MARCH 2018 | VOL 3 ISSUE 1
THE CHANGE-SPOTTERS AND CHANGE-MAKERS
ABDULLAH HAMOOD KHALIFA AL RAQADI, DIRECTOR GENERAL - IT MINISTRY OF HEALTH - OMAN
A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO HEALTHCARE The eTransformation within MOH, Oman has been guided by sustained emphasis on the service delivery based on international standards to improve quality of services, /18
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TWO YEARS OF THE TITANS
ANUSHREE DIXIT ASSISTANT EDITOR anushree@gecmediagroup.com
We, at The Titans, would like to take this opportunity to thank our dear readers for the tremendous support and trust that you have extended towards the magazine. It is two glorious years of The Titans and we are not only humbled but highly empowered by the recognition that our premium CIO’pedia has received in the IT Fraternity. The year 2016, when we inaugurated The Titans, the CIOs were on the brink of a major transformation in their role. There were numerous articles and debates being written on CIOs taking over the role of CEOs and the CFO’s tiff with CIOs in managing the revenue. The market was going through a major overhaul and today we are standing on the threshold of a new reality— CIOs as the new face of revenue generation in the organization. Our cover story in this issue focuses on the journey of the CIOs from ‘Money savers to money makers’. How are the IT spearheads evolving in this role and what are the expectations that they are living up-to. Throughout the last 2 years, we have brought you face to face to with over 200 CIOs from the Middle East, Africa and Turkey market— each unique and different in their own ways. Adding a ‘buzzword’ twist to the profiling, we have presented the readers with some new insights based on the digital readiness of the organizations to which the CIOs belong. We have not only tried to decode what digitization means to a particular CIO, but also tried to put up some great references for the solution providers who are reading this magazine to help them understand what kind of demand is coming from the market. The Titans Badge of Honor returns to it’s second edition at The Future IT Summit 2018. To be held on 14th March at the Burj Al Arab Hotel, the Badge of Honor is a humble effort to celebrate this uniqueness of the IT Heads who have contributed towards taking The Titans a step further in its glory. Time awaits to crown The Titans! Happy Reading.
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CONTENTS
COVER STORY
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FROM MONEY SAVERS TO MONEY MAKERS It is 2018 and we have moved on from the thesis that IT is here to save cost and optimize business. CIOs are entitled to a new task now— GENERATE REVENUE from IT. This is one of the hot topics doing rounds in the CIO fraternity globally, hence we decided to give it an MEA perspective.
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TOP CIO IN MENA
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
MY VIEWS
ACHEIVING EXCELLENCE WITH INNOVATION & TRANSFORMATION
A STEP UP IN SMART HEALTH
REFRESHING STRATEGIES
LEVERAGING OPEN DATA FOR WIDER SERVICE ADOPTION
MARCH 2018
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INTERVIEW
AHMED ALREFAEI, COO AL MASRAF BANK
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INTERVIEW
ACHEIVING EXCELLENCE WITH INNOVATION & TRANSFORMATION Having 30 years of experience, Ahmed Alrefaei is the COO of Al Masraf Bank. This bank offers a full range of financial services including Consumer Banking, Corporate Banking, Islamic Banking and Treasury and Investment services to help customers build and manage their finances.
Do you call yourself a digital organization? If yes, why? Digital is the first point of contact between a bank and its customers. Al Masraf in line with its vision wants to become innovative and a preferred financial partner for all banking services in the region and aims towards adding value to our customers, user experience and convenience to our Customers. There was a need felt to enhance Customer Experience, hence the organization started working towards Customer Delight by providing high quality services at convenience of its customers. The core idea behind being digital is to automate the mundane tasks which enables technology and facilitates employees to work more effectively, reduce the cost of services and increase competitiveness. The leadership of Al Masraf has set its course towards achieving excellence by means of innovation & transformation. Al Masraf wants to be a leader when it comes to innovation & adopting progressive technologies and practices. Management nurtures creative thinking and out-of-thebox problem solving, harnessing the power of the imagination with a can-do attitude that is reflective of the way Al Masraf delivers services to the customers. It is a practice at Al Masraf to conduct SWOT analysis to determine whether it will be innovative or not and not its status as an incumbent or the arrival of some external technology. We as an organization have innovative culture and are in the midst of developing, embracing and deploying the innovations and marching our digital journey. This zeal has led to multiple innovations in
the past and a number of projects in pipeline for transformation. As part of digitalization plan, the Bank has introduced digital banking solutions within multiple departments. Some of them are FTS Straight Through Processing, AML Screening, e-Statement Implementation, Graphical Intelligent Electronic Operations Manual (GIEOM), Trade Finance Approval Matrix, Recon for (GL, e-Guarantee, UAE Switch transaction), Centralization of Letter issuance, Motif Digital Banking Platform & Middleware Implementation, Mobile App Implementation, Utility Bill Payment Services, Self-service Kiosk, Table Top Kiosk, Security Information and Event Monitoring (SIEM), Advanced Endpoint Detection and Response (AEDR) and many other initiatives. Additionally, we have initiated major projects including Al MASRAF Core Banking (ACB), Digitalization and Implementation of Corporate Credit System. All the innovation & transformation initiatives resulted in better customer satisfaction, enhanced customer experience, minimizing turn around time and cost of processing. In addition to the above, some innovations like Anti-Money laundering SWIFT, Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS), Integration of ATMs with SIEM, etc. have resulted in adding more controls to the process and better security.
Teller) Watch Banking n QR Coding n
n n
Robotic Processing Artificial Intelligence
What are the key technologies challenges faced by your sector? n Legacy – The age difference between an organisation and the industry standard. n Risk management – Inability to asses Client’s needs and provide capital. n Short life span – Due to the ever-growing and rapid technological advancements, the lifespan of technology is very short. n Restrictive governance – Multiple level of committees overseeing projects.
