GITEX 2019 has finally concluded. We had five power packed days of action, business networking, and meeting new partners and clients. We spent last week full of conversations and experiences around innovation, technology, and future.
In case you were not able to attend GITEX 2019, we are afraid - you really missed out! đ
But don't worry, here is a run-down of what went down at GITEX 2019 and what is new for Exceeders this and next year.
As we mentioned in our GITEX preview post, we launched our flagship product, Exceeders Collaboration Agreement aka, ECA app. ECA app launch was an instant success and within the first three days of launch, the app became #3 trending app for its category.
In short, ECA is a comprehensive app for both Android and iOS. It offers users access to over 300 IT solutions and providers. With just a few clicks, IT leaders around the world can connect with Exceedersâ partners and start collaborating with them to grow their own organisations.
Want to benefit from ECA and Exceeders network? Download app here.
Speaking of Exceeders network and partners
Just like last yearâs edition, at GITEX 2019 we welcomed exciting new partners to our network.
Vestigos
We announced our partnership with Vestigos Consulting Services represented by Mr. Stelios Leftheris. Vestigos is a leading consulting firm that specialises in helping startups develop their products and acquire funding. Vestigos will support and connect with all startups within Exceeders ecosystem.
FlairsTech
We also signing a partnership with FlairsTech. FlairsTech is a leading IT provider helping organisations digitally transform their workplaces and employee experiences.
NESICON Middle East
NESICON Middle East and Exceeders also became partners at GITEX 2019.
NESICON is an agile Information Security Intelligence company that serves a niche market in Middle-East and Africa for business that seek top quality information security services for their organisation.
Cloud Solutions
We are now partners with Cloud Solutions. Cloud Solutions was represented by their CEO Ajith TK at GITEX. Cloud Solutions aims to help SMEs in the UAE - digitally transforming their operations.
Exceeders and Diyar United Company are now partners officially. Mr Saed Zaidan, Director, Business Development joined us at the Day 2 of GITEX.
Diyar offers IT services including Microsoft solutions to help businesses in Kuwait enrich their portfolio & bring value and help them accelerate their digital transformation.
Ubility
We are now official partners with Ubility. Together, Exceeders & Ubility will provide top of the line AI solutions that help out customers & improve their customer, supplier and employee experience.
eCity Oman
eCity is another new partner added to Exceeders network. We are delighted to announce our partnership with eCity for IT Services to help bring its portfolio of innovative solutions to the Omani SME Market.
GetBEE
We're so proud to be partners with GetBEE - Bringing Expertise Everywhere. GetBEE gives its customers the tech to drive better results digitally.
Sahab Smart Solutions
Exceeders and Sahab Smart Solutions are official partners now. Together we will expand Sahab's portfolio of innovative solutions to organisations in Sharjah and help them transform digitally.
CNS Middle East, one of the biggest SI in the GCC is now an Exceeders partner. CNS, was repped here by Mr Hatem Hariri at GITEX. CNS focuses on enterprise and public sector around the GCC region.
We are now official partners of Cork Information Technology a channel in Bahrain providing ERP solutions- represented at GiTEX by Managing Director, Raju M V.
Jathwa Technologies
At Gitex we also became partners with Jathwa Technologies, an emerging ICT provider from Saudi Arabia. Represented at Gitex by Salem al Enezi, President, Jathwa provides top solutions in CustomerExperience, DataAnalytics, & smart mobility.
We are proud to announce that our education startup, Nadrus, was acquired by the Omani Society for Education Technology (OSET).
An education initiative by Exceeders, Nadrus aims to bridge the gap between formal education and the market skill demand. It currently serves about 200,000 Arabic speaking learners and more than 150 educators in fields ranging from Microsoft Excel and Photoshop, to Android application development and programming.
All in all, we had an incredible week at GITEX 2019. We are thankful to our hardworking team, all our partners who visited us, and everyone who came by and made our day.
Now the countdown to GITEX 2020 begins already. â
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Originally published Oct 11, 2019 5:35:11 PM, updated November 19, 2019
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The tensions are running high lately at boardsâ level regarding the rapid changes and progress in technology and not knowing the possible impacts on the businessesâ future performance, profitability, confidentiality of data or even continuity.
The fumbling from the risks of information technology increases especially in traditional boards that include members who are unacquainted with this domain and who donât appreciate the extent to which their firms depend on âinformation assetsâ. Many are oblivious of the importance of information technology in shaping the strategies of their companies and the risks which could disturb their business due to system failures or security breaches.
