline commerce, the IoT, mobile service providers, small-to-midsizebusiness services companies.

Connecting to any organisation where the effective delivery of products and services enabled by commerce and payments has value, whether that might be healthcare, insurance, hospitality or professional services.

And, just like payments, the commerce ecosystem would benefit from the network effect – creating incremental value with every additional node.

The roadmap The implementation of this vision will require a cooperative effort from participants across the ecosystem, 23

TECHNOLOGY working with organisations capable of developing and managing a network of millions of nodes and billions of connections.

A ‘meeting place’ a central hub that can interact with and manage access to the disparate platforms and systems, is also needed. While the potential of interconnected commerce is powerful, without a central hub to manage the network, the result would be chaos. The vision also requires standard protocols that allow systems GLOBAL DATA CENTERS

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to communicate with each other.

The effort could be led by small group of companies across the commerce spectrum: network service providers, merchant acquirer/processors, hardware and software developers, issuers, and other organisations.

For example, Equinix is already providing dense interconnection points where enterprises and their service providers physically meet to efficiently exchange data.

INTERCONNECTION

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4,500+ Businesses Equinix Marketplace™ Revenue Opportunities

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The leading, global interconnection platform.

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July 2016

W H AT ’ S N E X T F O R M O N E Y ?

Like international airports, which serve as neutral connection points that allow airline carriers, retailers, restaurants and other service providers to compete for business, Equinix provides neutral interconnection points where

‘The Middle East’s e-commerce market is expanding and expected to rise to $10 billion by 2018’

telecommunications organisations, cloud-based service providers, and enterprises come together to efficiently exchange data.

It’s a complex undertaking requiring significant resources and time to implement. However, the benefits could be world-changing, creating a network of commerce enablement that, linked with the payments infrastructure, could actually redefine global commerce for the 21st century.

25

Top travel destinati Muslims in the Mid

Written by: Alice Young

ions for ddle East 27

THERE ARE EIGHT countries from the Middle East and Africa in the top 10 destinations in the global Muslim travel market. The MasterCard-CrescentRating Global Muslim Travel Index (GMTI) 2016, which covers 130 destinations, ranks destinations on criteria including facilities provided, suitability for family holidays, connectivity and visa restrictions.

The study also revealed that in 2015 there were an estimated 117 million Muslim visitor arrivals globally, representing close to 10 percent of the entire travel market. With a forecast that this will grow to 168 million visitors by 2020 with a value exceeding $200 billion, it’s clearly big business. In fact, it is one of the fastest growing segments in the global travel industry.

6

Here are the eight Middle Eastern and African countries that ranked in the top 10.

2016 GTMI Score

1

2

3

4

74.7

73.9

70.5

70.4

UAE

Turkey

Qatar

Saudi Arabia

2 7 8 1

4

3 5

5

6

7

8

70.3

68.3

65.4

63.3

Oman

Morrocco

Jordan

Bahrain

Supplying growth and transformation

Written by Tom Wadlow Produced by Heykel Ouni 31

As plans to open another 60 restaurants by 2017 begin to materialise, Kudu Corp is having to transform and innovate fast to meet increasing customer demand, with supply chain operations playing a vital part

K

udu Corp is adopting change at a rapid pace. Fuelled by plans to expand in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the GCC, the quick service restaurant (QSR) operator is also refreshing the Kudu brand and evolving its product range in line with customer demand.

Kudu is already the largest restaurant chain in the country with 337 branches across the Kingdom serving 60 million people a year and employing 5,000 Saudi citizens and residents, and another 60 sites are scheduled to be open by 2017. The concept of quick, fresh, madeto-order meals which include sandwiches, fries and rice options, all made in front of the

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July 2016

S U P P LY C H A I N

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NAPCO Group of Companies

Paper Products

Maxi Roll & Auto Cut Super Towel Napkins (Printed) Facial Tissues (Printed) Household Towel

Toilet Tissues Wet Napkins (Printed) Aluminum Foil & Trays Cling Film Garbage Bags

Multi Wall Sacks Paper Cores Paper Bags & Sheets Paper & Plastic Cups Paper Plates

Self Opening Sacks Clinical Towels Underpads Baby & Adult Diapers Dispensers

STRATEGIC

Supply Partner & Total Packaging Solution Provider Chain

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Email : info@napcogroup.com Email : info@napcopaper.com

Tel. : +966-13-8459400 Tel. : +966-13-8472288

S U P P LY C H A I N

customer, has proven to be a hit with the natives. Kudu Corp manages four other brands across Saudi Arabia: Al Khafeef, Aal Bal, Can CafĂŠ and Tea Garden.

Backed by supportive private equity investors TPG Capital and The Abraaj Group, innovation and adaptations are occurring right

across the business, with the supply chain team lying at the heart of the push for growth and improvement.

Murat Ungun has been in the QSR industry for more than 24 years and is now Senior Vice President of Supply Chain at Kudu Corp. His role is to lead the development and implementation of end to end supply chain strategy and solutions

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KUDU CORP

in every facet of business to support able to gain this experience and the company’s aims and growth. exposure, having the chance “I have worked mostly in the to work with the best suppliers, QSR industry and supply chain companies, teams and people.” field where I had the chance to work with many different local and Delivering for Kudu global supplier companies, gaining Kudu’s procurement setup currently experience and exposure comprises a mixture of in all segments of the long term supplier food, packaging, partnerships and inlogistics and house production service industries,” of fresh meat and Ungun explains. bakery products, “I have had which are also Number of employees the privilege of retailed in more than at KUDU reviewing and 1,000 stores. The contributing to company purchases companies I worked for, and distributes more than not from a pure supply chain point 2,000 skus to its restaurants via of view but from a holistic business its distribution system, made up perspective like from green of three main and four satellite field start- ups to acquisitions, warehouses. from menu management and Ungun’s responsibilities stretch marketing to sustainability. I far beyond the supply chain feel very fortunate to have been mechanics. He adds: “I am also

5,000

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July 2016

A.M.I. are Middle Eastern experts in providing full-service and cost-effective kitchen and catering equipment solutions

• Kitchen Design & Layout • Full Engineering & M.E.P. Plans • Complete Equipment Packages • Utensils, Smallwares & Furniture • Custom Stainless Steel Fabrication • Warehousing & Shipping Services • Equipment Installation & Start-Up • Spare Parts & Repair Services • Annual Service Contracts

Supplying Middle Eastern operators since 1993 Bahrain Regional Headquarters U.S.A. Head Office

Info@amimail.net www.amifood.com

IFFCO is a United Arab Emirates based international group which manufactures and supplies a wide range of food products and services. IFFCO Foodservice offers targeted solutions in: • Oils & Shortenings • Flour and Baking Ingredients • Herbs & Spices • Ice Cream

• Sauces & Mayonnaises • Frozen Bakery • Pasta • Chocolate

With Sales & Distribution operations across the MENA region, along with local manufacturing, IFFCO Foodservice offers customers specific solutions to meet your needs.

IFFCO is a proud partner of Kudu and all major QSR’s 38

July 2016

P.O. Box 29220, Sharjah, UAE | Tel: +971650 29000 | Email: info@iffco.com | www.iffco.com

S U P P LY C H A I N

responsible for strategic sourcing, as well as quality assurance and food safety departments which are foundational and critical elements of a quick service restaurant chain. “Assuring high quality, safe products in a consistent manner, at an affordable, fair cost to system responsibly and in a sustainable way is the core of what we are trying to achieve in the company.

It is not a destination and indeed is an ongoing journey that requires a huge set of efforts, commitment, determination, strategy, collaboration, long term thinking, resource allocation and talent.� “Our objective is to provide our guests with fresh, healthy, food safe products to their expectations and taste, in a consistent and responsible manner

w w w. k u d u . c o m . s a

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KUDU CORP

within a friendly, enjoyable and convenient environment.”

Supply chain is also playing a vital role in pushing forward future expansion plans, shouldering the huge task of establishing fruitful partnerships in new territories and setting up new

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July 2016

foundations and infrastructure.

Ungun comments: “As a 28-yearold but a very young-spirited company set for strong local and international growth, supply chain and the value that it creates for Kudu Company and its’ guests is one of the foundational drivers for

McCain International is part of McCain Foods Limited, the leading global provider of frozen potato, as well as a wide range of appetizers and dessert products, currently covering Retail, Foodservice and QSR, reaching consumers in over 160 countries worldwide.

Muhannad Abdel Hadi | Key Accounts Manager (QSR, Retail) - Saudi Arabia - MENA | McCain International Inc. m. +966 56437 9999 | e. Muhannad.HADI@mccain.com | www.mccain.com PO Box 392 | Riyadh | 11411 | KSA

CLEANER. SAFER. HEALTHIER

Solutions that go beyond the surface

A trusted partner at more than one million customer locations, Ecolab is the global leader in water, hygiene and energy technologies and services that protect people and vital resources. Ecolab delivers comprehensive solutions and on-site service to promote safe food, maintain clean environments, optimize water and energy use and improve operational efficiencies for customers in the food, healthcare, energy, hospitality and industrial markets in more than 170 countries around the world.

The Ecolab KAY ÂŽ Program offers specialized QSR products, in portion control systems, backed by training support and services that create a cleaner, safer and healthier environment.

ECOLAB GULF FZE P.O BOX 262015 , JAFZA , DUBAI , UAE Tel: +971 (56) 684 7993 Email: Kareem.ezz-eldin@ecolab.com www.ecolab.com

S U P P LY C H A I N

“ We must fully understand who our outsourcing partners are and what value can be added from outsourcing, and weigh this up with what we are doing ourselves at the moment” long term and sustainable success.

“When you open a new market, supply chain is the first and foremost element of the equation to unlock the potential. Kudu sees selecting the right partners to work with and setting up a strong supply chain infrastructure as a key to success. To that end, supply chain is an integral part of the company growth, success and profitability.”

Internal transformation If Kudu is to successfully expand, optimisation of current supply chain processes is paramount.

To ensure that it makes the most out of internal capabilities and supplier expertise, Ungun is spearheading a massive ongoing

efficiency assessment to decide what is best kept in-house and what is best outsourced.

“We must fully understand who our outsourcing partners are and what value can be added from outsourcing, and weigh this up with what we are doing ourselves at the moment,” he adds. “It is very important who we select to work with in a long term partnership as the overall aim is to improve the quality of our products and services as well as the way we run.”

Improvements are already starting to be made. For example, a decision has been taken to outsource the supply of trucks rather than maintain its own fleet as it does currently. Working with an

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KUDU CORP

international truck rental partner, Kudu will be able to utilise the latest tracking technology to optimise routes and fuel consumption.

Another significant enhancement has been the implementation of a new ERP system which has integrated all business units into one overview, providing much clearer visibility of the whole business. Real time data can now be analysed

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July 2016

quickly and accurately to maintain healthy stock levels and give management the information they need to keep control and make meaningful, long term decisions.

Customer-led transformation As well as adopting internally-driven initiatives, Kudu is also adapting in light of customer feedback. A rollout of restaurant refurbishments

Serving the Food & Hospitality Industry in the Middle East

for 50 years!

Proud partner The Tanmiah Food Group is one of the largest integrated poultry and food manufacturing operations in Saudi Arabia. For over five decades we have been serving the region's retail and food service industry, with quality Halal chicken, beef and turkey products. Our meat processing plants in Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates are accredited to international food safety and hygiene standards. Together with our ability to develop and produce premium tailor made products, we have earned the trust of discerning customers across the spectrum, from most major international fast-food (QSR) restaurants to gourmet chefs and housewives across the Middle East. We look forward to count you amongst our valued partners.