What kind of vendor/solution provider engagement do you look forward to in 2018? n Core Banking System & Regulatory Systems n System Integrators n AI & Process automation solution providers n Managed Services solution providers n Infrastructure Systems vendors
To do list for 2018 n Temenos, T-24. Core Banking: ATS (Automated Teller System), MFK (Multi-Function Kiosk) and ILT (In Lobby Teller) n Watch Banking n QR Coding – Assets & Documents n Robotic Processing n Artificial Intelligence n
What are your top projects for the next 6 months? n Temenos, T-24. Core Banking, Regulatory System Enhancements n ATS (Automated Teller System), MFK (Multi-Function Kiosk) and ILT (In Lobby
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TOP CIO IN MENA
ADAPTION IS THE KEY For the last 13 months, Adam Lalani is with Tristar at Group level, but he has worked at Tristar subsidiary ESHIPS since 2012, and Tristar acquired ESHIPS in March 2006.Tristar is a fully integrated Liquid Logistics Solutions provider catering to the needs of the petroleum and chemical industries, both in the region and globally.
having already launched one Blockchain supply chain platform in late 2017 we are already working on two other Blockchain projects – but I am unable to speak further on these at the moment. Other key projects revolve around automated data collection to aid decision making.
What are the key technologies challenges faced by your sector? I think the biggest issue right now is the pace of change. In the past, you could give your board a 3 to 5 year roadmap for technology. That whole thing has been ripped up. In 6 months from now an innovative technology will appear that we need to make use of that we might not have on our radar today. IT in all sectors has to be completely adaptable to change in a way that was never the case in the past.
What kind of vendor/solution provider engagement do you look forward to in 2018?
ADAM LALANI, GROUP IT HEAD, TRISTAR Do you call yourself a digital organization? If yes, why? Yes and No. If you ask me the question when my work here is done it will be a definite yes, but at the moment we are still working on our Digital Transformation. As we have multiple business activities, such as road transport, warehousing, fuel farms, turnkey fuel supply operations, shipping owning and chartering, it is obviously a large undertaking
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to spread this across all business units. What we have done is focused on those business segments that have problems that are best solved through the use of innovative technologies.
What are your top projects for the next 6 months? I can’t go in to details or specifics as we want to maintain our competitive advantage, but
I have an open-door policy when it comes to vendors. It is important to have a wide range of vendors to reach out to when problems need solving. On an average week I would have a minimum of 10 meetings with vendors (both existing and new), and even if we are not able to work together in the short term, it is always good to keep a comma, not a full stop to our relationships – in one memorable case I’ve worked with a vendor on Disaster Recovery 4 years after first contact.
To do list for 2018: My current to do list always hovers between 55 to 65 items. My key item on the to do list is learn to better shut off from work when off duty.
TOP CIO IN META
REDEFINING SELF SERVICE
Having 25 years of experience, Binnur Guleryuz Onaran is the Managing Director of TAV Technologies and CIO of TAV Airports Holding. TAV Technologies is a 100% subsidiary of TAV Airports Holding which is operating 17 airports abroad including Istanbul Ataturk, 11th major airport in the World and the holy city for Muslims, Medina PMIA Airport.
3. Implementing Oracle E-Business Suite ERP system to Macedonia Skopje Airport 4. Implementing CUPPS (Common use passenger processing system) and BRS (Baggage reconciliation system) to TAV Airports 5. Modernizing and migrating TAV Airports Holding’s main data center to a new location and the project will be completed on 1st July 6. Organizing a Hackaton and Ideaton named “boomerang” and expecting a wide attendance from all over the world.
What are the key technologies challenges faced by your sector?
BINNUR GULERYUZ ONARAN, MD, TAV TECHNOLOGIES & CIO, TAV AIRPORTS HOLDING Do you call yourself a digital organization? If yes, why? We are re-defining howan enterprise is operated by reengineering the business process to increase efficiency and corporate resource utilization. We have been developing the “Digitalization Strategy” of TAVAirports Holding andimplementingstate-of-the-artsolutionsinto our airports. We are adapting this experience and implementing digitalization strategies and solutions to the non-TAV airports as well. We are re-designing business processes, running R&D activities, investing on cutting edge technologies like AI, IoT, VR and Big Data. We develop new products to digitalize business processes, increase passenger satisfaction, increase operational efficiency 10
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and implement them to the TAV Airports and non-TAV Airports as well. As a company, we are housing all 3 main streams of IT business under its roof, serving as Operation and Maintenance Service Provider, Contractor for Projects and Software Vendor.
What are your top projects for the next 6 months? 1. During 2018, we will be installing stateof-the-art technological infrastructure and solutions to Abu Dhabi Midfield Terminal. 2. Implementing “Self-Service Airport” project into Medina PMIA Airport containing self-service check-in kiosks, self-bag drop system, travel document validation system, eBorders and self-boarding gate systems.
In the aviation, all of the cutting-edge technologies are being used and the sector is the one of the pioneering sectors in the market as per the technology usage. But also, there are lots of legacy systems in the market since there are strict rules, regulations, and previous investments. Always we need to think on both ways, while digitalizing/modernizing the airports, we should maintain/utilize the legacy systems and make smooth and robust integrations between them.
To do list for 2018 n Decrease the costs and increase
operational efficiency in all of the Airports we are operating. n Advance the product portfolio and execute digitalization activities in alloftheAirportswe are operating. n Advance customer portfolio and export know-how to the market. n Increase service scope and create new businesses using know-how and seasoned employees. n Enhance our sales regions, increase market share and create customer base in Europe, USA and Asia.
INTERVIEW
ALIGNED IT, AGILE DELIVERY In an exclusive conversation with The Titans magazine, Ahmed Al Ahmed, CIO, Nakheel talks about the organizations digitization strategy, major projects and partnerships and how they are looking having direct relationships with the technology providers.