This lack of awareness often leads to a slowdown or negligence in making fateful and even existential decisions. There are many examples of global companies who did not realize the stimulus of technological developments on their businesses and their future; their hesitancy led to massive losses, shares falling, and even bankruptcy.
The Importance of IT Governance
Still, in many western and eastern countries, boards donât give special importance to the subject of IT governance due to unfamiliarity with the topic. Board members often lack the basic knowledge necessary to ask key questions about technology risks and around the impact of high-tech changes on the business itself.
Traditionally, this responsibility is left to the information technology executives, who define the course of action according to their whims. Therefore, the lack of control over IT activities by the Board is treacherous as it could expose the organization to the same risks resulting from incompetent assets or financial management.
Several global companies have understood the IT threats and risks and have created special board committees to monitor and oversee the Information technologyâs activities. The IT governance team worked closely with the audit and governance committees. Subsequently, IT governance committees were recognized and became a major and auxiliary in carving strategic decisions and monitoring companyâs IT performance. Involving IT governance at board level led these companies to gaining competitive advantages in their markets i.e.: Procter & Gamble, Vodafone, Wall Mart, and Federal Express.
The Role of the IT Governance Committee
The boards, who decide to oversee the activities and the impact of information technology on their businesses, need to form an IT governance committee. It starts by recruiting independent directors or specialists, who their main role is the preparation of the committeeâs charter and its relationship with other board committees.
After its formation the committee's main task is to understand the IT roadmap of the executive management and its impact on the company's business in the foreseeable terms. What should distinguish the work of a competent committee is its ability to bridge the knowledge and communication gaps between the executive management and the board of directors. Accordingly, the role of the committee is pivotal, since it will help the executives to avoid digging into technical details and technological terms but to focus on the opportunities available and draw a broader picture of their IT strategy and its impact on the business growth and success.
The committeeâs role is also to review the cyber security measures implemented by the company and engage specialists to assess the vulnerability of the firm vis-Ă -vis cyber threats. A Gulf flavored GDPR will be applied soon in United Arab Emirates which will force most companies to review their IT and cyber security measures in order to comply with the state rules and regulations concerning user data protection.
In addition to the above tasks, IT governance committeeâs further role is to challenge the IT projects proposed by executive management and its efficacy and necessity; to assess the success of projects implemented and its contribution to the businessâs progress; to inquire the adoption of certain technologies which might not benefit the firm or could be a waste of time and money.
The IT governance committee is as important as the audit committee. Its role helps to balance the current business and future needs; ensure the seriousness and feasibility of investments in IT projects; ensure the protection of âdigital assetsâ and âbusiness continuityâ. The relationship between these two committees should be close; for IT matters can affect economic and regulatory issues, IT governance committees are geared to understand the fundamental dynamics governing changes in technology and its ability to transform the company's economic outlook.
How Global IT Governance Committees Successfully Fortify the Board
Boards supported by IT governance committees, and who valued the positive influence of technology on the businessâs fortune, have contributed to their companiesâ success. Accurate information and peculiar data analysis have assisted the boards in understanding the dynamism of competing markets, customers behaviors, and the importance of customersâ experience. Those boards reacted to the changing dynamics of their markets and took swift decisions based on information that boosted their profits and raised their shares.
Finally, forming an IT governance committee is crucial and requires strict commitment and discipline by the Chairman of the board and all members for the success of the committee's work. Board members and senior executives need to assess the impact of information technology on the company's business and strategy and determine whether the formation of an IT governance committee is essential to their business or not.
Antoine Alam
CEO â BluGrass Technologies
Certified Board Member
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We live in a time that is characterised by a major technology takeover, a time experiencing the 4th industrial revolution. Companies that want to survive and evolve must keep track of technology breakthroughs, because as weâve come to know, technology can make or break a companyâs success.
In light of that, it is imperative to always look forward in anticipation and not just wait for a trend to start âtrendingâ. We have created a list of what we speculate to be the major technology trends of 2020 that everyone should keep an eye out for.
No matter how much technology advances, it is agreed that no single tool can replace humans. Most organisations out there are already familiar with automation, which involves automating simple tasks that require processes with predefined rules and structured data. The idea of HyperAutomation, on the other hand, involves a combination of tools that together result in the creation of an organisationâs digital twin, which allows for the automation of more complex work.