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KUDU CORP

We Exist For Our Valued Customers

Forsan Foods & Consumer Products Company ltd. started its operations in 1979 with its sight set on excellence in serving the needs of all sectors of consumers. With the flagship business of meat distribution, the Company diversified into bakery, pastry ingredients, cheese, consumer items and general merchandise.

Forsan is now one of the leading manufacturers and distributors of: - Dairy Products - Bakery Products and Ingredients - Pastry Products and Ingredients

+966 1 465 9144 www.forsan.com.sa

Fraikin - a key partner to the Food & Beverage industry in Saudi Arabia, providing refrigerated trucks complete with comprehensive service and support across the Kingdom. • Long Term Full Service Contract Hire • Short Term Rental

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July 2016

www.fraikin.co.uk

S U P P LY C H A I N

will be taking place and a new logo has already been developed, along with new packaging and uniform designs. The menu is also evolving to give customers a wider choice and will now be displayed on digital menu boards in restaurants.

“Our first step was to approach our guests and ask them for their thoughts on Kudu and what they expect from us in the future,” Ungun explains. “We showed them some new product concepts and packaging, uniform, restaurant designs and have taken their feedback on board. The transformation is now going at full speed.”

“We have recently launched rice meals which are doing fantastically well, and have also launched gourmet fries with a cheese sauce, and I can say that these are the best gourmet fries in the region, not only the country! Gourmet

burgers will also be an addition to our menu very soon. We are known as a company that serves fresh and healthy products and are working with our customers to produce even fresher and healthier food up to their expectations.”

In terms of the impact on supply chain operations, new products have been carefully sourced and a brand new rice cooking platform has been rolled out across Kudu restaurants. To meet the logistical demand created by opening so many new sites, Ungun is planning to open a new warehouse in Jeddah next year to boost capacity. A mixture of new hubs and optimisation of current warehouse processes, the focus of Kudu’s ongoing assessment, will ensure the company is ready to deliver its products to more Saudi and other GCC customers.

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KUDU CORP

Staying competitive Continual innovation and enhancements of processes is how Ungun plans to differentiate from competition in the region and gain market share in the future.

“Innovation doesn’t happen by chance,” he says. “It is an outcome of structured and planned efforts and requires a total mind set

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July 2016

change, a lot of collaboration, transparency and planned hard work. Periodic business reviews, innovation sessions, benchmarking are all foundational elements that we are applying to break complacency and move the bar up to the next level.”

Selecting partners with the same working ethos is equally as

KUDU CORP

“Our job is to further optimise our systems, maximising the value we are giving to our guests while preparing the company for a local, regional and international growth” Murat Ungun

Senior Vice President of Supply Chain Murat Ungun is a Food Engineer by education and started his career at Unilever followed by Coca Cola and McDonald’s at different management roles and geographies. Before joining to Kudu Corporation, he was the Supply Chain Director for McDonald’s Corporation responsible for the strategic sourcing, management and performance of key food, beverage and promotional product categories and suppliers for 38 markets in McDonald’s Asia Pacific Middle East and Africa region, with more than 10,000 stores.

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S U P P LY C H A I N

important for Ungun, as is honest and open communication between parties. “Whatever the success we achieve at the store level will be our mutual success so we are together in this,” he adds.

“Being transparent and open for sharing, mutual trust, being a team player committed to our business long term and doing their best to give us the best value are all the foundational components of our supplier selection process. We expect our suppliers to choose long-term benefit of the system over short-term individualistic gains and this is what longterm partnership and our supply chain philosophy requires.”

Looking ahead, Ungun sees supply chain as a crucial contributor to long term sustainability and competitive advantage, and the coming years

will provide an exciting test of Kudu’s expansion credentials.

Ungun concludes: “Our job is to further optimise our systems, maximising the value we are giving to our guests while preparing the company for a local, regional and international growth. That requires the best supply chain infrastructure, right talent and best in class supplier partners to work with.

“We need to work around a more agile supply chain structure that will react to rapidly changing consumer needs, market dynamics and risks.

Supply chain is a crucial contributor to most companies and creates long-term wealth and competitive advantage for the entire system.

The ‘value of supply chain’ will get more prominent and critical to every company every day.”

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Working sma

art

Written by Tom Wadlow Produced by Heykel Ouni

53

DU

UAE telco du is providing services beyond traditional telecoms, taking the lead role in transforming Dubai into the world’s first truly smart city

I

n 2006, the thought of starting a new telco in the UAE - a country where mobile market penetration was already over 120 percent - and competing against a very strong incumbent player while growing to take almost 50 percent mobile market share may have seemed unthinkable.

Fast forward seven years and du has achieved precisely this.

With a mission to bring people and businesses together by offering mobile and fixed telephony, IPTV and broadband to homes and offices, du now conducts over AED 12 billion’s worth of vital communications work a year with a strong EBITA of AED 5.4 billion.

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July 2016

This translates into 7.7 million mobile customers, with 674,000 fixed line subscribers on its books.

Mobile data exceeded 33 percent of its total Mobile revenues. Delivering its broad scope of services is a 1,700-strong workforce, comprising nationals of more than 60 countries from around the world – a global team of experts.

Now the company is embarking on its most ambitious project to date. Dubai Smart City will connect residents, business and government in ways never seen before, leveraging the power of the Internet of Things to enhance usability and efficiency of vital services spanning utilities, parking

S U P P LY C H A I N

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Accelerating

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DU

1.7k

The total number of employees working for du (2015)

and health. It will also contribute to achieve the vision of Dubai’s ruler and Vice President of the UAE, His Highness Sheikh Mohamed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, to transform Dubai into the smartest and happiest city in the world.

Lift off Playing a key strategic part in du’s journey from the beginning has been Anis Tabka, Senior Vice

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President – Sourcing, Contracts & Supply Chain Management. Vital areas that have been developed

by Tabka, allowing the company to grow so impressively, are its procurement and strategic sourcing strategy, end-to-end supply chain experience and positive attitude towards supporting the business to meet its needs while enforcing corporate governance.

Tabka, who has 21 years of

experience in the telecoms trade, mostly in the USA and Germany with Siemens on the commercial side, emphasises the importance that finding the right expertise to work with both internally and externally has had on business development.

“Traditionally the industry in the MENA area was not well-equipped in terms of expertise,” he explains.

“When I came in 2005 most of the

professionals I was sourcing in the region came from other functions.

One of the biggest challenges I faced was finding technical procurement professionals who are familiar with the telco world and having the business thinking on how it is important to look at the whole value chain whenever negotiating deals rather than just focusing on price negotiation.

“I was able to convince my

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management of the value of putting a strategic spend category strategy matching our corporate roadmap and also of the benefits of partnering with some strategic vendors can bring. We needed a proper procurement strategy and a Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) methodology put in place and Executive Management allowed us to run with it and make it happen.�

This has paid off and du was the first Telco in the Middle East to get awarded in 2010 the prestigious Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply award from the UK. Going above and beyond the norm in corporate governance has also allowed du to stand out in what was an extremely saturated and monopolised telecoms market in the UAE. Three core values lay at the heart of du’s corporate governance

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system: friendly, honest and confident, with an emphasis on nurturing responsible practice and accountability which will result in sustainable business.

Underpinning this is a strong code of ethics set by the Board of Directors, with business objectives based on community and national development needs.

Dubai: smart city This is no better demonstrated

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than by du’s work to turn Dubai into a smart city. The UAE has one of the highest mobile penetration rates in the world, and Dubai is witnessing a steady population growth, making the need to be ‘smart’ all the more pressing.

Du has been selected as strategic partner to the government’s Smart Dubai Office, responsible for implementing and managing the smart city platform. “This will be the first of its kind in the world,”

Tabka says. “All services and applications will be connected and running together so the citizens of Dubai will be able to make better use of their data.

“For example, someone about to leave their home will be able to find out exactly where to park and the best route to get there before they get in the car. Many of the smart cities around the world have deployed separate IoT applications such as smart homes, smart metering and smart transport, but none have integrated as many used cases under one centralised digital platform as Dubai. Du will be hosting such a platform and managing it on behalf of the city.”

The project aims to establish collaboration in six ‘smart’ focus areas: smart life, smart transportation, smart society, smart economy, smart governance and smart environment, guided

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“All services and applications will be connected and running together so the citizens of Dubai will be able to make better use of their data” – Anis Tabka, Senior Vice President of Sourcing, Contracts & SCM, Corporate Affairs

Building A Better Connected World Huawei is a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider.

Our aim is to improve efficiency through a better connected world. Driven by customer-centric innovation and open partnerships, Huawei has established endto-end ICT solutions portfolio that gives customers competitive advantages in telecom and enterprise networks, devices and cloud computing. www.huawei.com

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by principles of communication, core services are flattening; integration and cooperation. that’s why our management has Du will be responsible for creating decided to set up a new Digital one common infrastructure from Business Unit to boost our cloud which all smart services can products and complex Managed grow and interact, bringing the Services offerings in the market. city’s data into one place in a “Our Dubai Smart City project secure environment, is a perfect example introducing best-ofof this. This does not breed smart services, involve a traditional all designed to work sourcing strategy nor together and sharing the traditional large data that brings a proprietary software The amount of new level of insight to players we are used to. revenue in AED Dubai to benefit the The Big Data and IoT generated by du public, entrepreneurs worlds are challenging (2015) and government. our Modis Operandi: Such non-traditional it’s now all about telco work also Open Source software requires Tabka to realign vendors, SaaS (software as a his sourcing strategy.

Service) solutions, Cloud services Tabka explains: “Major Telcos are and strong systems integration. having to look into other revenue We worked very closely with our alternatives such as digital business technical colleagues to find the as revenues in their traditional best in class partners to meet

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Smart Dubai requirements and use our experience to integrate it all together and deliver a complex project such as this.

“There are far more joint ventures, partnerships, revenue shares and corporations working together to deliver this strategic project in the long term. We all drive to deliver the best services and evaluate each other much more closely and in much greater detail, as we are both taking risks. These are very close relationships that involve constant communication and flexibility from both sides and HPE [Hewlett-Packard Enterprises], our main partner and system

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integrator for the Dubai Smart City project, is a good example.”

Du’s smart city credentials are already in evidence, shown by its city-wide public WiFi provision and smart street lights, using motion sensors to increase visibility when vehicles approach. However, integration of app-based services on this scale presents a larger set of challenges to overcome.

“We need to be flexible on how we put this huge ecosystem in place, and my job is to help bring all the different component parts together in the best way,” Tabka adds. “How do we set up revenue sharing, who do we choose to partner with, how do we optimise costing for du and the City?

“We need to convince partners to invest in this as a long term partnership, and we also need to convince the providers of existing smart technology in the

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“Major telcos are having to look into other revenue alternatives such as digital business as revenues in their traditional core services are flattening; that’s why our management has decided to set up a new Digital Business Unit to boost our cloud products and complex Managed Services offerings in the market” – Anis Tabka, Senior Vice President of Sourcing, Contracts & SCM, Corporate Affairs

city that an integrated approach is the way forward. There will be changes, there will be challenges.

“For example, security is one of the biggest challenges facing us.