What has been Nakheel’s digitization strategy so far and what is your roadmap for 2018? Nakheel IT strategy was built with a deep focus on the digitization and went through multiple stages starting from 2012. It started with a full renovation of the processes and infrastructure in order to be agile ready. Virtualization was the first step towards moving to the cloud. The strategy also focused on the customer engagement through digital channels and established multiple systems that converted many processes into a digital format. The workflow system was one of the in-house implementations that converted millions of transactions into electronic format and eliminated thousands of papers. The 2018 onwards strategy is another stage of our digitization. There are multiple initiatives are planned for 2018, and some of them are executed already. The focus goes not only for the cloud services but also around multiple vertical markets technologies like business intelligence, leasing business, selfservice and advance call center to serve our vertical business.
What are the top projects of Nakheel for the next 6 months that we can witness? Two of the major projects that are currently under implementation are related to the retail leasing. The solutions will enhance the leasing processes and will also get integrated with the tenants for the real time revenue recognition. Another major system is currently is under development which is going to serve the Development Control and Urban Planning unit. This system will be integrated with several backbone systems to
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provide a centralized interface for the team with all related information. Not only that but it will also automate several processes that currently done in traditional manual efforts and will facilitate an automatic submissions of the customer requirements over a new portal. In the cloud initiatives, one of the major vertical systems that is responsible for the Facility Management will be fully transferred to the cloud as a SaaS model with additional features and better ROI.
Tell us about your major partnerships of 2017. The partnership concept is divided into two parts as per our understanding and depends on the location of the entity in our supply chain. The vendors from one side and the end users in the other side. In the internal side, we have built an excellent relationship with the business units members so we can convert their needs into technological actions. In the other side, Nakheel IT did major partnerships with key vendors in 2017 and accomplished major projects. Our partnerships strategy focus not only on the major and solid integrators but also extended to the technology providers like Microsoft, Oracle, Lenovo, Avaya, HP, InforEAM and few others. We see the maintenance of these relationships as a mandatory strategy to stay up-to-date with the technologies in order to bridge the gap between the technology and the provided services to our customers.
construction of a large public buildings like malls for example requires lot of technology preparations during the design phase in order to provide a competitive customer experience in the future and once the building is ready and opened. However, technologies are developed these days might end up with a kind of obsolete technology by the time the building is opened. This requires a lot of search to make sure that the used technologies are agile and can be adapted and upgraded at any point of time. In the other side, this vertical market is growing very fast in UAE and very dynamic. This adds another challenge on the companies that are using legacy systems.
What kind of vendor/solution provider engagement do you look forward to in 2018? Our 2018 IT strategy is looking at cloudbased services that serves all our vertical business units. Hence, we give higher priority to the vendors that provide cloud services with their systems. It should increase our ROI and free our time to focus on our service delivery rather than look at the infrastructure issues. We also prefer to have direct relationships with parent companies. This would enhance the response time and the quality of services and at the same time will make sure that IT would stay aligned with the agile service delivery.
Being a CIO, what are your top 3 priorities for 2018?
What are the key technologies challenges faced by the Real Estate and Construction sector?
n Improve Customer Engagement through
The technology challenges in the real estate market relies on the time to market. The
n Explore new technologies like
Agile Digital Channels and mobile services n Big Data with Business Analytics
Blockchain, AI and robotics.
INTERVIEW
AHMED AL AHMED, CIO, NAKHEEL
MARCH 2018
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TOP CIO IN MENA
A STEP UP IN SMART HEALTH Having 17years of experience, Mohamed Gamalis the Head of IT atAlZahra Hospitals and Clinics. The organization provides premium medical care with modern equipment since their facility is built with latest advanced technology.
n n
Digital Signature DR solution
What are the key technologies challenges faced by your sector? n Data privacy and regulations n Integration and cost effectiveness with restricted environments as healthcare organization n Increasing costs of IT projects in healthcare, cost of data validation engines from UAE or external
What kind of vendor/solution provider engagement do you look forward to in 2018? n Data analytics and data since solution vendor n Specialized IOT solution for healthcare sector n Data engines and validation tools.
To do list for 2018
MOHAMED GAMAL, HEAD OF IT, AL ZAHRA HOSPITALS & CLINICS
Do you call yourself a digital organization? If yes, why? Digitalization is part of our strategic & action plan from 2016, for instance the IoT where we have integrated vital signs machine, collect and send it to EHR that generates a complete record of a clinical patient encounter or episode. And in our integrated EHR environment, the barcode scanning is linked to the clinical databases via network. At the patient’s bedside, nurses scan their badges, or log into the BCMA system, scan the patient’s wristband, and scan the medication. The BCMA system validates whether the “five rights” of medication 14
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administration—right patient, right drug, right dose, right frequency, and right route. Mobile Application connected to the facility where patients can get insights about their treatment, reports, communicate with clinical and admin resources directly.
What are your top projects for the next 6 months? n Completing EMAR, IP EHR implementation “phase 3 and 4”. n Web Reporting Center and reporting scheduler n Smart SMS manager n MRD Digitalization
Facilitate the expansion of the organization borders using technology, smart tools and smart techniques, with empowered IT team who is certainly willing to give and contribute to shift Al Zahra Hospital to another level. Some of our to do list include: n Increasing digitization and interconnection between healthcare systems in AL Zahra Hospital n Adopting lean methodology to eliminate the waste in process and new IT development. n Reduce operational and clinical paperwork by 95%. n Enhance the security and create SOC and NOC in Al Zahra, move out from traditional techniques, not relaying only on process or tools. n Improving the patient experience using technology, connecting patients and families through engagement with patient portal adoption, secure messaging, social media, and other emerging health related technologies.
