Businesses must reinvent their service delivery models and maximise digitisation to stay competitive or wither, says PwC’s Fadi Komati

AI, machine learning, data analytics, user experience are now prerequisites to business success

Fadi is a Senior Partner and an accomplished Digital and Cyber Consulting Leader at PwC Middle East, with more than 20 years of experience in projects related to digital and cybersecurity strategies development and implementation, systems integration, and security implementation.

He has served the government, telecom, NGO, and financial sectors on projects that include national digital strategies, digital laws and regulations, national digital identity strategies, data governance and architectures, cyber security strategies, and digital transformation offices and business support systems transformation project management offices.

Invited to judge the Middle East Technology Excellence Awards, Komati shared his insights with Asian Business Review on how COVID-19 impacted business operations and the customer experience, how these will further evolve as well as the technologies that have become imperative to ensure survival.

How has the pandemic affected the tech industry in the region?

COVID-19 has created a ripple effect that forced the government, businesses, and all other stakeholders to reinvent how they work, deliver services and run operations. Digitisation was a big part of the new reality and hence during the lockdown, technology vendors, consultants, and the value chain around them became busier than ever. Innovative solutions emerged by startups, entrepreneurs covering commerce, retail, delivery, health, education and many other use cases.

What are the upcoming tech trends that you can see Middle Eastern businesses benefit from the most?

Smart, location-based, AI and data analytics powered digital services will further mature to provide a much more inclusive and customised user experience to the end-users. Having experienced digital services and digital payments more extensively during the lockdown, users now have higher trust in online transactions and will expect services to be user-centric, customised for each particular user, otherwise, they will use the competition who is able to provide such services.

Many experts are espousing digital transformation as the key action that will keep businesses afloat during and after the pandemic. But is there a possibility that it can also be a hindrance—much less an added problem—to their survival and progress?

Digital transformation has a cascade effect on the operating models of organisations (retailers, suppliers, etc) and their supply chains. Organisations that are not able to reinvent their operating model to remain competitive will wither. A good example is how Amazon’s success as a digital e-commerce platform led to the bankruptcy of established retailers who were not able to undertake their digital transformations fast enough. On the other hand, digital transformation has a big effect on the workforce community where social bonding resulting from physical meetings weakened and hence created new challenges in teams’ efficiency and productivity

The impact of the pandemic lingers within and outside of the Middle East, what would be your advice to tech companies that are still in the early stages of recovery?

We are now living in a new world. Organisations’ requirements and expectations from tech companies changed. AI, data analytics, machine learning, user experience and user-centricity are now prerequisites to any potentially successful product.  Reinvent your products and services, reduce the average age of your products’ designers, engineers, and developers, and capture the expectations and requirements of the young generation. And if you do all of this, you will emerge stronger.

What key factors are you looking for when judging who should win?

Innovation, leveraging AI, data analytics, machine learning, user experience and user-centricity to provide a convenient service that is much easier to use and reduces steps needed to be undertaken by the end-user or the time needed to complete the experience. Cross service or organisations integration/data exchange to provide a holistic digital service that does not require the user to enter information that is already stored at the service provider database or its affiliates.

Solutions that use emerging technologies to enhance a traditional physical service (agriculture, education, etc) using innovative delivery models.