According to Gartner, combining robotic process automation, intelligent business management software, and AI enables organisations to visualise how functions, processes, and key performance indicators interact to drive value.
Allowing this digital twin to become an integral part of the HyperAutomation process as it provides real-time continuous intelligence about the organisation will enable more informed decision making. Successful automation involves several key factors: discover, analyse, design, automate, measure, monitor, & reassess.
An example of a tool that is designed based on these factors would be Exceedâs ESP.
While Blockchain was first developed back in 1991, it came to life with the introduction of Bitcoin in 2009. The idea of bitcoin mimics printed currency in the transactional sense, but instead of being regulated by a central bank or government, bitcoin is regulated by a network of computers. Blockchain is the protocol on which bitcoin is built.
In the simplest terms, Investopedia defines Blockchain as âa distributed, decentralised, public ledgerâ, which translates to digital information (blocks) that are stored in a public database (chain). While blockchain is beneficial in peer to peer transactions and small-scope projects, it remains immature for enterprise deployments due to technical issues.
However, market speculations anticipate it to be fully scalable by 2023. According to research conducted by Gartner, âtrue blockchain will have the potential to transform industries, and eventually the economy, as complementary technologies such as AI begin to integrate alongside blockchain.â
Can Machines Think?
AI involves designing âhuman-likeâ machines that are able to perform tasks requiring intelligence. Machines are built to mimic processes and tasks that involve recognition of images, speech, or patterns & decision making. Those processes include acquiring information and rules, using those rules to reach conclusions, & self-correction.
Unlike traditional coding, the computer creates instructions for itself using machine learning algorithms rather than having humans write those instructions. To demonstrate the effect of AI, take google translate for an example.
When it first went live, google translate used to have more than a million lines of code (human-created instructions). Currently, google translate has 500 lines of code due to machine learning. However, while it is expected to overtake every industry, one must understand its limitations.
Knowledge in AI comes from data, and for the machine to be accurate, it must read from accurate data. While businesses have been understanding what AI can and can't achieve for the past few years, it expected that the future points towards a time where machines are appointed not only all of the physical work, as they have done since the industrial revolution, but also the mental work involving planning, strategising, and making decisions.
Sources:
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/blockchain.asp
https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/gartner-top-10-strategic-technology-trends-for-2020/
https://www.simplilearn.com/top-technology-trends-and-jobs-article
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You see the end product but weâre bringing you closer to the people behind it !
Among our recent partnerships, we joined forces with Ubility.
To bring the service provider closer to YOU, we sat down with their CEO Khaled Dassouki, to gain firsthand insight on the things they do and the types of human capital profiles that drive their success.
Khaled is a Lebanese national with an engineering background and PhD in Artificial Intelligence & Security obtained at Université de Technologie de Troyes, France.
As a result of over 20 years in the field, Khaled decided to establish Ubility in France and build it on a base of Artificial Intelligence in Customer Experience, which was considered to be highly innovative as it was a niche field.
Khaled was quick to notice that there had been a shift in the way business was carried out, the shift had been made to be more customer-focused. With that came new challenges, the ease with which customers can connect with the business led to a huge influx of queries and requests for support, which was very time consuming, tedious, and required businesses to grow their customer support teams leading to higher costs.
While growing their teams did solve some challenges momentarily, organisations were quick to realise that the complexity and average time required to resolve customer challenges was growing which eventually led to dissatisfied customers. Not only that, customer service agents were quickly burning out as they were answering an ever-growing list of routine questions rather than helping solve complex problems and offering innovative solutions.
Taking all that into account, Ubility offered an AI-powered platform that learns from interactions between an organisationâs customers & their customer care team to enable quick suggestions of appropriate solutions that could solve a customerâs challenge in seconds rather than minutes.
In addition to that, Ubility also offers AI training for professionals in the IT industry, a sales chatbot that is based on a recommender system and knows the sales cycle, and AI Consultancy in which they are recruited to build and implement AI services in response to an assessment of an organisationâs processes.
Success Story
Ubility was commissioned by a Telecom operator in the gulf to assess and analyse their IT processes. After a thorough analysis done by their team of experts, it was concluded that a huge portion of their IT processes had an opportunity for automation.
After studying the best ways in which they could automate their processes, they determined that incorporating AI would allow the elimination of a manual process by looking at historical data. Instead of their operational costs raking up to 50,000 USD a month, they were now cut by 80% to be only 10,000 USD.
Intrigued and want to learn more?