The hackers out there are only going to get smarter. We are going to be seeing all the traffic and data from all of these different government functions and services provided by private entities – electricity, parking, home consumptions, supermarket shopping. How do you secure this and not endanger the integrity of the customer’s

data we are integrating? It’s a big challenge and we are working with our main partners the Smart Dubai Office, Dubai Data Establishment and our community of selected technology partners to bring the best suited solutions to secure this.”

Track record Based on du’s recent track record in innovation and service delivery, the challenges presented by Dubai Smart City will no doubt be overcome.

In March, du won ‘Security Implementation of the Year’ at the

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2016 Network Middle East Innovation Awards for its Secure Web Hosting in the cloud. The company was also recognised for Best Enterprise Mobility Solutions and the Best Cloud Security Solutions at the inaugural Cloud MENA Awards 2016 in April.

In terms of delivering a value for money service, du announced earlier this year that it is reducing its GCC roaming charges, offering more affordable connectivity and communication for customers as they travel for business and leisure.

Customers can also benefit from a joint venture with Ticketmaster, receiving a 15 percent discount on some of the region’s biggest events.

These end user benefits would not be possible without the work of key partners in day-to-day activities, and Tabka is eager to emphasise the many positive working relations du has with other businesses, and how important these will be in the future.

He adds: “Aramex, for example, are our main logistics provider helping us from traditional warehouse operations to distribution channels, fulfilment and end-to-end customer activation. They are going through their own digital transformation and are embracing the concept of crowd sourcing more and more. We are very happy to be working with innovative companies such as Aramex.

Our other key partners include HPE, Huawei, Atos and Cisco.

“As for the future, we will be growing more and more and we will need new technology partners embracing the world of Open Source and innovations to add to the business. I would love to get involved with more exciting new projects like the Smart City, opening up new areas and opportunities for growth.”

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Tunisian Heights for Cancer Since 2004, du’s Anis Tabka has been raisingmoney for cancer charities. He started with running the Boston Marathon in support of the children’s cancer department Massachusetts Memorial Hospital and then started taking part in various mountain climbing charity fundraisers. In 2012, Tabka was inspired to set up his own charity and Tunisian Heights for Cancer was created.

He says: “I wanted to support my fellow Tunisian youth who are suffering from that disease but are not getting the same financial support as is the case in the West.”

The aim of the charity is to support young Tunisian kids from disadvantaged families who can’t afford proper cancer treatments and Tabka focuses on both raising awareness and funding during his mountain climbs. He adds: “The first Tunisian project I was involved in was in association with ATEL (Association Tunisienne des Enfants Atteints de

Leucemie) on the project of extending the paediatric wing of the Hospital Aziza Othmana in Tunis. This allowed more children to be treated in that facility.”

Tabka’s achievements include being the first Tunisian to climb to some of the world’s highest peaks. “I’ve climbed Kilimanjaro in Africa, Elbrus in Europe, Denali in North America, Aconcagua in South America - each time I am on an Expedition, I try to raise funding for the charity.”

His next expedition is scheduled inNovember to Mt. Vinson in Antartica.

To find out more, visit the charity’s Facebook page

Co-operative success Written by Wedaeli Chibelushi Produced by Dennis Morales

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FrieslandCampina

FrieslandCampina has been present in the Middle East for over 60 years and has found lasting success in the region. The Middle East division of this dairy multinational recognises localised challenges and opportunities, which drive the need for continuous innovation

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utch dairy co-operative FrieslandCampina is one of the leading dairy co-operatives in the world. It produces and sells consumer products (e.g. dairy-based beverages, infant nutrition, cheese and desserts) in Africa, Asia and many European countries. Dairy products are also exported worldwide from the Netherlands.

In addition, products are supplied to professional customers, including cream and butter products to bakeries and catering companies.

FrieslandCampina also sells ingredients and half-finished products to manufacturers of infant nutrition, the food industry and the pharmaceutical sector around the world.

FrieslandCampina was among the first multinational companies to enter the Middle East

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“Always striving for the best quality, where health and safety play a key role. For our cows, farmers, consumers, employees and partners, we are all about ‘nourishing by nature’” market in early 50s. Since then, the company has established a strong position in the market.

Its brands, such as Rainbow and Omela, have become household names in the region.

What is FrieslandCampina’s secret to Middle Eastern success?

“I think it is about consistently striving for the best quality,” explains Bas Roelofs, Managing Director for FrieslandCampina Middle East. “Being here for more than 60 years, allows us to have a strong heritage in the region.”

Before becoming Managing Director of the Middle East, Roelofs spent four years as a Director of Sales and Shopper Marketing for FrieslandCampina. Supply Chain

Digital speaks to him about how FrieslandCampina is building on the region’s positive economic and social changes, and how they plan to further expand and invest in Middle East.

Co-operative company FrieslandCampina is a proud dairy co-operative. “We have 19,000 member farmers who have from generation to generation owned this company, and that’s different than having a stockmarket listed company, of course,” Roelofs comments. He also insists that the firm’s cooperative status distinguishes it from competitors; that its farmers’ joint entrepreneurial mind-set

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separates FrieslandCampina from stock-market listed companies.

“When we started back in 1871 we had a small group of farmers forming a small company, now we are one of the top global dairy multinationals,” Roelofs asserts. This small group of farmers has expanded over the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Roelofs believes that FrieslandCampina’s success as a co-operative has allowed it to reach out to several foreign regions, including the Middle East.

Staying fresh The company has a unique ‘grass to glass’ business model, ensuring it adheres to the highest quality standards in the dairy industry. The model is anchored on FrieslandCampina’s ability to have full control of the whole chain: from the farms (grass) to the final product (glass). With more than 140

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years of knowledge on farming, food production, food safety, sustainability, health and nutrition as well as in depth knowledge of the market, FrieslandCampina believes it is well placed to be part of the fast growth of this region.

Roelofs describes the process: “That all starts with collecting the milk directly from the farms, where we keep them in a chilled truck to get it to the production facility. It all happens in a short time frame to make sure the milk is fully fresh when it reaches our facilities.”

From this point, different products follow different chains. “We have a supply chain where the finished product doesn’t have to be chilled, like with Rainbow evaporated milk. We also have products that need to be fully chilled all the way to delivery in store (like cheese), which has to be kept between four and seven degrees. We have our

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Friso brand (infant formula) that has to be kept at a very stable temperature as well,” Roelofs adds.

After production, the products are transported in chilled containers (on boats) to the receiving region.

FrieslandCampina tracks deviation in temperature throughout the journey, from harbor to store.

Progressive plans FrieslandCampina is determined to maintain a culture of innovation.

A newly opened state of the art R&D center in Wageningen Campus, the Netherlands, invests in unlocking maximum potential in dairy and creating new concepts.

FrieslandCampina Middle East

realises that along with consulting its Dutch R&D center, it must carry out its local consumer research in the Middle East.

“In order to reflect the local needs, our consumer research is done locally. We listen to insights from key stakeholders, or it could even be government requirements or consumers calling our consumer care line,” says Roelofs. “We link that back to our R&D center and make the maximum use out of that so we can always be close to consumers’ needs”.

FrieslandCampina Middle East also focuses on what Roelofs calls “commercial innovation”. Current engagement with stakeholders

22,000

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“In order to reflect the local needs our consumer research is done locally. We try to listen to research done by key stakeholders, or it could even be government requirements or consumers calling our consumer care line” and consumers is different from the company’s strategy two or three decades ago. For instance, FrieslandCampina is currently running a big digital campaign for its Frico cheese brand – this would not have been possible five or ten years ago.

Neither would it have been possible for FrieslandCampina to produce a widespread media campaign with celebrity chef Sanjeev Kapoor. Kapoor is the protagonist of Rainbow evaporated milk brand communication running across major UAE TV and radio networks. Kapoor promotes Rainbow’s capacity to enhance the taste of traditional Asian karak tea.

Another commercial innovation

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centres around the activation of Rainbow flavoured milk, a product produced in FrieslandCampina’s Jeddah factory. “We recently won the Guinness Book of World Records in the Jeddah Red Sea Mall, where we had the world’s largest gathering of kids dressed as Ben Ten,” Roelofs comments. Ben 10 is a much loved character from Cartoon Network EMEA, who partnered with FrieslandCampina Middle East.

Opportunities and challenges Roelofs acknowledges current conflicts in the Middle East: “Of course, often covered in the news lately are the wars in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. That gives a completely new

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and different challenge”. Roelofs growth. Roelofs ultimately also recognizes the instability of recognizes that it’s a privilege for oil prices and the geographical FrieslandCampina to operate in complexity of the region. However, the region, despite its challenges. he ultimately believes that the benefits of operating in the Middle Expansion and investment East far outweigh the risks. Roelofs The firm has big plans for the sees the Middle East as vibrant, and future. Firstly, it is investing in feels FrieslandCampina its Jeddah factory, where can learn from and it produces Rainbow contribute to the ready to drink milk. region. We have Sustainability is a lot to offer the another area which The year diverse nationalities is seeing heavy FrieslandCampina and cultures. investment. “One of was founded Roelofs adds: the things that we’ve “This region has a recently announced is population which is growing, our commitment to massively notably a young and educated invest in biogas equipment, demographic with high investment meaning that our farmers will be both in the public and private sector. able to use the manure to get Personally that gives me energy.” electricity for the farms. As such He believes that in the coming we know that we can get more decade the region will see milk, more growth and a lower strong economic and personal carbon footprint,” Roelofs notes.

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FrieslandCampina Middle East is also reducing wastage of energy and water in its Jeddah factory.

Roelofs believes that FrieslandCampina Middle East will maintain its success over the coming years. “Aim for the stars while keeping your feet on the ground” he states, a motto that aptly summarises the cooperative’s future plans.

FrieslandCampina wants to

continue serving its millions of Middle Eastern consumers. It wants to continue sourcing inspiration, continue growth and introduce new products. Roelofs concludes: “It makes me very proud to see the historic result that we have delivered here, and I want to continue humbly serving the millions of consumers in the Middle East, with our organisation across the region and backed by our farmers in Europe.”

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Kuwaiti triumph Written by Nell Walker Produced by Dennis Morales

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Noor Al-Qatami, CEO of Kuwait’s number one supermarket, describes her team’s tireless work in creating the best possible shopping experience for its valued clients

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aveco, Kuwait’s biggest and most successful supermarket, is a true success story. Founded

by Noor Al-Qatami, the company’s CEO, just two years ago, the store’s popularity has proven astronomical in an impressively short amount of time. Al-Qatami was determined to develop the brand quickly as a reaction to customer needs, and marry the twin ideals of highquality with accessible produce.

Customer relations Organic, vegan, gluten-free, and many luxury items that are not readily available to the average Kuwaiti citizen can be found at Saveco, to the point where shoppers are able to dictate what Saveco sells.

“We decided to develop a system where customers can come in and request an item; we then order it for the store, and it is then put on the shelf for other customers as well,” says AlQatami. “It’s a more specialised service for the

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customer, where they feel they are being treated like a VIP. This is not just a supermarket, it is their own store; a store that they have a say in.”

This special treatment of customers is key to the company’s success. Saveco has an unusually large social media presence, and the CEO herself handles the accounts, allowing customers to speak to somebody who is multi-lingual and enabling Al-Qatami to connect with them on a more personal level than

most bosses would.

“The reason I wanted it to do it this way was because when I looked at social media accounts in Kuwait, they were always neglecting the customer,” she explains. “I wanted to have a relationship with our customers. I can answer people back in their own language or dialect, and they go away feeling extremely content. It’s satisfying for everybody involved, and ensures that the customer returns to us.”