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TOP CIO IN MENA
REFRESHING STRATEGIES With 26 years of experience, Mohammed Younes is the CIO of United Al Saqer Group. Established more than 37 years ago, United Al Saqer Group (UASG) owns and manages a diverse yet complementary portfolio of six UAE-based companies encompassing a number of key industry sectors, which includes Abu Dhabi Motors, Dalma Motors, Al Saqer Heavy Equipment, Al Saqer Property Management, Awraq Islamic financial brokerage, RoyalInternational Construction and Royal Joinery. The Group will focus on enhancing customer-facing services, mobility, analytics as well as information security. We also intend to refresh the IT strategy, which will allow us toremain in perfect alignment with the Group’s corporate strategy and capture any evolving business requirements. Training, change management and adoption to newly implemented platforms will also receive our attention to maximize utilization and return on investment.
What are the key technologies challenges faced by your sector? Key challenges include difficulties in recruiting suitable talent in the local and regional markets. The pace at which new and disruptive technologies are introduced makes finding highly skilled staff a very challenging problem. Other challenges relate to educating management and staff to adopt to cutting-edge cloud-based technologies.
MOHAMMED YOUNES, CIO, UNITED AL SAQER GROUP
Do you call yourself a digital organization? If yes, why? With a network of partners and sales teams spread across the Middle East and located in prime international markets, UASG has carved a distinctive niche as one of the UAE’s business leaders. In December 2017, the United Al Saqer Group launched its 3-year digital transformation strategy. So far, the company has implemented a group-wide enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform based on the latest cloudbased Oracle Fusion applications. The transformation included core services such as Human Capital Management, Supply Chain Management, Financials, Dealership
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Management, Business Intelligence and Mobility. In addition, the Group has obtained two ISO certifications: 20000 and 27001. The UASG Group is one of the first companies to implement an end-to-end ERP platform, which is completely based on Software as a Service (SaaS) technologies. The Group is also one of the first companies to implement a comprehensive cloudbased Dealership Management System to automate its entire automotive sector, which includes Sales, Spare Parts, After Sales, Field Services and Mobility.
What are your top projects for the next 6 months?
What kind of vendor/solution provider engagement do you look forward to in 2018? The focus will be on vendors who can provide tools and solution to leverage data for better decision making – this includes business intelligence, predictive analytics and Artificial Intelligence. We will also focus on technologies that would further enhance the Group’s capabilities in protecting its information assets.
To do list for 2018 n Enhance the capacities of UASG Business Intelligence Platform n Enhance mobile services to internal and external customers n Enhance the information security capabilities including governance, risk and compliance n Refresh the IT strategy
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COVER FEATURE
ABDULLAH HAMOOD KHALIFA AL RAQADI, DIRECTOR GENERAL - IT MINISTRY OF HEALTH - OMAN
A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO HEALTHCARE
The eTransformation within MOH, Oman has been guided by sustained emphasis on the service delivery based on international standards to improve quality of services, networked knowledge acquisition and effective use of ICT. With such determination, the Ministry of Health Oman is all set to enhance its eServices and introduce mHealth, telemedicine into MoH establishment to run virtual clinics.
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COVER FEATURE
Tell us more about Ministry of Health’s eServices and how much success it has tasted so far in catering to the digital demands of the country? Healthcare industry has been experiencing major growth with increased demand for professionals, state-of-the-art infrastructure and advanced technologies poised to become one of the biggest employers andusers of new technologies worldwide. Our eHealth development depicts the maturity of the present infrastructurewith each pillar has
contributed to share information to achieve the efficiencies required to address current challenges: spiralling costs, staff shortages, tightening regulatory requirements, increased burden of chronic disease and rising patient expectations. The initiatives integrated many disparate systems which were the building blocks and fruits of the last 20 years of focused digitization process within ministry of health. These initiatives could also bring together many other stakeholders involved in the care continuum through the development of standards
and building confidence in the sustainability and long-term benefits of the projects. We implemented and digitalized more than 245 institutes across the country, while 148 are interconnected to exchange data and information. Tell us about the major Ministry of Health projects and what are its key features and benefits. Al-Shifa is an in-house developed comprehensive HIS implements an electronic workflow creating paperless environment to enhance the quality of services saving the professional time
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COVER FEATURE
1 MINISTRY OF HEALTH’S TOP 3 PRIORITIES FOR 2018 to concentrate on patients rather than documentation. It covers all aspects of EMR to Asset, Inventory, FA, and HR management. A fully integrated and EMR that provides 360-degree view of the patient history and clinical information needed for a point-ofcare is the most crucial component of Al-Shifa. The Al-Shifa System serves approximately 90% of the population and handles the monthly 1,350,000 hospital visits an average of 35,000 per day. System captures all aspects of patient information that has clinical significance, right from a patient referral/walk-in to the healthcare facility to the discharge from the facility after the required care is delivered to the patient through a set of inpatient and outpatient services. Al-Shifa comprises tailor made clinical system modules for 30+ clinical specialties, a complete CPOE and several subsystems including, but not limited to, Laboratory, Blood Bank, Pharmacy, Stores, Radiology, Operating Theatres, ICU/CCU/SCBU and other Critical Care Units, and Emergency Care and several non-clinical modules. All clinical specialities and paramedical services are integrated into a single system catering to the data processing and scheduling requirement of each service unit. It facilitates real-time data capture and instantaneous shared access to legible information repository through multitudes of structured views needed by each service department. Al-Shifa also helps administrators and analysts with instant access to the patient records, track clinical activities, operations and workflows and setup KPIs. Improved patient and professional satisfaction, efficiency in hospital operations, reduced controlled costs, and improved patient outcome 20
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Re-engineering the simplified process is one of our main priority to ensure enhancing the current eService’s and developing new eservice on the second phase of eHealth Portal
performance and reduced medical errors are the intangible benefits AlShifa adds. AlShifa generated an overall 60% saving on professional time. E-Referral System e-Referral system is made to transfer the patients electronically from one institution to another in order to take a medical advice or transfer the patient to meet a consultant specialist to take an appointment for the patient electronically. at present implemented between 150+ interconnected healthcare institutions across Oman, taking care of inter-institutional appointment requests for inpatient/ ambulatory services, laboratory, radiology and other procedures. The referrals get uploaded to referral centres with automatically attached HL7-CCD compliant documents. SMS alerts are sent to patients when appointments are realized. Subsequently the patient encounters at the referred institutions are tracked and consultation feedbacks are automatically sent back to referring institutions enabling sender to track developments. In case of the laboratory, radiology and procedure referrals, results/reports are sent back online to the sender upon completion of the service and authorization of the reports. E-Notification System (Tarsud) e-Notification engine was originally developed to build central repositories for certain communicable and noncommunicable disease notifications, so individual institutions can notify such events and the central bodies responsible for QC and response actions can monitor, classify and report back follow-up actions. The system
2 Integration with Private Health establishments into our National Electronic Health Records and do mapping process to meet the international standards
