Levtech Consulting Levtech consulting is a software company based in Dubai that is making headlines by driving digital transformation and creating empowered, connected enterprises and exceptional customer experiences. The company is a Microsoft Gold Partner and Cloud Service Provider, offering a range of business solutions powered by Microsoft software. Levtech Consulting is focused on fastgrowing sectors in the UAE such as real estate and construction, retail and manufacturing, presenting these industries with technology that promises to improve operations, insights and scalability while providing efficiencies that supports growth and profitability. We caught up with entrepreneur and CEO of Levtech Consulting, Anilesh Kumar, for a conversation about the capabilities and future of the company, as well as his optimism and positivity that is motivating his team and highlighting opportunities for development and growth. Recognising the fast paced, dynamic
of the technology industry, Kumar is dedicated to maximising potential within his business. He compels his staff to achieve results in client acquisition, product delivery and innovation, yet remains an empathetic leader with a collaborative approach. He sees this as an important factor in fostering a team that is multicultural as well as diverse in age groups, business functions and skill sets. The future success of the organisation depends on a strong set of sustainabilityorientated values. Levtech Consulting is focused on the success of its customers and delivering a product and service that enhances their capabilities is a key objective. The company deploys business solutions that serve its clients through addressing their challenges and accelerating productivity. Each customer has a unique business vision and Levtech Consulting works with them to reach their goals. As an organisation, Levtech Consulting recognises that to achieve this mission, they need to attract and retain the most knowledgeable and passionate professionals to
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their team, then build a collaborative, merit-based culture, aimed at evolving performers into leaders. The company treats their customers as partners and believes their success lies in nurturing these relationships through value creation. Established in 2009, Kumar has grown Levtech Consulting from a two-person operation in Dubai into a 200+ employee company, with subsidiaries in over five countries and servicing over 300 customers in over 30 countries. The journey has been a homegrown success story, as the company has transformed itself into a best-inclass consulting company with a product development arm, that is determining the digital transformation of entire sectors in the region, specifically construction, real estate and retail. From a governance and structure perspective, the company has creatively accelerated industry specialisation and improved business stability by partnering with RIB Group, which is a public-listed firm with a market cap of over a Billion Euros from Stuttgart, Germany. RIB Group is a global leader in construction technology and a pioneer in the field of proptech, as they apply information technology and data platform capability to construction and real estate markets. Levtech Consulting have also pioneered a new start-up called Yegertek (yegertek.com) which has a focus on digital transformation in the retail industry, with emphasis on customer engagement, loyalty and omni-commerce. From an innovation standpoint, the company started out as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), building software and systems to manage supply chain and financial processes, but has developed its own intellectual property and matured into a digital transformation specialist with a wide array of solutions in its portfolio. It has been an escalation within the world of technology, as Artificial Intelligence (AI) now performs many of the tasks within the software. This has resulted in exponential growth allowing us to move from the
tasks within the software. This has resulted in exponential growth allowing us to move from tasks within the software. This has resulted in exponential growth allowing us to move from local implementations to global rollouts. It has also seen us transition from a tight-knit set of partners to a majority partnership with a publiclisted global technology firm, RIB Group. Throughout this process, the company has continued to expand its team of highly skilled people and grow financially as well. Levtech Consulting has also been a driving force in the digital transformation of the construction sector, both across the region and globally. They have brought MTWO, the premier, cloud-based 5D BIM platform to the regional industry in MEA. MTWO is a collaboration between RIB Software (product owner and Levtech's parent organisation), Schneider Electric (a strategic Investor in RIB) and Microsoft Corporation. This comprehensive construction management, virtual-to-physical solution is a single end-to-end platform that operates on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform. It connects all stakeholders, 44
processes and data in one place across the construction industry value chain. Quantity takeoff, estimation, project timeline, procurement schedules and construction execution are all connected with the BIM models, to bring real time data and visibility for accurate decision making in a fast-paced, dynamic industry. One team’s data can help other teams prepare and plan through real-time and secure access to data. This enhances active collaboration and helps rapidly improve productivity. Through connecting data, people and processes, MTWO also enables construction organisations to move towards building a more efficient, sustainable future. For the real estate sector, Levtech Consulting offers industry-leading software Property 365, an innovative Business Automation Platform for Real Estate and Property Management. Built on Microsoft Dynamics 365, it is engineered and optimised for the real estate industry’s specific and growing digital needs. It has been designed to facilitate each stage of the customer journey, from demand generation and marketing automation to sales and facility management processes. Leveraging Microsoft Dynamics and Power platform, Property 365 is an industry solution which can be easily extended to meet customer needs across industry players such as asset owners, managers and facility management companies, and provides ready insights and AI capabilities. To realise all these achievements, Levtech Consulting has been agile in its execution and collaborative in character, working closely with the best companies in the region ranging from Al Ghurair and Aujan, as well as global companies such as British American Tobacco, the Virgin Group and Softbank. The organisation has won several awards from its vendors over the years, including the Inner Circle for Microsoft business applications, which rates Levtech Consulting amongst the top 50 out of more than 2500 companies globally, and the Dubai SME index, where the company was ranked in the top 12 and have been rated ‘A’ consistently. Kumar is proud to inform us that none of his competitors have been able to