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Saveco also offers a delivery middle of the store which allows system that can be used via customers to learn new skills in the WhatsApp; Al-Qatami says that kitchen. Young school children can people in Kuwait generally prefer book sessions of cooking or cake messenger services as they dislike decoration, but the system is aimed talking, either on the telephone very much at adults. or face-to-face, when it comes to “In Kuwait, most people don’t ordering from stores. cook as they have chefs in Customers have the their homes,” Al-Qatami option of simply sending explains. “They wouldn’t an image of what they know what to do with want to Saveco staff, quinoa, for example. We or even asking to see decided that if they wanted what range of a certain to get on the bandwagon product the shop has, and eat quinoa, why not at which point images teach them? They are Number of would be sent to them in coming in and buying the Employees at order to let them choose product, so they really Saveco the item they desire. The should learn different ways messenger service is of incorporating it into free, as is the delivery itself. their meals. Kuwait has the highest obesity rate per capita; we have a The Food Academy responsibility of helping people eat One of Saveco’s most impressive healthier meals.” features is The Food Academy, Al-Qatami identified gaps in the a cooking school located in the food market and filled them, for

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Noor Al-Qatami - CEO

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example by conferring with a coeliac organisation to develop a gluten-free section. The Saveco team even went so far as to re-organise the aisles to bring the glutenfree products closer to the door, allowing coeliac children to choose a snack quickly rather than being faced with all of the food they can’t eat. The shop then also offers a kids’ area on the top floor so that they can play while parents shop in peace.

Building a family Al-Qatami admits that finding staff was difficult at the beginning, because nobody knew how successful the business would be.

Two years later, Saveco has become a family, and Al-Qatami believes this to be one of the most important elements of the company:

“They are not merely employees,” she states. “Once they pass their three month probation, we take care of them, not just through work but everything else as well. For example, when one of our employees passed away, our COO flew with the body to the man’s homeland to be at the burial. We made sure the burial and reception fees were covered, and continued to pay his salary to ensure his kids are supported. We try to go above and beyond for our staff.”

A man’s world?

Al-Qatami has by no means achieved what she wants. Her vision of what she wishes to accomplish is not even five percent there, she says; she plans to make Saveco international, and develop into the retail business.

She is among the top 100 most powerful Arab women, and attributes this to attitudes instilled in her by her parents.

Her father, a successful

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businessman himself, never told her to come to me. Things are she was different because of her changing here; women aren’t gender, and encouraged her in her having to fight as hard, and they ventures – whether they failed or are part of every element of the succeeded. Al-Qatami conducted working world. The CEO of the a TEDx Talk last year during which top bank in the Middle East is a she described her woman. background and “Some parents triumphant career, and in Kuwait treat she showed enormous females differently good humour in the face to males; they will of those who judged her open doors for for her gender. their sons that “Women often put they wouldn’t barriers in front of open for their The year themselves simply by daughters. My saveco was thinking of themselves dad taught founded as different from me that if you men,” she says. “If work for it, you acknowledge that there is no you will get what you difference, then there is no barrier. It want. He believes in doesn’t make a difference to me if me, and that was someone realises I’m the boss or one of the most vital not, because the bottom line is if elements to my they want to do business, they have success.”

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Creating world-class attractions Written by Lucy Dixon Produced by Jordan Platten

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Dynamic Attractions is capitalising on the growth of the theme park industry, offering clients expertise in every element of rides and attractions

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he theme park industry is booming, with new and expanded attractions opening around the world. And this interest in theme parks is good news for Dynamic Attractions, a company with years of experience creating and building attractions for the biggest and most successful theme park operators around. Earlier this year, Dynamic Attractions created a new division called Unlimited Attractions, to reflect the holistic approach it takes to creating world-class theme park experiences. Not all of today’s theme park operators have the decades of experience and expert staff needed to be able to combine telling a compelling story with

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creating a superb ride experience, which is where Unlimited Attractions comes in. Housed in its new, 40,000 square foot ‘Attraction Development Center’ the new division has the capability of offering everything needed for world-class attractions.

George Walker, Vice President Creative Development, explains: “The market had a need for an entity that could provide all the intricate services involved in building attractions. There are so many new theme parks opening around the world, there’s really a kind of second life happening and we’re capitalising on that. If you look at typical attractions, there are many, many components that all have to

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come together – but what we found was the backbone, the core of every attraction, is the ride system. This is the most expensive element.

This is the element that drives the schedule and has the greatest amount of impact on the facility, so it makes sense to also design, manage, and deliver the show elements that wrap around the ride system. But people who design ride systems tend to be really good at

math and really bad at story telling.”

At the helm of Unlimited Attractions is the expert trio made up of Walker, Mike Haimson (VP Technical) and Cindy Emerick (VP Business Development). Together they offer an unparalleled mix of skills and experience when it comes to creating theme park attractions.

They originally met working on the Ferrari World expansion in Dubai, as Walker explains: “It is

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truly a massive expansion of that park, with a 40 percent increase in capacity that includes eight rides and attractions, as well as new facades and environmental updating. For the most iconic attraction of the project we hired Dynamic, and this is how Cindy, Mike and I found that we worked extremely well together.

This was around the same the CEO of Dynamic Attractions, Guy Nelson, was interested in improving the way in which his company was able to provide these services for clients.”

And the result of this was Unlimited Attractions.

Haimson adds: “I think the three of us work so well together because we take an attraction that has a ride system at its core, but then we start to fold in all the other elements. The storytelling moments, building the scenes. The way in which the experience is going to unfold for the guest. All of that is a combination of technology and art. It’s very delicate and if you get it wrong you essentially spend a whole lot of money to not have as good an experience as you could have if you had done it right.”

So, how does any theme park operator know when its attraction is hitting the target? Ticket

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Our control systems are designed according to the latest international safety standards by ISO, ASTM and CSEI using modern and innovative safety control solutions. Our control panels are manufactured, tested and certified to uL, CE, CSEI and CSA standards at our in-house facility. All of our work is controlled by our ISO 9001-based quality management system.

We are proud of our record of supplying safe and reliable control systems to Dynamic Attractions and we are very proud of the successes we have enjoyed with Dynamic Attractions in delivering some of the most exciting attractions in the industry today.

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CONSTRUCTION

“We train maintenance staff and work on other attractions that are not ours, because we have a talent pool within our company that can handle it, and a reputation for quality” - Cindy Emerick, VP Business Development sales are a big indicator, of course, but it goes further than that, says Walker: “The pay off in the world of theme park design isn’t the one that comes from the bank. It’s the one that comes off the faces of the people exiting the attraction.

That’s the reward. So you never know for sure until you open.” But the Unlimited Attractions team has enough success behind it that it has pretty good instincts for this now.

Cindy Emerick adds: “I guess the challenge is always understanding how to mix the ingredients very well together, like a chef. How do you know it’s going to taste good when you’re done? You don’t know, but because that’s what you’re trained for, that’s what you’ve dedicated

all of your time and studies and experience to, you are probably going to be pretty close to right.”

Being a one-stop shop for theme park attractions offers many benefits to Dynamic Attractions’ clients, beyond just the creation and construction of an attraction.

Emerick says: “Dynamic Attractions also has probably one of the most extensive parts and service divisions. In effect, we can actually assist, maintain and audit a park technically. We train maintenance staff and even work on other attractions that are not ours because we have a talent pool within our company that can handle it, and a reputation in the industry for quality.”

Added to this long-term

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relationship with clients, Dynamic Attractions can bring together a group of specialist companies that have the know-how to produce every detail of an attraction. Haimson explains: “If you do one particular discipline – a fire effect, for example, or a special kind of media – then we’re going to involve you directly into our design and bring you onto the project under out contract.” These enterprises can partner with Dynamic Attractions, meaning they are potentially working across multiple projects for Dynamic and thus spreading the risk for themselves. And the client benefits from the economies of scale by contracting directly with Dynamic Attractions so they don’t need to spend the time and money sourcing these smaller, but highly skilled, companies. So, it’s a situation where everyone wins. Haimson adds: “That’s how we’re going to be able to get a better product at a better price; there is no downside to it.”

The team knows well which partner is right for a particular project – depending on what the client wants to achieve, as well as their budget. Smaller parks don’t have the big budgets of, for example, Disney and Universal. Emerick says: “They see these wonderful projects and they can’t compete with

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the pocketbook of those parks but and we balance them together from they do want to deliver something a creative standpoint,” says Walker. great for their guests. So, we use And these days, the trio Mike and George’s expertise at acknowledges, visitors are being able to put on a big show anticipating bigger and better with a reasonable budget.” And it experiences when they visit a theme is a constant challenge park. Walker says: “The for the creative team, audience is expecting alongside the ride more. They want experts at Dynamic more than just a ride Attractions, to system, they want to marry up the be entertained all the artistic and time, while they’re Number of Employees at the technical queuing. While they Dynamic Attractions elements of an wait for 45 minutes, attraction at the right we have the opportunity price for their client. to get their attention and “I like to think of it as an artist’s entertain them – that’s what the palette. The different colours, clients are wanting and that’s what the different paints, the different these smaller parks and locations are materials are all like the different finding out. The level of expectation elements used in an attraction, like of the public is increasing. A great scenery, lighting, audio, media, example of this is the Flying Aces or effects. All of these ingredients attraction that I recently opened at are interdependently related to the Ferrari World Abu Dhabi. The queue technical and ride system elements, for this attraction takes you back in

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“We’re working with clients right now at making things more interactive, in terms of augmented and virtual reality, moving scenery, media and real-time generated graphics” - Mike Haimson, VP Technical

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time to the golden age of flying where we explore the origins of the Ferrari logo which comes from a WWI pilot who painted it on his plane. So the attraction recreates this with a story that leads you through the pilot’s barracks, through an old radio room, and to an airfield that is recreated using projection that fills the sky with planes everywhere.

The environment is filled with scenery, props, rockwork, and even a plane crashed in a tree.”

Constantly coming up with the wow factor is at the heart of what Dynamic Attractions does, and it has a research and development team in Orlando, in the attraction development centre, looking into new – and sometimes established – technologies and what they have to offer theme parks. Interactivity is a hot topic at the moment and, as Haimson explains, it goes a lot further than simply live tweeting your

ride experience: “We’re working with clients right now at making things more interactive either in terms of augmented and virtual reality, moving scenery, media and realtime generated graphics. But we’re also looking at ways to make the big mechanical stuff interactive as well. So imagine you as a guest can choose your path in a ride system and at the same time, try to make sure the client still achieves the return on investment that they need.

So we’re trying to stay ahead of the curve by investing our own research and development dollars into things and that’s one of the reasons we built the Orlando facility. Ultimately how we make the guest experience better for the new guest, this new audience.

“Clients out there will hear the buzzword interactivity and they think that means the guests need to be able to either shoot at something or look at their phone. That is not what

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interactivity means. Interactivity is getting the guest to be engaged in their environment in a way that they can affect and in a way in which the environment can affect them. So I encourage anyone who wants to use interactivity to take that fresh approach and if you don’t have any thoughts or ideas on how to do that, please give us a call. We’ve got lots. ” And these ideas, when realised, will be right the first time. This is because of the precision engineering approach taken by Dynamic Attractions – making sure each part of a ride or attraction is perfect from day one can significantly reduce costs and time for both Dynamic Attractions and its clients.