3 Introduce mHealth and telemedicine into MoH establishment to run virtual clinics.
later got extended to handle a broad range of notifications like adverse events, birth, death, trauma, etc. Nabd Al Shifa System The data-warehouse and Business Intelligence (BI) built on top of Al-Shifa, allows the slicing and dicing of KPI measurements over a wide range of dimensions, with the facts accumulated from 245+ institutions including offline sites. Sophisticated dashboards and portals with graphs and charts assist healthcare analysts in decision support National eHealth Registry (NEHR) The National eHealth Record (NEHR) project is a part of strategic decision to build an interoperable heath IT ecosystem in the country which becomes a platform for healthcare data sharing among multiple stakeholders. The NEHR ecosystem depends on the shared clinical repository based on the HL7-FHIR standard, along with web and mobile UI interface which reflect the complete patient record. Eventually NEHR becomes extended to personal health record (PHR). System is expecting healthcare providers on both public private sectors sharing clinical information based on standards based in HL7 FHIR. Since sharing information is the primary requirement, a scalable messaging architecture is the principal component of the NEHR system. Project focuses on actions that will enable a majority of individuals and providers across the care continuum to send, receive, find and use a common set of electronic clinical information at the nationwide level by the end of 2018. Although this near-term target focuses on government entities interoperability of healthcare information based
COVER FEATURE
on standardized data elements will make it scalable across private and other semi government stakeholders. Master Patient Index based on National Registration System (NRS), laboratory test registry based on LOINC, diagnostic and surgical procedure registry based on SNOMED etc. will work hand in hand with clinical information received as HL7 FHIR messages in order to form a national clinical repository. Central Birth and Death Registry (CBDR) This system is a centralized nationwide birth and death records registry reported through healthcare facilities (MOH, non-MOH government and private). Built using the open standard and architectures, disparate EMR systems running at care facilities are able to connect to the system in a platform independent way and deliver standard messages related to birth and death events happening within the care facility. The system is also integrated to the ROP National Registration system (NRS), which means the records delivered to the MOH registry are also routed to NRS online and receives the unique CivilID back on birth registration. National Donor and Donation Registry (NBDR) The National Donor and Donation Registry (NBDR) system integrates the different blood banks within sultanate to build a central donor and donation registry, blood product inventory, and a transfusion database so that a nation-wide safe blood donation and transfusion environment can be achieved through this integration and sharing of data. The NBDR system is centrally hosted and is integrated with the blood bank systems across sultanate through the MOH health intranet (Health Net). The EMR/Blood Bank Systems are integrated to the NBDR bi-directionally, and will make use of the central registry for donor, donation, transfusion and inventory management. Transactions related to donor registration and screening,
donation and bleeding, blood product creation and screening, blood product issue and transfusion monitoring will be informed to central registry which then will aid other blood banks to retrieve crucial information and provide necessary checks and alerts during the processes to ensure donor and recipient safely.
system also facilitates the transmission of details to quality and patient safely administrators without compromising on the confidentiality nature of data and institutional safeguards. System should also provide timely performance characteristics and indicators so that performance goals can be setup to improve the quality of service.
Centres of Disease Control – Information System (CDCIS) The CDCIS system builds a central information system for all the centres of disease control, which is also integrated with other government entities, like Ministry of Manpower (MoMP) and Royal Oman Police (ROP) that collaborate in the recruitment of expatriate workforce to the country. The integration entails the employment clearance information and to the eventual upload of the screening status at the end of the process. The system will also be linked to the visa application and NRS system in order to update it regarding the fitness status of the employees after the screening. CDSCIS also manage the workflow within each CDC from the registration of the applicant, the clinical process involved in the screening and vaccinations, lab/radiological investigations that ends with the clearance of the fit employees for the assigned jobs.
Give us a glimpse of Ministry of Health’s e-governance framework? What are the various portals that are at the disposal of the citizens? In term of leadership and e-Governance our framework consists of three main components as ecosystems: physical Entities such as people, mobile and infrastructure, Digital Connection for data, platforms, applications, cybersecurity and Business Processes. eHealth Portal is the main access of citizens’eService’s such us viewing patient records, appointments, medical reports, ask doctors, etc. In addition, there are many other services for business and government. The second portal is Health academic management System (HAMS) where parents can interact with health
Incident Reporting System (IRS) The system is a significant step forward in the patient safety efforts facilitating a more proactive approach to medical errors and other unanticipated incidents. The real-time event reporting system that protects the anonymity and impunity of the reporters and then use these reports to identify the cause of untoward incidents and propose solutions to mitigate, reduce the frequency, and or avoid them altogether. While the reported adverse incident being discussed between the stakeholders and experts, realtime feedbacks should be given to incident reporters. The centralized
institutes and the students as well. Does G-Cloud play a pivotal role in enhancing your services? Ministry of Health does use G-Cloud for two main portals, one is eHealth portal which includes 114 eService’s and the other one is Health Academic Management system. G-Cloud is under administration of Information Technology Authority. Through our experience since 2015, G-Cloud is become essential enhancement of eService’s, in term of security, integration, resources and reduce costs. What kind of new technology/smart projects can we see in Oman in 2018? In 2018 we are focusing in Personal Health Records (PHR), Vendor Neutral Archive, and modernizing our ALSHIFA system. We are focusing on using Open Source platforms and more mobility support.