replicate his unique evolution as a business and he is proud to lead a team of homegrown trailblazers in the UAE. The key for a digital transformation company is to be responsive to future trends and up-andcoming technologies, in order to remain at the forefront of capability, demand and relevance. Levtech Consulting sees the leading current trend as the adaptation of cloud-based business platforms, for productivity tools, business applications and analytics. Cloud-based platforms allows companies to be flexible, quickly adopt new technology, increase productivity, leverage information and execute performance and data intensive activities such as machine learning and predictive actions. Security is paramount and this has quickly improved to surpass the new requirements. These trends have been fast-tracked through the COVID era and the pace of change has quickened. The other significant change is for businesses to move from complex, interlinked application architectures, backed by cumbersome customisation and integrations, to standardised, homogeneous platforms. The silo-driven application landscape that many enterprises have built in the past, using best-of-breed systems is rapidly giving way to consolidated platforms, which may not have the broad range of functionality, but overall deliver greater results, laying the foundations for increased automation and a transformation in organisational structure and culture. The working relationship with Microsoft has allowed Levtech Consulting to develop engagement while delivering technology-driven benefits to customers. This includes building awareness and demand, sales planning, accelerating partner-to-partner empowered selling and delivering through marketplace-led commerce. When Levtech Consulting chooses to co-sell an offer, they work directly with Microsoft sales teams on jointly selling and delivering to solve customer challenges. This strategy unlocks benefits when selling and delivering solution 45
through the commercial marketplace online stores such as Azure Marketplace and Microsoft AppSource. The affiliation with Microsoft has given Levtech Consulting the inside track on technological development from the software giant. As Microsoft announces new AI-driven applications, Levtech Consulting has all the details and is able to share knowledge and expertise to allow its clients to empower their organisations, take informed decisions and improve their customer experiences. They are finding more companies are choosing Dynamics 365 and Power Platform than ever before, with companies like ExxonMobil from the energy sector as well as Virgin Atlantic and Paccar from the transportation industry, seeing the advantages the software brings. Even Miami Heat and Tivoli with their sports and entertainment services are getting on board. The common thread is the power of a comprehensive, connected business cloud, drawing on unified data and applied intelligence to help make proactive decisions to positively impact business. The client base at Levtech Consulting has seen a transformative shift from a siloed, reactive approach to a proactive way of doing business. With the expansion of the Microsoft portfolio, software applications can cover a 360-degree view of each organisation. This goes beyond data capture and backward-looking insights, to unification of all data and the provision of forwardlooking intelligence. Powered by Azure AI, these tightly integrated capabilities can make AI real for businesses today and enable employees to
proactively drive decisions and action. The pressure to execute effective digital transformation has never been greater, but Levtech Consulting is empowered through Microsoft's Catalyst programme to deliver a blueprint for digital transformation for organisations ready to embark on their strategic digital journey. For larger organisations especially, a structured process is needed, to generate new value from the changes made. This allows a results-driven process, rather than doing the same old things with newer technology. In a world where effective, tangible solutions must be delivered promptly, Microsoft Catalyst delivers value and quantifies the benefits. The programme uses the power and breadth of Dynamics 365 and the Microsoft cloud to help companies build, plan and execute business transformation strategies. When the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, Levtech Consulting recognised that businesses would be seeking innovations and technologies to allow them to continue trading while the world went into a series of lockdowns and limited human interaction. There were challenges across many industries but Levtech Consulting addressed the complexities and became focused on providing and delivering solutions that could allow their clients to find ways to operate. For example, one client from the staffing and manpower supply industry needed a facial recognition-based attendance app to track the location, attendance, billing and payments of blue-collar workers. Levtech Consulting created this application with the help of Microsoft Face API based facial recognition system and Power BI dashboards were utilised for user attendance analytics. The application reduced the process completion time by about 75% and replaced a redundant manual, excel-based approach, meaning it will be relevant well into the future. Another instance arose when the largest space research organisation in the Middle East needed an Android and IOS chatbot system, to deliver employee self-services such as leave requests, expense claims and other HR functionality, in an 47
across Europe and the US, meaning the company is now delivering significant global projects covering multiple territories. Over the past year, in order to continue business operations regardless of lockdowns and travel restrictions, the customer’s journey of engagement with a digital transformation partner has significantly changed. The pandemic may have forced this hand, but the technology is in place and the adaptations are there to stay. Customers can choose from a global pool of talent, communicate their requirements effectively online and implement the solutions remotely. In the future, workshops, training and meetings can also be hosted online, so this is the projected direction of execution.
Intuitive manner. The chatbot needed the capability to decipher the context and extract information from typed or spoken user input, then automatically address the request. Levtech Consulting developed the solution using Microsoft’s language understanding platform, LUIS for language keyword detection, as well as Docker to package the LUIS systems inside the clients’ infrastructure. The chatbot reduces the process completion time to about 15 seconds, 16 times faster than previous endeavours and has become a successful investment in their company communications.
As a specialist firm, this means Levtech Consultancy can broaden its objectives to become a global technology consulting organisation, delivering transformative projects for enterprises that operate in the international arena. The company’s portfolio will expand, particularly in the direction of analytics and predictive sciences, to add value to existing and upcoming projects. The firm will continue as an industry leader in the construction, real estate, retail and manufacturing sectors, increasing its capacity, proficiency and domain strength to ensure that it remains at the forefront of delivering innovation for its core industries.
During the course of pandemic, the demand for online implementations increased considerably, and Levtech Consulting pioneered a system of remote implementation that allowed their clients to implement the required software, guided remotely to reduce physical contact. Using Microsoft Teams and associated tools such as Whiteboard and Planner, the expertise was communicated via an effective online manner. This has significantly increased the demand and broad reach for Levtech Consulting services,
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