Emerick illustrates this point with an example: “We just designed and manufactured an attraction and because of the details and the special attention that the team

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did on the precision engineering, your design intent is properly executed. You want to ultimately provide a safe, functional, smooth and exciting attraction to the rider.

They don’t know what it takes to get there, but we do everything it takes to ensure the end experience is as great as possible.”

The motivation behind the team at Dynamic Attractions comes from their passion. Walker describes it this way, “We live in a world that is sometimes more harsh than it should be. Great attractions can take people out of that world for a moment.

They can become an escape where you get a chance to be something impossible, or feel something you normally couldn’t. It’s a chance to give people a lasting memory that makes the world a better place, even if just for a moment. Who wouldn’t want to do that for a living?”

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Construction without ba partnership without bo Written by Alice Young Produced by Jordan Platten

arriers, oundaries

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Adbul Latif Jameel Machinery has grown to become a key supplier of commercial vehicles, industrial and heavy equipment and associated services to customers in Saudi Arabia in a very short space of time

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bdul Latif Jameel Machinery was established in 2013 to meet the demands of the Saudi Arabian market in terms of construction and mining equipment. Komatsu was the first brand the company represented and was followed by the successful inclusions of more brands to its portfolio, including Manitou, FotonLoxa and Teksan Generators.

The company has further complemented its offerings in the market by developing extensive aftersales capabilities. In just three years, it has become a major force in the machinery segment.

Business Review Middle East speaks to Abdul Latif Jameel Machinery’s Managing Director, Arif Chishti about how this was executed, and how the company intends to grow in the next few years while maintaining its exemplary reputation and crucial supplier relationships.

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Operations

Abdul Latif Jameel Machinery is a business of Abdul Latif Jameel. With dual headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Abdul Latif Jameel’s interests encompass a number of sectors, including automotive distribution, auto parts manufacturing, financial services, renewable energy, environmental services, land and real estate development, logistics, electronics retailing and media services.

With a presence in over 30 countries across five continents, Abdul Latif Jameel positions itself as a preferred business partner primarily for inward investment into the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey (MENAT) region.

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“Abdul Latif Jameel Machinery was founded in 2013,” Chishti explains. “In the same year, we were selected to represent the Komatsu brand in Saudi Arabia.

Komatsu is a world renowned brand of Construction and Mining Equipment, and it has been present in Saudi Arabia since the 50’s.

“In just over three years, we expanded by adding a number of

global brands including Manitou, Foton-Loxa and Teksan Generators.

By successfully launching five facilities across Saudi Arabia, we also expanded our geographical footprint to be closer to our customers. We call them “4S” facilities– Sales, Services, Spare parts, and customer Support.”

Abdul Latif Jameel Machinery, as the name suggests, is primarily

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“We recently moved into our state-of-the-art facility rated by Komatsu as the world’s largest.

It’s built on a land area of 17,000 square metres” - Managing Director Arif Chishti

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responsible for supplying high operator training, technical training, quality machinery, commercial immediate availability of parts vehicles, and industrial and heavy and more. Our customer support equipment to the Saudi market. standards ensure best in class upAlongside this it also provides best in time, thereby providing optimum class aftersales support throughout utilisation of the equipment.” the life cycle of the equipment. Its Chishti adds: “We recently moved product range consists of dump into our state-of-the-art facility, trucks, dozers, excavators, wheel which spreads over an area 17,000 loaders, motor graders, telescopic square metres in Jeddah. The handlers, and concrete facility is designed to ensure delivery trucks. The optimal productivity, company has also workflow efficiency and made recent increased flexibility. entry into the It also has a training Number of employees generator market. centre which helps at Abdul Latif Chishti explains: us give young Saudi Jameel Machinery “Customer talent the opportunity care is central to to experience and our business. We be part of a specialised endeavour to become work environment. We are our customers’ preferred partners, also proud to say that our facility is supporting them through the life of currently rated the world’s largest their equipment. Our scope includes by Komatsu. A similar facility is initial consultancy advice on the under construction in Riyadh.” type of product they should buy or rent, proposing financing solutions, service agreements, onsite repairs, Abdul Latif Jameel Machinery

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recognises the value of its employees and is backing this up with a range of initiatives. “We sell premium products and our employees are equally experienced to provide consultative services to our customers. We have a truly multicultural workforce comprising of 19 nationalities but we also have a lot of local talent. Despite the fact that our company only

has a formalised three years of presence, we can proudly say that we are in the green zone which means that 30 percent of our workforce is comprised of Saudi talent,” explains Chishti.

“We have a very important role to play in Saudi Arabia and that’s to build national talent.” Chishti adds, “We are always keen on hiring fresh Saudi graduates and putting

“We have a very important role to play in Saudi Arabia and that’s to build national talent”

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them through training on parts, services, or sales. Today, we have 10 graduates who are undergoing this scheme which will last for two years, after which they will have full time employment with us.”

The company uses a mixture of in-house and outsourced training programs to ensure that its employees comply with both internal and customer expectations.

Chishti adds: “As site conditions vary significantly with temperatures ranging from zero to 52 degrees and humidity of more than 90 percent, our service crew have to pass physical ability tests as well.”

Industry challenge

Chishti explains: “Having experienced buoyant growth over the past years, the industry is currently going through challenging times; customers and suppliers alike are reducing workforce, and capital expenditure. At Abdul Latif Jameel Machinery, customer satisfaction is our top priority and we

continuously look at innovative ways to meet the changing needs of our customers. We carefully “listen” to their requirements and provide them with the best customised solutions.”

Chishti adds: “While there have been casualties in the industry, we are investing on our talent which will ensure that we continue to have the best talent through these tough times. Specialised talent is not an easy find.”

Abdul Latif Jameel Machinery has also used its supply chain to drive customer satisfaction. By optimising its inventory and logistics procedures using a centralised Enterprise resource planning (ERP)

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“It is the team of people which brings life into a company” system, the company is able to aim for 95 percent first pick across its parts. The company also adheres to Kaizen principles in line with Abdul Latif Jameel’s broader continuous improvement structure.

alike. Such solutions comprise of on-site modular support units including workshop, parts warehouse, and lube service shops at the customer site.

He adds: “We don’t actually call them customers - we refer to Chishti highlights them as guests because that Komatsu has guests have the highest The year that an installed base of degree of respect in the Abdul Latif thousands of pieces Arab world. We have Jameel of equipment in what we call a ‘guest Machinery Saudi Arabia and, delight index’, and we was founded subsequently, customer have a dedicated guest support is at the delight department cornerstone of Abdul Latif Jameel that calls our guests to ask them Machinery as a business. Chishti about their experience with us and his teams have worked hard and areas we can improve on.” to provide innovative solutions “Equipment constitutes a large for new and returning customers proportion of capital investment

Innovation

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on a project - perhaps the largest.

Recognising this dynamic, we continually train customer operators in safe and efficient operation and maintenance procedures. Our guest support standards ensure best in class up-time, thereby providing optimum utilisation of the equipment,” continues Chishti.

Information & communication technology (ICT):

“To provide timely recommendations to customers, Abdul Latif Jameel Machinery installs Komatsu’s remote machine operation management system (KOMTRAX) in every Komatsu piece of equipment delivered, along with its subscription.

“This allows pre-empting possible failures and reducing diagnostic time. Through KOMTRAX, operator training needs are also identified and this goes a long way to delight our customers.

KOMTRAX is also available as a retrofit for older Komatsu equipment,” Chishti explains.

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Sustainable growth

It is the team of people which brings life into a company, as Chishti highlights: “Our core values are Respect, Integrity, Passion and Empower (RIPE); these are indoctrinated in every employee.

We refer to them as associates.

Our associates are emphatically attached to our company and they contribute valuable ideas which are key drivers of growth in good and not so good times.”

Abdul Latif Jameel Machinery has been able to build an extensive business and develop into a well trusted partner of choice in only three years. Having developed a series of key relationships with equipment manufacturers, the company holds true to its reputation for being a supplier of global brands with a local touch.

By investing in both its physical and human assets, the company has proven that its business model is not only viable, but capable of delivering for its staff, its customers, and its partners.

Arif Chishti

Managing Director Arif Chishti is the Managing Director of Abdul Latif Jameel Machinery.

He graduated from Nigeria in 1990 with a Degree in Civil and Water Resources Engineering; and from France in 1992 with an MBA Degree in International Management. He also attended IMD business school in Switzerland. Having worked successfully in the region with leading brands of heavy equipment including Caterpillar and Volvo, Chishti has more than 25 years of in-depth experience in setting up and driving 4S – construction machinery and industrial equipment dealerships.

Ingredients Written by Lucy Dixon Produced by Alex Barron

s of success

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A family atmosphere and attention to detail have helped to steer Shakespeare & Co. towards an impressive path of growth, as Business Review Middle East reports

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hen Cyrus Graesslin joined Shakespeare and Co. five years ago, as Regional Director of Operations and Franchises, the company’s portfolio comprised just eight restaurants.

By the end of 2016, its repertoire will span 50 stores across the UAE, the wider Middle East, North Africa and the United States. Graesslin explains: “We are a Dubai-based, home-grown brand and all of our stores outside of the UAE are exclusively franchised. My role is to oversee the operations both here

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in the UAE, as the café restaurant component represents the core of our business and the focus of our development strategy. We’re also focused on expanding our presence in other territories. Currently we have franchised branches in Lebanon, Iraq, Qatar, Egypt, Oman, Jordan and Iraq, as well a few companyowned stores in the United States.

When I joined in 2011, we had an aspiration to open 35 stores by this year - and we exceeded it. I think if the conditions are right and we can continue to roll out stores in the

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UAE, while encouraging the development of our franchise territories, I believe 100 stores worldwide by 2018 is well within the realm of possibility.”

This phenomenal growth, he says, is a result of its traditional menu and décor that doesn’t change every time there is a new culinary trend, coupled with consistently high standards in every single restaurant. He says: “We don’t believe in trying to reinvent the wheel. I think a lot of concepts try too hard to be the next big thing, whether it is creating the next frozen yoghurt or the ‘it’ gourmet burger.

Here in Dubai at the moment, it’s all about Peruvian food. Our mantra is simply good food, great service in a comfortable atmosphere – but most importantly, to deliver those things consistently.

We’re not pretentious. We serve comfort food and we serve classics that people never get bored of, which appeals to everyone. If you look at our menu, we’ve got everything from French toast, Eggs Benedict, to fish and chips and grilled baby chicken. It’s the kind of food that is universally loved and accepted across all cultures and discerning palettes.”

Graesslin highlights the crucial nature of consistency many times. “The problem a lot of

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HORECA Trade HORECA is a leading food, beverage and non-food distribution company dedicated entirely to the hospitality sector servicing more than 1,000 foodservice operators. The company was established as a new start-up in 2003 as the first company to be fully dedicated to the niche sector of foodservice. (The term HORECA stands for Hotels, Restaurants and Cafes/Catering).

In 2005, Bidvest, a global international service, trading and distribution company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange acquired a majority share in HORECA. Despite this HORECA remains to be operating with full autonomy. In 2010, HORECA was voted by its customers “Best Food and Beverage supplier in the UAE”. In 2014 and 2015 HORECA was awarded “CSR label” by Dubai Chamber for all the efforts and dedication to the community.

HORECA Capabilities: • Employ 180+ foodservice professionals.

• Superior customer service with 24 hour delivery with 98% service rate.

