SharePoint services in Middle East (Our GCC Journey)

Working in Middle East from last 7 years with complete focus on selling Business Applications and solutions, built on SharePoint on premise and cloud Platform (SharePoint On-Premise and SharePoint Online). The best thing about working with Middle East clients is that you can easily and enthusiastically engage in conversation with them. Small talk is more than just a courtesy. Gulf Arabs are charming to the core. When I came up with an idea to work within Gulf Region; management was not so confident about the success and setting up new vertical as most of the business was driven through North American and European Markets. After having many internal sessions, presenting blue prints and business plan to management; they finally agreed to put Adapt's footprint on Gulf soil. 

Being a Microsoft Gold Certified company our vision is to revolutionize the way clients use their SharePoint or O365. With same motto we started our gulf journey by selecting Dubai as first destination to start the business expedition. We generally work with partners who are based outside India and want to outsource their work and we can help them in providing presales and extended bandwidth. The best way to approach a partnership is to look for commercial synergy between the two organizations and intellectual synergy between the people from both parties. As an initial step we hunt for couple of good partners who were ready to form a Strategic Alliance and can front end with client to get leads and worked with us in converting it into successful closure. Parallel, we started building relationship in other markets as well i.e. Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman etc. We successfully closed many mid and large size projects within Middle East. We also got in touch with few of end clients, who wanted to work with Adapt directly. Arabs generally prefer to do business with people they know and like. One of the prestigious client of Adapt is Alfardan Group. I met with Mr. Osama Nassar (Group IT Manager, Alfardan Group) at GITEX 2013. He was in search of a professional company who can help them starting their SharePoint Journey by implementing Intranet Portal in SharePoint 2013. Here is quick snapshot of Alfardan Case Study:

About Alfardan Group:

Alfardan Group has established itself as one of the leading conglomerates in the region for the past 60 years. A business enterprise built around traditional family values and an uncompromising commitment to integrity, premium service and social responsibility. Alfardan Group has created new benchmarks of excellence within its diverse portfolio which has grown to include ventures in jewelry, exchange, property development, automotive, hospitality, marine and investment.

Challenge:

As a conglomerates, with multiple offices across the country, it became critical to improve communication and collaboration among its multiple business units and within 2000+ Employees. Team members were unsure where to find latest information and there was inadequate governance on the sites to which they had access. In addition, the lack of a formal information architecture resulted in the inability for users to quickly and easily find and share relevant data. There was no centralized space to share and store documents. Data was everywhere, often repeated in multiple locations, and some areas became a 'dumping ground' for information due to lack of guidelines and structure. To address this challenge, the company needed a common collaboration platform where they can create a centralized library, share information, images and company related announcements.

Solution:

Adapt proposed Intranet Portal developed in SharePoint 2013 on premise to leverage out of box and custom features of Microsoft SharePoint. SharePoint has given the flexibility to grow and scale as new employees join and team size increases.

SharePoint Intranet Portal consist of following functionalities:
 

• • About Company
• • Department Sites
• • Visually pleasing on brand design
• • Webparts (News, Announcement, Photos, Videos, Survey etc.)
• • Social Media Integration
• • User Profiles were created and customized to show relevant user information and assist in finding resources
• • Site-wide search and refiners were implemented to make content more findable

Alfardan Group have implemented the portal within entire group and employees are participating in document sharing, polls and other activities with full throttle. It was a cost effective implementation with improved employee satisfaction. Now we have to move for the phase 2 of Alfardan journey that includes migration to SharePoint 2016 and setting up complete Document Management System.

If you have blue print ready and have solid sales plan & strategy in place then 2017 can prove to be most effective by doing and expanding business in GCC. There are some economic challenges now a days due to oil crisis but as per recent economic surveys 2017 will be great year with lot of potential to grow with GCC Economy.