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COVER STORY
FROM MONEY SAVERS
TO MONEY MAKERS
It is 2018 and we have moved on from the thesis that IT is here to save cost and optimize business. CIOs are entitled to a new task now— GENERATE REVENUE from IT. This is one of the hot topics doing rounds in the CIO fraternity globally, hence we decided to give it an MEA perspective.
WORDS BY ANUSHREE DIXIT
My research on the trending topics for CIOs in 2018 brought me to this interesting feature that I am going to put forward as the cover story for the anniversary issue of The Titans. Over the last decade, the role of the CIOs has been the one that has undergone massive transformation. Since IT became the spine of all business and ‘being digital’ rose as the new mandate for organizations, CIOs or IT heads have been the focal point for leading organizations on this transformational journey. Call it the way of nature or the norm of business, there is always a need for ‘more’ from what exists. The CIOs were not spared from this nature/norm when business started demanding money from the CIOs rather than merely saving it. For a good part of the millennium, IT was defined as a tool to optimize cost, save money and eradicate complexities from the face of a business. Voila! The definition just changed and IT is rising as a tool to generate revenue. There is no one path to becoming a revenue-generating CIO. Some CIOs are in the game from the start with the full backing of the CEO, the board and other power brokers in the company. Others must battle from behind
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to prove they should be there. BEING IN A FAIRLY GOOD POSITION As businesses and organizations incline more towards being digital, one cannot neglect the fact that the IT department definitely have an upper hand in ensuring that ‘things’ are in place for the other departments to perform. According to a report, The IT organization typically has skills and expertise relevant to revenue generation that other parts of the enterprise do not. Having said that, one does not expect the CIO to be the marketing executives of the company or go on a sales spree. As an interesting statement says, as business becomes more digital, IT has to become businesslike. Any kind of inward investment or emerging opportunity would require a deep understanding of how several technologies can co-exist, specially the information security. “IT services have become a daily need than a luxury service in modern world. Particularly in MEA region, customers are used to enjoy free IT services in almost everywhere. Therefore, charging such services may
COVER STORY
seriously harm any business due to customer reaction against the common practice in the market. Therefore, it is suggested, that businesses operate particularly in MEA region should be extra careful to focus on generating additional revenue from IT services, as disadvantages that may generate by charging guests for such IT services may over weight advantages,” said Prasanna Thiyageswaran, Director of IT, Kenz Hotel Management. A survey report from Harvey Nash and KPMG found that more than half of CEOs want their CIOs to prioritise on areas that can create revenue and less on saving money. Of the 3,352 CIOs and tech leaders surveyed, 63 percent said that increasing revenue was the priority, while only 37 percent said saving money was most important. EXPANDING THE HORIZONS OF BUSINESS Quoting a statement from enterprise project, “A typical IT team already has the infrastructure, data, security, digital, and mobile skills and awareness to take existing businesses and extend them into new spaces. Because IT sees so many of the business processes across the organization, they may also be in a place to synthesize a set of requirements that define, for example, a variation of an internal service that can be developed and sold directly to customers.” CIOs and IT heads are the people who are working day in and day out to deliver solutions to the customers, hence it is evident that they have a clear understanding of how business can be taken to the next level. There also has been an increasing conversation around flipping from a project mindset to a product mindset that focuses on revenue generation. For example, thinking of a software solution as
MARCH 2018
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COVER STORY
PRASANNA THIYAGESWARAN,
HANI SAIF,
Director of IT, Kenz Hotel Management
CIO, eXtra, Saudi Arabia
“In MEA region, customers are used to enjoy free IT services almost everywhere. Charging such services may harm any business due to customer reaction against the common practice in the market. Therefore, it is suggested, that businesses that operate particularly in MEA region should be extra careful to focus on generating additional revenue from IT services.”
“We in EXtra started link our customer touch points offline and online to surround our customers with our services where customers prefer to find via our mobile app that match all our offers and services in addition to add our financing service that make the customer apply for instalment for his purchasing and get the approval online.”
a product rather than project opens new avenues of revenue generation for business. A software developer, designer, programmer owns a software that he builds and runs it as a revenue model by determining which customer
it fits and how an intricate campaign can be run around that project. “Traditional retail business will not survive anymore as per the change in thee customer needs and expectations. It has a big role to make the shopping
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experience different and more enjoyable. We in EXtra started link our customer touch points offline and online to surround our customers with our services where customers prefer to find via our mobile app that match all our offers and services in addition to add our financing service that make the customer apply for instalment for his purchasing and get the approval online and give him the option to buy online and pick his goods from any store in our chain that spread around 27 cites around the kingdom in 2 hours which enable the Omni Channel experience to him,” said Hani Saif, CIO, eXtra, Saudi Arabia. THE RISE OF CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TEAMS This may not be a very practical trend in this region, but many global counterparts of the Middle East have been eliminating some roles from their organizational infrastructure. Well, let’s not say eliminating rather swapping. At the end of the day, it is all about being mission critical. In 2016 and 2017 there was a lot of hype around the CIO taking over the role of the CFO, taking the reigns of finance and having a decisive role on how, where and how much a business spends. The trend has just taken a new shape. Now the CIOs are not only responsible for taking decisions on the organization’s spending, but also on creating new channels for the flow of revenue into the business. FINALLY The soil is fertile and the grass is green for ambitious leaders who are willing to change the business with the power of IT. Only time can tell how the CIOs will emerge as the revenue-generators of an organization, but this trend has definitely encouraged more active dialogue and collaboration between various business units and technology functions whilst pushing the CIOs to further expand their innovation horizons. Go CIOs, let the money flow.
