My view from Dubai: It's a big world, after all
February 16, 2021
For more than five years, I’ve called Dubai home while supporting clients in Australia, China, India and Japan, as well as Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia. Under normal circumstances, I spend a great deal of time travelling to these markets. Even on days I work from Dubai, there’s usually a steady hum of airplanes taking off and landing outside my office. In other words, travel has been integral to my life.
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The COVID-19 pandemic grounded airplanes. It also “grounded” me. And yet, it helped digital transformation soar to new heights.
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That changed in 2020, of course, as the airspace became eerily quiet. I vividly remember driving past Dubai International and realizing the airport had become a parking lot with an infinite sequence of plane tails showing up beyond the fences! The COVID-19 pandemic grounded airplanes. It also “grounded” me. And yet, it helped digital transformation soar to new heights.
As we approach the pandemic’s one-year mark, I would like to pause and share highlights of what I’ve observed while collaborating with clients around the world before and during this global crisis.
Let’s start in Latin America, where before the pandemic, our financial services and communications clients had already undertaken significant digitalization programs. For several years, we have been managing marketing and online sales for companies like Telefonica. The pandemic prompted others – including insurance, retail, consumer goods, and software companies mainly in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico – to accelerate their efforts at digital transformation. I also noticed the steep rise of online marketplaces like Mercado Libre dominate the consumer retail business.
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The story is somewhat similar in Africa, where our largest pre-pandemic clients were financial services and communication players. Today we continue to work with those clients but are also supporting some massive retailers – especially in South Africa – with strategy and digital architecture. These retailers recognize that customer expectations have completely changed. COVID-19 put those changes on a fast track, but in Africa, the launch of a $15 smartphone had already started to fuel digital momentum. Selling online is not a way to save costs in a market with very cheap labor cost, but a mean to survive against global platform competitors.
Among our clients in Saudi Arabia, digital was already a top priority before the pandemic but time to execute was not necessarily in line with the expectations. Since then, we are experiencing high demand for digital strategy and digital architecture services. Across government, travel and transportation, communications and financial services, Saudi-based organizations are laying the groundwork for long-term digital agility and innovation, in line with the Saudi 2030 vision sponsored by the Kingdom.
China was ahead of the digital curve before COVID-19 thanks to widespread adoption of WeChat for virtually every kind of business or personal interaction. In other words, Chinese businesses were already well positioned to serve customers amid lockdowns. During COVID-19, we saw the Chinese giant platforms further expand their business. For example, entering in eHealth services offering and AI driven solutions to help monitor for healthy working environments or early detection of COVID-19 cases.
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For Japan, the rise in demand due to the pandemic was and remains swift. Companies there are highly focused on building new digital strategies – from launching joint ventures to setting up data sharing and AI platforms to power the new era of customer engagement. Japan is for me a global benchmark of innovation and partnership and an enormous source of inspiration for opportunities to be replicated around the world.
The shifts have been a bit different in Southeast Asia and India. In markets primarily driven by high volume and low value, country lockdowns have drastically disrupted economies and ways of working.
Companies around the globe have outsourced customer support to operations in these markets. When those companies shut down retail operations, customer call volumes surged. Yet outsourcers had also shut down due to COVID-19. That created a cascade of demand for our help in deploying automated interactive voice response (IVR), chatbots and voicebots to provide much-needed capacity.
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The last stop on my virtual tour is Australia – which has been profoundly impacted by long, extensive pandemic shutdowns. Companies within Australia that invested in digital strategy before COVID-19 have weathered the storm comparatively well. Others are still recovering; once the lockdown fatigue has subsided, I am optimistic that clients across Australia will reinvigorate their interest in digitalization.
As I work with clients across these markets, I am always reminded both of how much we as humans have in common and of how heterogenous our world can be. Digital priorities and initiatives remain diverse, complex and dynamic – and I look forward to continuing to help clients navigate them, whether I’m in my home office in Dubai or once again working with them shoulder to shoulder.