• 1st foodservice company to launch an online shop store shop.horecatrade.com • Certified to HACCP, OHSAS 18001 and ISO 9001.

• 25 multi-temp trucks delivering more than 110,000 efficient deliveries in 2014 • Fully integrated ERP/BI Solutions with a Field-Sales reporting app • 2 distribution centers in Dubai and Abu Dhabi with 45,000 SQ. Feet space • Extended coverage reaching (A/B/C+) channels via HORECA, C/D+ channels via HORECA Express and D/E via sub-distributors.

• Relevant 360° Marketing Approach covering (corporate marketing, brand marketing and trade marketing).

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brands face when they become large-scale operations is they are not able to sustain the level of consistency they were able to achieve when they had just a handful of stores. For us, adapting our operation as the number of branches grew presented an enormous challenge. But we’ve been able to achieve a good level of consistency courtesy of our central production facility which is the hub of everything that we do: the kitchen, stores, purchasing department, pastry kitchen and design department. Centralising the operation is the key to consistency.

Our suppliers also play a great

role in maintaining a high level of continuity. Some products we have no control over whatsoever, such as our ready-to-serve beverages.

Any disruption in the supply chain can directly affect our customers.

However a perfect example is Horeca Trade, who supplies our marquee water AcquaPanna and San Pelligrino – it has been incredibly supportive in ensuring uninterrupted product supply, offering new and improved products and providing us full support for all our initiatives. Ultimately, we see the results in our mystery shopper reports, comment cards and social media channels – people appreciate

1,400

Number of employees at Shakespeare and Co.

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“For us, staying true to the b food, a clean restaurant, nic service; I think that’s the hall

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basic principles of good ce atmosphere and great llmark of our success�

SHAKESPEARE AND CO.

the fact that it doesn’t matter which to the restaurants themselves, branch they go to, they’re able to where they start treating customers get the same taste and quality they like family members and people love expected and become accustomed coming to our restaurants. We have to.” relationships with them and become Added to the quality food is the like the neighbourhood watering atmosphere that Shakespeare hole.” The Victorian period-inspired & Co. creates for all décor helps to cement this its restaurants. warm, friendly feeling – It believes in plush furnishing are the personal much more inviting touch, and this than the industrial, is something minimalist style that keeps favoured by Shakespeare and the customers many restaurants.

Co.’s annual revenue coming back.

Graesslin adds: “For “Even though we’ve us, staying true to the transitioned from a basic principles of good family-run business to a food, a clean restaurant, nice corporate structure, we still run it as atmosphere and great service; a family business. A lot of the team I think that’s the hallmark of our members including myself have success.” been here a minimum of five years As well as expanding its and we are a very close-knit team. franchise network beyond the And that family atmosphere extends UAE, Shakespeare & Co. has also

$58 million

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identified other revenue streams it The second additional string to can capitalise on. The first of these Shakespeare & Co.’s bow is its is an outside catering division, patisseries – it became obvious which it operates within Dubai. that running its own pastry kitchens Graesslin says: “Catering is a tough within company-owned sites was business, it can be a lot of work more practical, which it started for very little money. But for us, back in 2006. Graesslin explains: everything’s already set up, so “The problem with pastries is that why not make the most it’s really only a success if of the opportunity?” based on economies The catering team of scale, because the works on small and waste can exceed medium-sized what is sold. We’re events, anything not like other stores from a small where we keep Shakespeare and Co garden party of 10 cakes for days, is based in the UAE people to a buffet while we also insist for 150 people, all the on keeping our fridges while with the focus on top full. From an aesthetic quality: “One gentleman wished to point of view, empty displays impress his fiancée so we organised look unappealing. The downside a private dinner on the beach. We of those two philosophies is that focus on the niche sectors of the we suffer from an inordinate level market which the bigger brands of wastage.” However under the tend to shy away from.” guidance of a very highly-regarded

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“I’ve worked in the business 18 years and a lot of companies preach to promote from within, but very few put it into practice. This is the only company that I know of and that I have been a part of that does that”

UAE Official Distributor Room Service Delivery L.L.C

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PO Box 33073 - Dubai - UAE Tel: 800 4788 - www.cafeambassador.com

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French Executive Pastry Chef, Pascal Dupuis, who has been with Shakespeare & Co. for 10 years, the pastry operation has grown as its footprint has expanded, and is now one of the most profitable facets of the business, third in sales behind food and beverage.

Attracting – and retaining – the best staff in this way is something Graesslin speaks very passionately about, with emphasis on staff working their way up within the company. “I’ve worked in the business 18 years and a lot of companies preach to promote from within, but very few put it into practice. This is the only company that I know of and that I have been a part of that does that. We hire everyone into entry-

level positions, irrespective of their level of experience. This is not brain surgery, you’re not auditioning to be a NASA scientist.

This is a people business – we are selling emotions and experiences.

Our only requisite is you are exceptionally friendly and have a passion for hospitality. That is why we hire everyone in entry-level positions and grow everyone within the company. When we need a new position, we look within our own ranks. The majority of our managers and chefs have been with us over 10 years – they know if they work hard they’ll get rewarded and no one will ever go above them. We don’t just offer them a career – we provide a future for themselves and their dependents.”

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Responsible dairies Written by: Nell Walker Produced by: Alex Barron

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New Zealand’s largest company, Fonterra, has an enormous global reach, with its dairy products found all over the world. Operations Director Aamir Mehdi describes to Business Review Middle East how the company has grown, and its increasing impact on the region

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ew Zealand’s largest company, Fonterra, began as a merger of the New Zealand Dairy Board and Kiwi Cooperative Dairies in 2001, having previously operated as several smaller co-ops. It is owned by over 10,000 farmers and handles more than 90 percent of the milk produced within the country. While Fonterra as a corporate entity is relatively new, its heritage goes back nearly 150 years – Anchor was founded in 1886 and remains incredibly popular across each country in which Fonterra operates.

Fonterra’s reach spreads over 130 countries, maintaining two distinct arms of business: Fonterra Ingredients, which produces an array of daily ingredients to sell

to huge food companies such as Nestle, Danone and Kraft, and a relatively smaller Brands division, specialising in converting those same ingredients to valueadded products sold under Fonterra’s own brand names, making Fonterra one of the few fully-integrated dairy supply chain companies in the world.

New Zealand, with its human population of around four million, has between five and six million cows, leaving Fonterra needing to find homes for billions of litres of milk. The natural solution was to become a worldwide dairy exporter – now the largest in the world – and the fifth largest dairy producer.

Aamir Mehdi, Operations Director at Fonterra Middle East, has

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helped to develop the company’s footprint in Africa with a brand enormous global reach from its new factory in Addis Ababa.

Middle East headquarters in Dubai.

“We sell milk powder, butter, and “I work within the Middle East/ a variety of cheeses and creams, Africa/Central but in the absence Asia sector of of access to local Responsible Dairying the business,” he milk pools in this says. “Of about region we choose 63 countries in - for now - not to this region, we are compete with the active within 25 of big names in fresh them. I look after milk products. We the operations side are committed which is composed to move New of manufacturing, Zealand’s pure dairy supply chain, nutrition across R&D, procurement, and supporting our markets; that is where all our new market expansion projects. dairy ingredients come from and This is a very wide region with then, and there’s a lot of processing a lot of emerging markets. We involved to turn it into the consumer already have a presence with products we sell here. Innovation our own manufacturing facility in is a high priority; this can only Saudi Arabia – our big regional be done if you have local assets. manufacturing site – and we’ve We can’t get everything readyrecently expanded our asset made from New Zealand.”

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For nearly 25 years, we have had the privilege of working with Fonterra Foods in the region.

As a strategic partner we are committed, to support their growth through packaging solutions that help deďŹ ne, their world class products.

Paint Cans

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Plastic Pails

Can Components

Winner: Grand Design Award

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Design Award: 2 pc Food

2016

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Everyday nutrition to dairy nutrition, and if they can The portfolio for Mehdi’s region get it, it’s very expensive,” Mehdi of the business is dominated by says. “We have developed a Everyday Nutrition, which targets product which targets deficiencies products that people consume in children but costs less than a for basic nourishment. It involves can of soda. Addressing the issues a focus upon products which of affordability and availability are would be found on the typical our main strategy for expansion.” household dining table for everyday consumption like Corporate identity butter, milk Fonterra places powder, and a huge amount spreadable of focus on its cheese. identity with Number of employees at Fonterra also has its customers, Fonterra Brands Middle East Specialist Nutrition consumers, and offerings for adults and shareholders. This identity children. The company intends a involves being responsible in the great deal of expansion into Africa, way that it makes its nutrition for which the concept of Everyday available, including the basic quality Nutrition customised for local of the product, hygiene factors, needs - especially in markets with processing techniques, ingredients, deficiencies - is proving popular. and care for the environment.

“There are almost 100 million The company complies with the people in Ethiopia with little access highest standards in the world,

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Who would you trust to produce your high quality cheese product 24 hours a day?

We are extremely proud to be a par tner and supplier to Fonterra Saudi

Contact us directly Tel. +45 98 24 31 44 limitech@limitech.dk

For more info visit www.limitech.dk

ensuring that the cows are almost exclusively grass-fed with no chemical hormones involved.

Sustainability is a major component of this identity, and Fonterra places enormous

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significance on the concept: “Our dedication to sustainable standards allows us to work towards becoming seen as the most trusted source of dairy nutrition in the world,” Mehdi says. “We go to great lengths to signify and demonstrate that. As an example we are installing X-ray machines to check for contamination in all production lines, which sometimes cost twice as much as entire packing lines of some of our competitors; the effort we make to live by our aim to be the most trusted dairy is demonstrated at all touch-points - in the way we treat our animal herds, our people, and our customers.”

Farming operations The farming operation in New Zealand is one of the most sophisticated in the world; the policies it has in place, the treatment of animals, milking techniques,

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and equipment are all state-of-theart. The country’s beef industry allows for a lot of collaboration in the ethical treatment of cows, and Fonterra also works with environmental protection groups regarding the best ways to recycle the bio-waste they produce.

As the biggest company in the nation, Fonterra is the employer of choice, and the scale of the business attracts key talent – beyond New Zealand, Fonterra relies on the strength of its brands and reputation for the same.

“Our sheer household presence across the world is a huge advantage,” says Mehdi. “The reach we have is massive, and people who come and work with us become ambassadors. When you see our products on the shelves, especially in the Middle East where there are aisles and aisles filled with options for consumers, we have something

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for every dining occasion. In terms of quality and freshness we believe our offerings are both world standard and differentiated.

“One of the strategies that we continue to work on is the strength of our brand, and what it stands for in terms of improving the life and health of families – that’s very close to our hearts. We don’t use a ‘one size fits all’ approach for products, especially in a place as diverse as the Middle East.”

Expansion Fonterra’s expansion plans are quite focused towards Africa as well as building on the strength of current competencies in KSA. Mehdi considers the company to be hugely committed to the MEA region, with the Saudi factory in particular undergoing projects for new production lines that will make cheese products for every

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segment, suited to the local palate.

“When we look at the countries that we are present in, as well as where we are expanding, there is also focus on what we contribute back to the community. Raising The quality and skill set of local talent especially in KSA and Ethiopia is very high up on the agenda, We are spending time and effort in training, development and recruitment of

fresh local talent from universities who can be groomed for future leadership of this business. Setting up a local R&D team in Saudi is a strong example of this.