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INTERVIEW
LEVERAGING OPEN DATA FOR WIDER SERVICE ADOPTION Dubai Municipality is leveraging the power of AI and machine learning specially in the CRM space resulting in the ability to deliver more smarter, predictive and personalized customer experiences. AI-powered CRM activities covers a wide spectrum of use cases such as improving customer classification and qualification, personalizing marketing and awareness campaigns and lowering costs of support calls.
AHMED MOHAMMED KAJOOR, IT DIRECTOR, DUBAI MUNICIPALITY
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INTERVIEW
We are just 2 years away from Expo 2020. What are the various key projects that Dubai Municipality will be embarking on in 2018? Dubai Municipality includes 35 different service department with this being said and 2020 is only 2 years away, our main focus is getting ready for the massive number of people that will be visiting Dubai Our foundation stone is Data, how to use data properly to reach the maximum level of satisfaction for all service users, food safety, how can we ensure that every food journey from across the world to Dubai residents and visitors is 100% safe, and with more people come more waste and how to manage the expected number of waste generated This was just a sample of the kind of challenges we are expecting in 2020, therefore we are utilising the most recent technologies to ensure smooth journey for all 2020 Visitors, Block Chain and IOT for Health and safety Measures, Robotics for Waste management activities so on and so forth
Tell us about any of your recent project and what benefits it offered to the citizens? Food tracking system based on IoT, BigData and Blockchain Closely related is a strategy to make data omnipresent, with special emphasis on leveraging open data for wider service adoption by encouraging innovation with new business models. Dubai Municipality collates and generates a lot of business data particularly useful within the public domain. These non classified data will be made available to the public who are encouraged to consume and produce value added services out of it. “Food Watch” is a major initiative from the Food & Safety Department supported by IT department which allows collaboration between the suppliers, importers, regulators, restaurants, DM officials, health authorities and customers. Using Blockchain technology, food products will be tracked digitally from farm to store shelves and ultimately to consumers. This technology enables the monitoring of information such as farm origination details, batch numbers, factory and processing data, the intermediary details, expiry dates, storage temperatures and shipping details, along the entire food supply chain. Safety and compliance will be the key objectives of this initiative. Data inputs from large number of IoT devices (Big Data) during food processing, transportation, storage etc. are captured for analytical processing, compliance checks and making business decisions. Benefit: n Edge for Health and safety Quality compliant food provider companies
n Extra Security Measure for Customers’ health and safety Smart CRM system based on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Dubai Municipality is leveraging the power of AI and machine learning specially in the CRM space resulting in the ability to deliver more smarter, predictive and personalized customer experiences. AI-powered CRM activities covers a wide spectrum of use cases such as improving customer classification and qualification, personalizing marketing and awareness campaigns and lowering costs of support calls. With the rapid proliferation of customer data, AI driven CRM enables us to prioritize customers, alert customers of potential delay in services and provide smart enquiry services. With AI in CRM, we already have a solution before a problem even arises and the customer doesn’t have to make a call due to interactions happening on a constant, continuous basis. The AI-driven interaction automatically provides context sensitive contents to the agent at the right time, including suggested solutions, relevant cases, and best next actions. The continuous flow of customer data translates into a greater understanding of the customer and a superior experience that builds our brand loyalty. Benefits: n Integration with Google Maps Street View so customers don’t need to know the actual location name, as the Customer service agent will be able to see the actual view of the customer surrounding n Predictive analysis for Incidents/Service request for Users and Areas. n Bots integration to automate the response calls. n Real time tracking of the service delivery where customer can predict the delivery ETA through the app
What’s the main direction for Dubai Municipality digitalization? Our main focus going forward would be: n Align with Dubai 10X initiatives n Embrace disruptive technology in all aspects of work n Focus on data analytics, AI and ML technologies
What would be your advice to your regional colleagues? How can the CIOs and IT Directors of the government organizations walk together to further achieve the visions of 2020? My advice to all IT leaders would be, start from the basic...Data gathering, Analyzing and mining is the corner stone to start with, once they have punctual accurate data the business need along with implementation ideas will follow.
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TOP CIO IN MENA
USHERING A NEW WAVE IN BUSINESS Manoj Gopalakrishnan is the IT Director of Al Abbar Group with 20+ years of experience. Al Abbar is the largest architectural building enveloping and glazing contractors in the Middle East providing high quality products and services that meet international standards. be embarking upon? CIOs roles are changing, oversee business beyond traditional IT to innovation and transformation are the major responsibilities. Going by the regional trend I would say a typical CIO would scale out his business more to cloud, focus more on implementation of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning to improve the business decisions. Crypto currencies are going to be another major game changer in this region.
What are the key technologies challenges faced by your sector?
MANOJ GOPALAKRISHNAN, IT DIRECTOR, AL ABBAR GROUP
Do you call yourself a digital organization? If yes, why? As you know, digital transformation changes the way you engage with your stakeholders. It can also change the way that your employees engage with your organization, in addition to that you communicate to all your stakeholders whether that be customers, employees, shareholders or the general public. The second area of change is how you operate; how you fulfil the purpose of your business or organization. This is
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about digitizing your business end-to-end; whether it be on the shop floor, how you change prices, how you deliver or how you logistically coordinate yourself to perform the tasks. Finally, how business models innovate and to become a disruptor model in their fields and utilize digitalization as business enabler. We are in a digital transformation curve and currently in the second stage.
Going by the regional trend, what do you think would be the top 3 projects that the CIO’s would
Digitization requires a new level of trust - Trust is required for all stakeholders – employees, customers, shareholders, partners. In order for trust to be effective, info-security will have to become one of the key investments and without strong cyber/ info-security capabilities it will be impossible for companies to earn and maintain the trust of their customers, employees and shareholders, particularly for financial transactions. This means cyber-security becomes a fundamental part of the value of the product or service that the customer receives. Protecting privacy and security of digital assets / products are going to be the major challenges in future.
What kind of vendor/solution provider engagement do you look forward to in 2018? I would focusour digital investments on customer-facing solutions. But it can extract just as much value, if not more, from investing in back-office functions that drive operational efficiencies. A digital transformation is more than just finding new revenue streams; it’s also about creating value by reducing the costs of doing business. Any vendor who would have a cost-effective solution to push businesses to improve the customer experience across all channels would be a winner.
TOP CIO IN MENA
ENHANCING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE WITH NEW SOLUTIONS Wissam Al Adany, Group CIO of Ghabbour Auto has 22 years of experience, including over 4 years of International (Brazil, Kazakhstan) tenure. GB Auto is an Egyptian automotive industry providing value for money and built to last products. The company has operations in key markets and sectors throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and since 2007 has been listed on the Egyptian Exchange (EGX). for our customers. On the other hand, we will continue working on our operational processes transformation by expanding our shop floor automation systems to provide a full control on our products’ quality. We are also considering further investment in Business Intelligence to cover all our operations to provide a Realtime analytics for a better decision-making process.
What are the key technologies challenges faced by your sector? As all our systems are centrally hosted in our Headquarter in Egypt, while it serves more than 200 sites across the Middle East, communication become one of our main challenges to provide a stable operation; 24X7 with 99.99% availability. On the other hand, the current economic situation in the region requires us to rely more on a more agile IT model, and speed up our digital transformation plans.
WISSAM AL ADANY, GROUP CIO, GHABBOUR AUTO
Do you call yourself a digital organization? If yes, why? Due to the emerging challenges in the Egyptian market in general and the Automotive industry in specific, GB Auto as one of the largest Automotive corporates in Egypt and the middle east is considering digital disruption as one of most important pillars for its success. Hence, we have allocated large part of our IT investment to be used in the digital transformation process this year. We are currently focusing on two main aspects: Transform Customer Experience and Transform Operational Processes.
What are your top projects for the next 6 months? Regarding the customer experience transformation, we are considering to have a better understanding to our customer’s behavior and segmentations via different analytics solutions, as well as digitizing the customer touch points, by providing better engagement over the social media to automate the handling of customer’s complaints and provide a set of self-services solutions over mobiles. In addition, we are planning to enhance our top-line growth by provided a new e-commerce platform
What kind of vendor/ solution provider engagement do you look forward to in 2018? Our main strategy with our vendors relays on building a strong long-term relationship based on global agreements directly with the mother companies. During the previous years, we have successfully concluded global agreements with Cisco, Microsoft and Oracle. These agreements proven its effectiveness to provide a sustainable service and product support and showed a cost saving in the medium to long term. During 2018, we are targeting further engagements with different service providers such as DELL EMC & IBM.
To do list for 2018 Focusing on our CDI (Corporate Digital Identity) and enhance our customer experience through our new solutions and services.
MARCH 2018
THE TITANS
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TOP CIO IN MENA
PAVING WAY FOR A DIGITAL FUTURE Imad Taha joined Belhasa International Group in 1999 and since then he has been in many senior positions where at last was assigned as the Group CIO (2008). Belhasa International Group is a highly diversified group offering turnkey solutions across a spectrum of business interests such as real estate, construction, automotive, technology, education, trading, hospitality, investment, travel and tourism.
a new innovative business model idea for the retail sector called SALEradars .Tell us more about your SALEradars
IMAD TAHA, GROUP CIO, BELHASA INTERNATIONAL GROUP
The Titans magazine had an exclusive rendezvous with the Group CIO of Belhasa in December 2017. Read the excerpts here.
approach n Increase market share by focusing on sustainable products and services
How has Digitization penetrated the retail sector of late?
We are not different than the leaders in retail. We wanted to create a one shop for all retail products trying to think as a retailor and as a consumer at the same time.
Retail Sector was among the 1st industries to consider digitization for 2 factors: n Know your customers or get personal
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What has Belhasa’s digital retail strategy been in 2017?
You introduced to the market
SALEradars is an app and a website that give all info about any SALE or offer happening in a country, city, mall, shop name, brand during a period of time and give Retailors info and tools never had it before and reward the loyal customers too all this free to customers and consumers and with fraction of fees from retailors side compared to the bulk untraceable SMS marketing. 1) Benefits for Retailors n Imagine if you have a tool that allows you to know who saw your advertisements, who came physically to your shop (because of this PARTICULAR advertisement) & who shopped/ how much they spent? - Who did not buy and why, when and where? Wonder no more, SALEradars gives you all this and MOREOVER rewards your loyal customers too!! 2) Benefits for Retailors’ s customers (Consumers) n How do you know if your favourite brands are on SALE, how many times you missed them? n Do you have time to follow or like all social media pages for your 100s favourite shops/brands? n Do you have time to download every shop/brand mobile app? n Can you visit to any webpage where you can search for sale or offers by date and city (tourists) /brand/shops (competitors)? n Are you fed up by the number of loyalty cards you have in your wallet? n No Internet on the go? don’t worry you will still be notified about SALE/offers from shops/brands you only care about or simply near you!!
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