“We’ll continue to invest heavily in pursuit of this goal of raising the capabilities of local talent. We want to be known as a very responsible corporate citizen, who is committed to this region for the long run.”

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Israel’s Ministry of Health has been undergoing a technological overhaul, led by CIO Shira Lev-Ami; she explains why this was necessary, and describes the challenges she has faced

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s chronic diseases evolve and take centre stage, patients live longer, and unhealthy lifestyles become a greater threat, healthcare systems have to change.

Israel, like much of the world, has had to transform its own systems in order to keep up with changes, putting pressure on the nation’s Ministry of Health.

Shira Lev-Ami, the Ministry of Health’s Chief Information Officer, has spent her five years with the organisation faced with the challenge of altering both the mindset of

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colleagues and the processes by which the ministry operates. LevAmi’s multi-disciplinary background which includes earning three masters degrees (political science, law, and business administration) led to jobs in many different corporate sectors, before she decided on a meaningful career in the public health sector.

“I started working for non-profit organisations, learning how to create philanthropic strategies,” she explains. “I wanted to create infrastructure that otherwise would not exist. It was always my hobby

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Shira Lev-Ami CIO

Shira Lev-Ami is leading the national eHealth strategy definition and implementation.

She holds three masters degrees from Tel-Aviv University: Political Science, Business administration and Law. She served as an officer in a Technology Unit and as an organisational consultant in the IDF. Lev-Ami comes from a business background at the Fishman Group headquarters (where she worked on IPOs and other business transactions), and at Shaldor – the leading Israeli strategic business consulting firm.

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to think ‘how can this process be swimming pools, and so on for improved?’ Eventually I applied for sanitation quality – use a pencil and a job with the government where notebook for their work.” While she I could make a difference.” was up to the challenge, managing The Ministry of Health’s outdated 300 different projects needing information systems proved an uphill to be planned and implemented battle to change for Lev-Ami. Israel’s simultaneously was daunting.

Ministry of Health involves “The necessity for around 100 business revolutionising IT was units, each with clear, but moving different processes forward quickly in a and information government setting systems. When is sometimes viewed Lev-Ami joined as an oxymoron: Number of Employees the ministry, government at Ministry Of Health almost all of those processes require units came to her, long tenders and Israel demanding their work overcoming many processes be supported by bureaucratic obstacles. It can adequate information systems. be very discouraging, and explains “It’s hard to believe that in the why a lot of younger and more year 2016, we still have core technologically-minded people processes managed manually. For don’t necessarily want to work example, the ministry’s inspectors for the government. You need – monitoring restaurants, schools, a lot of optimism and to believe

40,000

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“ I wanted to create infrastructure that otherwise would not exist. It was always my hobby to think ‘how can this process be improved?’” that there’s always a way.”

The challenge for Lev-Ami’s team is providing the best possible service to all of these units, through creating common technological platforms as the means for synergy: “If you do a good job planning ahead and building enterprise-wide solutions, re-using the common features for any additional required process becomes easy. It’s like a city architecture: design a new city well, and traffic will flow seamlessly; trying to expand a road that was built for carriages in the 18th century will prove much more difficult.

“We’re now in a better situation, but we still have a lot of work ahead of us just to make sure we’re supplying the basics.”

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The Israeli Ministry of Health, as part of the National ‘Digital Israel’ initiative, aspires to promote the Israeli healthcare system through the use of digital technologies. “We had to make a significant leap in the way we supply health services,” she says. “There’s a saying: trying to provide medical services in the 21st century using 20th century methods would require an impossible amount of doctors. The transformational part of what we’re doing is looking at the health system and the technologies to move it forward.

“As a ministry leading the transformation, we have an array of tools to utilise. We combine the use of regulatory guidance with government incentives,

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designed to stimulate investment in digital health arenas which are under-utilised. In other areas, we’re creating technological infrastructures ourselves, paving the highways for digital health applications and innovation.”

One of Lev-Ami’s biggest recent projects has been reinventing the national health information exchange network, which she has put into place over the past few years. It is where all public healthcare organisations - providers and hospitals - are able to connect to one network which carries personal medical records. While it is simpler to build one database and fill it with information for all to view, for privacy reasons, it had to be designed in a way that had no central repository.

“People get medical treatment in very many places, and the challenge lies in how we make sure all of these treatments are connected, and that crucial medical information can’t fall between the cracks. We took responsibility for providing the infrastructure, not just the regulation, and succeeded in tackling the continuity of care challenge. The next step is utilising the national health information exchange in a way that enables system-wide innovation.”

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“The people who work for the Ministry of Health are people who want to do good. They work from the heart” Another nationwide project has been focussed on the emergency departments. Over a quarter of Israel’s population visits an ER at least once a year, as a patient or chaperone, many leaving with a bad experience. Targeting shortening waiting periods in the ER, Lev-Ami’s team is deploying a sophisticated system to improve the process.

Optimising the ER workflow, while providing patients with information on their precise location in the medical process and estimated wait times, has proved vital in improving patient experience: “We’re developing an ER app which we view as a medical version of Waze, providing transparency on real-time ER situation for patients and decision-makers alike”.

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The healthcare sector is built around the concept of ‘do no harm’, which unfortunately goes handin-hand with ‘make no change’.

However, Lev-Ami and her team have managed to turn the Ministry of Health’s IT system on its head, which has had the added benefit of vastly increasing trust in the Ministry’s leading role among Healthcare teams, as a valued partner.

“The Ministry of Health is a crucial organ for Israeli society, focussing on providing quality and equal healthcare,” Lev-Ami concludes.

“To make a process move forward you have to be both a visionary, and very proactive. In the end, the staff working for the Ministry of Health are people who want to do good.

People here work from the heart.”

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Managing in in an engine Written by: Jennifer Johnson Produced by: Craig Daniels

nfrastructure eer’s paradise

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The Saudi Arabian city of Jubail has held the title of ‘largest civil engineering project ever attempted’ for over 30 years. The Royal Commission for Jubail, through its Operation and Maintenance Sector (O&M), has been tasked with implementing an approach which calls for efficacy, efficiency and effectiveness of managing infrastructure and built environment in order to enable the O&M to keep up with the ever-expanding city, and preserve and maintain the well-developed infrastructure in Jubail Industrial City

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n eastern Saudi Arabia, on the shores of the Arabian Gulf, the industrial city of Jubail continues to sprawl out into the surrounding desert. Growth has long been the norm in Jubail, which has held the title of ‘largest civil engineering project ever attempted’ and ‘largest petrochemical complex in the world’ for over three decades.

In September 1933, what was once a modest fishing settlement made history as the landing site for the first team of geologists to search for oil in Saudi Arabia — needless to say, the town wouldn’t be provincial for much longer.

In 1975, King Khalid assembled the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu (RCJY) to develop and execute an infrastructure plan which would transform the town, as well as the port settlement of Yanbu on the Red Sea, into the country’s premier petrochemical industrial cities.

Today, the population of Jubail

has grown to almost 242,000 with no discernible signs of a slowdown in development.

However, with expansion must come modernisation: to construct an efficient and cost-effective urban centre in the 21st Century, assets must be optimised to reflect advances in technology.

However, the Operation & Maintenance Sector (O&M), through five core departments; Roads, Buildings, Landscaping and Irrigation, Sanitation, and General Utilities are responsible for managing the city’s infrastructure assets and maintaining them to an acceptable operational service level. Faced with increasing expansion rates, aging assets and restricted budgets, it is believed that there will be a point in the near future where funding may not be enough to sustain the current service levels. A big change has to be taken.

As a response, RCJ adopted

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the concept of Infrastructure Asset Management in 2008 in the Buildings Department. Due to the absence of a local example and in order to manage the associated risks, the Royal Commission for Jubail (RCJ) decided to limit the project’s scope and conducted a three-year long pilot scheme.

The Pilot Project turned to be a remarkable success, Productivity (closed maintenance orders daily) had increased 175%, Quality had increased 36%, Time to Fix had decreased 60%, all of that was achieved simultaneously as the cost, via optimization, had reduced 40%. This was ultimately used as the basis for the decision to initiate an overall transformational program.

To support the transformation, and properly steer and manage the change, the Project Management Office (PMO) for Jubail’s O&M Sector was formed In 2014. Its responsibilities include managing

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strategic, sector-wide projects and programs, and acting as a think tank for RCJ O&M executives. Its main aim is to manage, support, direct the transformation program, and to adopt and standardize all Project Management operations of Jubail O&M to be in alignment with PMI’s methodologies.

The program, which will reorganise and reposition RCJ O&M as a worldclass model for government public The approx service provision, of the po is in total alignment of Ju with the Kingdom’s recently announced Vision 2030 and Saudi National Transformation Program 2020.

Abdulrahman Al-Wohaibi has been assigned the role of manager of the RCJ O&M PMO. He and his team of change stewards, with the assistance of RCJ Engineering Department,

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“with expansion must come modernisation: to construct an efficient and costeffective urban centre in the 21st Century, assets must be optimised to reflect advances in technology�

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recognise how critical their role is.

General manager of operation and maintenance in Jubail; Sultan Al-Khuraissi explains: “in 2011 we have developed a strategy to transform our approach in buildings and facilitates to asset management and to take our first steps towards achieving RCJ vision: “to deliver a world class asset management service and be known as a centre of excellence, in our asset classes, in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and within the top 5 in the GCC”.

To deliver world class asset management operations, we need structured framework approach in asset management; ensuring that all O&M apply “the one best way” to deliver asset management to the infrastructure and built environment within the city.

A framework/model of O&M optimization to boost quality and value while maintaining or reducing operational costs”

Efficacy, efficiency and effectiveness There are three ideas at the core of Jubail’s Infrastructure Asset Management Strategy: efficacy (governance), efficiency and effectiveness. Through a systemic approach, it allows management to decide when a particular piece of infrastructure — from a road to an air conditioner— ought to be repaired and when it might be more economical to replace it wholesale.

It is the responsibility of the Project Management Office to enable and sustain such an environment.

Faced with massive expansion and restricted O&M budgets, RCJ O&M and its Project Management Office have found themselves having to re-imagine Jubail before it has been wholly completed.

“We have to reorganise and reposition,” Al-Wohaibi says.

“We have to restructure and optimize. Infrastructure Asset Management is not a privilege,

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but rather a necessity.”

The Saudi government has further commissioned an $11 billion add-on to Jubail, called Jubail II, which has been under construction since 2006. It is estimated that the city will have doubled in size within the next 14 years. Where assets are concerned, RCJ O&M seeks innovation more than an increased budget or workforce.

“We collectively are on board, our CEO is keen and very supportive to this program, our General Manager happens to be a subject matter expert, and we’ve got the required approvals,” says Al-Wohaibi.

“This is an exceptional situation of secured authority, knowledge, and most importantly, clarity”.

“As the city is in continuous expansion, we in O&M need not to expand as much as we need to evolve to the challenge,” Al-Wohaibi continues. “The risk is that there will come a point at which it will be hard to fund O&M tasks while sustaining

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the same quality standards — our mitigation is the adoption of Infrastructure Asset Management.”

The first step in ensuring that Jubail’s infrastructure is cost-effective was to create a model that could predict just how profitable implementing certain measures could be.

“We imagine our performance against the indicators in the Model and we found out that we will be behind — so we designed the program to reorganise ourselves and reposition,” Al-Wohaibi adds.

“Maintenance abides by the butterfly effect. That is, in a scale of a city, changing a light bulb does not have a big impact. But changing 10 light bulbs, in 100 buildings, daily, may exceed the cost of operating the only clinic in a small, remote town on the other side of the kingdom.

That is our perspective in Royal Commission for Jubail & Yanbu when it comes to expenditure.”

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“We have to restructure and optimise. Infrastructure Asset Management is not a privilege, but rather a necessity�

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Innovating through automating The program is the implementation of the Infrastructure Asset Management Model, which includes ‘smart’ enabling certain buildings and infrastructure frameworks, implementing decision making processes, assets performance management protocols, value managing O&M activities and securing its governance through sophisticated information systems. l Commission The RCJ O&M and Yanbu sector is responsible ablished for managing the city’s beaches & parks, landscape & irrigation networks, buildings, roads and traffic control and, storm drainage systems, municipal waste management and all power and telecoms infrastructure. One of the program’s main tasks is the model that will synchronise control of Jubail’s assets in one

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location where maintenance needs, performance and management are ordered numerically and reported using the city’s information and centralised control systems.

“Our duty is to run and sustain the city’s infrastructure,” Al-Wohaibi says.

RCJ O&M are developing centralised Building Management System that is capable of monitoring all connected buildings in a central location. The system allows operators to remotely manage and auto-control so that for example, the lights and airconditioning in an enabled building will be shut down at night, thus reducing energy consumption when the space is vacant, or report if the logic is interrupted. The city’s recycled treated water irrigation systems are also automated and can be manipulated from within a single control room. “[Operators] can open a valve that is 30 km away and close it in

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seconds,” says Al-Wohaibi. “They can monitor pressure, detect leaks in all the city and they can schedule more than 200,000 operations in an hour. We have been informed that this is among the largest automated irrigation network in the world.”

Similarly, traffic behaviour in Jubail is monitored, and handled, from inside a single traffic management centre. Closed circuit television cameras placed across the road network feed real-time images back to Traffic Management team which has the ability to control traffic lights and redirect vehicles to clearer roads. While this all sounds highly futuristic, Al-Khuraissi paints a picture of a city that has always been ahead of its time.

“An advantage is that the city follows an explicit, cutting edge masterplan that was designed 40 years ago,” he explains.

“This masterplan is updated frequently upon given factors, and it anticipates population

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increases and the required services. Down to details like expanding exit routes when a certain district is fully occupied.”

Looking ahead Jubail’s O&M framework is continually reimagined to anticipate the development of new technologies. Saudi Arabia’s strong economic performance has enabled the expansion of the city to be brought forward by almost a decade. At present, there are no plans to halt or slow the urban spread, thus the challenges faced by the O&M and its PMO will evolve as the metropolis does.

“The decision to paint walls in an office building of ours is not hard. The decision to either light-maintain a road or carry out an overhaul rehabilitation to this particular road is harder.

But the exclusive decision about whether to paint walls, maintain a road or rehabilitate a pipeline

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Sultan Al-Khuraissi

General Manager – O&M Sector - Jubail Industrial City – Royal Commission for Jubail & Yanbu Mr. Al-Khuraissi holds a Bachelor Degree and Master’s degree in Building Engineering, from University of Dammam. Has been working for Royal Commission for Jubail & Yanbu for more than 14 years. He is a certified PMP, Plant Maintenance Manager, His duties cover the two industrial cities of Jubail and Ras Alkhair.

Al-Khuraissi is a member of the Institute of Asset Management, Project Management Institute, the International Facility Management Association, Association for Facilities Engineering, and Jubail Toastmasters Club.

Abdulrahman Al-Wohaibi

PMO Manager – O&M Sector - Jubail Industrial City – Royal Commission for Jubail & Yanbu Mr. Al-Wohaibi holds a Bachelor degree in Architectural Engineering and a Master’s degree in Project Engineering & Management, from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals. Worked for Bechtel Corporation for 6 years and has joined Royal Commission for Jubail & Yanbu 3 years ago. Al-Wohaibi is a member of the Institute of Asset Management, Project Management Institute, Illumining Engineering Society, American Society of Civil Engineers, Society of American Value Engineers.

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Centracs ATMS at the Royal Commission for Jubail & Yanbu Traffic Management Center An intuitive GUI-based centralized system, Centracs provides powerful and flexible ITS management, traffic control, and optional feature-rich modules in a single, easy-to-use platform.

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is very complex,” Al Wohaibi says. “It involves lifecycle costing, statistical analysis, simulation, value management and other factors.

Infrastructure Asset Management governs and details the actions required to come to this decision.”

Jubail’s Infrastructure Asset Management Model is scheduled to be implemented by the middle of next year, at which time all of Jubail’s infrastructure assets will be operated and maintained by one of the most advanced infrastructure management models.

“Given the change strategy and

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the implementation tactics, we target that in 14 years, we will be cumulatively saving more than a billion Saudi Riyals in Operational Expenditure” Al Khuraissi says.

“That would be more than 25% annual saving on O&M costs.”

During his nine years in Jubail, Al-Wohaibi claims the only piece of infrastructure he hasn’t seen built are nuclear reactors.

“Jubail is an engineer’s heaven,” he says. “Anything an engineer could imagine is here.”

Ultimately, an engineer’s vision may come to be an asset

manager’s challenge, but Royal Commission executives and O&M teams are prepared to let their solutions evolve as the city does.

And Al-Khuraissi, Al-Wohaibi and the teams in RCJ are optimistic about what has already been achieved in the realm of Jubail’s Infrastructure Asset Management.

“The programme has not been fully implemented so we still cannot firmly say that it is successful,” AlWohaibi cautions, “it is not easy, it is not supposed to be easy, but what we have seen is success”.

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Fighting fit: UFC GYM takes on its biggest challenge yet Written by Dale Benton Produced by Stuart Shirra

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The Ultimate Fighting Championship has challenged the Middle East health and fitness industry. Its prize fighter? UFC GYM

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ver the last seven years, a UFC gym has opened in more than 135 locations across the world, with gyms in the United States, Australia and Canada. Now, the mega franchise is heading to the Middle East – starting with Dubai.

“We’ve come here so we can showcase UFC GYM and the facilities we provide to people around the world. Putting UFC GYM across the UAE is really going to compliment the region,” says George Yiasemides, Chief Operating Officer, UFC GYM Middle East.

So what can UFC gyms offer?

“The question that everyone is intrigued by is, what is UFC GYM all about?” says Yiasemides. “UFC GYM is about combining the best of traditional fitness with the innovation of how the world’s best athletes train.”

Dubai is quickly becoming the global centre for most businesses. It’s very centralised and accessible.

UFC as a brand has seen an exponential growth over the last 12 months, with fighters such as Ronda Rousey and Connor McGregor, some of

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the most famous names across the MMA industry, rocketing the sport to global recognition.

The UFC GYM franchise is very much a consequence of this expansion, but despite having over 135 gyms worldwide, the spirit of UFC is embedded within each gym.

“It’s all one big family,” says Yiasemides. “Fighters get involved with the launches of our clubs and have a heavy involvement, hosting

seminars and taster sessions in the clubs, which you can imagine the communities love.”

“For example, the current UFC middleweight champion Michael Bisping is about to open his first UFC gym. As much as we are an expansion of the brand, we still follow the guidelines, the ethos and the culture of UFC.” The Dubai branch of UFC GYM opened its doors earlier this year,

“You’ve got to be on the ball. We treat every suggestion, every complaint as an opportunity to turn someone’s thinking around”

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UFC GYM but Yiasemides has plans for a grand franchise opening this September, announcing that UFC GYM has well and truly arrived in the Middle East.

With 33 years of experience at every level of the fitness industry, from instructor right through to manager, Yiasemides identifies two big moments for success.

“In the fitness industry, you’ve got two huge months when the subscription is wealthy. There’s January because you’ve got New Year’s resolutions and there’s September, that’s when people get back from their European holidays. It is absolutely crucial that we capitalise on that.”

Round two: hitting hard and taking knocks Yiasemides has been in charge of operations for one year now and it has been a roller coaster for the Middle Eastern UFC GYM, and the success has hit Yiasemides like a double leg takedown.

“I think the feedback we have been getting from our members in particular, for our first gym, has been quite overwhelming,” he says.

The first UFC GYM facility opened on April 24 and the positive reaction 190

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“You’re fo trying to b and if you as well. Yo you never

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oolish if you’re not be ahead of the game u think you know it all ou have to make sure r drop your guard�

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from the community has been without challenges. overwhelming for Yiasemides, but “We don’t shy away from like any fighter, he has to always complaints because it’s very easy to think about his next move. just turn a blind eye and say well I’ve “The plan was that we’d open the got a couple thousand members, first one and assess it over a sixwhat’s one complaint, I’m not going month period but as soon as we to worry about it. We treat every announced we were coming into the complaint, every suggestion like it’s region; we had an influx in enquiries gold.” from organisations that wanted to “You must react quickly to be involved in the franchise those kind of situations business or franchising or you risk losing, not UFC GYM,” adds just one member, Yiasemides. but you also risk “I am in the club losing the next 20 once or twice a potential members week and when I they would have When UFC GYM talk to the members, referred.” three things I hear was founded are it’s an amazing Round three: facility, it’s an awesome knowing your opponent environment and it’s different.”

The latest technological The franchise has seen an advancements have seen a incredible amount of early success huge growth in different training and Yiasemides knows that to equipment and facilities, but the stay on top of the fight you have to principles remain the same. be quick to react to everything.

“Technology is moving so fast “You’ve got to be on the ball. but it’s gone a full 360. Being an exWe treat every suggestion, every rugby league player, I’ve noticed complaint as an opportunity to training methods coming through turn someone’s thinking around.” now that we we used in the 80s.”

Success does not come Yiasemides however, admits

2009

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UFC GYM that he cannot rest on his laurels.

“You’re foolish if you’re not trying to be ahead of the game and if you think you know it all as well. You have to make sure you never drop your guard.

“You’ve always got to be innovative and the best way to do that is not just to go and visit other clubs in other countries. Go and visit the hotel industry, see what the banking industry is doing. Go and see what other industries are providing and get the best of it and then come up with

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your own formula. It’s very, very easy to get caught up in your box.”

Round four: working the crowd The most important factor in any industry is the customer. In the fitness industry, it is the members and the potential members that are crucial to building a successful franchise. One of the issues that UFC GYM has faced is a stigma attached to the brand.

“It’s very easy to perceive us as a fight club but the truth is we’re

H E A LT H C A R E

actually a family orientated club,” says Yiasemides.

“We want to do roadshows across the schools and showcase UFC GYM so they can start exercising in a group environment and not feel intimidated and really benefit themselves from a health point of view and from a skillset point of view as well.

“If you’re not putting yourself out there in the community, you run yourself at very high risk because you’ve got to give people reasons other than fitness to come into the club.

We have a natural responsibility to be seen participating in local community events.”

In order to benefit the local communities, Yiasemides needed the right team. All trainers at the gym are UFC certified but it’s the level of development that allows UFC GYM to stand tall.

“You pay someone a decent salary but it’s only going to last so long so we need to make sure we keep developing our staff,” he explains.

It is clear that the success and the very core of UFC GYM revolves around one thing – the people.

“We are a people business and a big part of our goal is to ensure that anytime someone walks into a UFC GYM facility, they’re delighted to be there. They love the experience. They feel like they have accomplished something. They feel part of something bigger and we want them to be as proud as I am and the rest of the exec team to be a part of this,” concludes Yiasemides.

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