Maintaining Traditional Values
In an Age of Globalization

Dr. Amer Al-Rawas
Managing Director, OmanMobile
Muscat, Oman

Monday, July 17, 2006

We want to make people understand that we are a new company. We are not the old GTO telephone organization or Omantel. We are a new image. We focus on creating a strong brand equity. We wanted to be a household brand, and we are. We were voted the top brand in Oman, fifteen months after we were integrated, because we addressed all segments of this, where the different brands before us were only attached to people with money. We address everybody.

For the corporate brand, we chose the name Oman. We could have called it ‘First Mobile,’ because we were the first mobile company. We could have called it anything, you know, there is a company called Orange. But we decided that we had to link it to Oman. We used the bee as our image, because we wanted to connect it to something that has been part of Omani traditions forever, which is getting honey from the mountains. We wanted people to perceive us as diligent and hard working, as the bees are that make something that is useful to people. They call our building “The Beehive,” by the way.

So, to move from that, we created a number of values. We did a workshop in which we included four standard people to ask them, ‘What has Omani values that we don’t see in us as an incumbent with the legacy that we’ve had. They said, ‘You’re not transparent, and how do we know you’re fair? We have a meter, a water meter at home, so we are content that those people are honest.  We don’t know what you’re doing.’ So, being transparent will be perceived as fair. And so can just being professional. If someone comes to your office and finds that you’re not acting in a professional manner, they’ll not trust you. So, being professional is to be trusted. We knew the competition was coming, so we had to be animated, but we knew that our society was still growing in terms of IT literacy. We knew we needed to be very simple to be able to sell our new products and ideas.  But even the newest, most innovative steps that we took. 

Oman is very proud to be the first country in the region to produce an indigenous mobile game, it’s a game that you play on your mobile phone.  And this game was actually linked very much to the tradition.  And that is, it has someone who is a treasure hunter going from one money court to the other.  And we took images from the real courts.  We got all those people playing and actually at the same time touring the country, understanding the culture of the country and knowing more about the history of the country.  And this is how we have been able to actually link the transformation that we are taking to link globalization with the history.  This game has actually earned us the youth, the people who are in the universities, they are usually fascinated by that.  We got them to actually give us a theme for our game, and this these was actually designed by university students and we implemented to our partner, and we got those students, computer science students, to work on it along with the company that we contracted, and they went all the way to Shanghai, China to learn how to program video games for mobile.  And this way, we were able to create a new skill in the country as well, and those people were able to carry the message to the rest of the university.  The new game by the way, this is a surprise by the way, nobody knows – well some people in the university know – the new game is also from the Omani tradition.  In Oman, I showed you those cups, we drink coffee, and after you finish, you have to shake the cup – to show that you’re done.  So the new game, is this guy, trying to put something into – there are twelve cups – only one is shaken, so he has pour in the one shaking, and he has to pour in that cup.  So this way we have also linked people to the Omani hospitality and the Omani culture.  This group is an interesting group because the first group was interesting but this is more interesting because it has women in it, and they will travel to India this time to learn how to program video games and to learn on the mobile.  This is somehow how we have been able to prepare for globalization and keep our culture.  Now most companies, if they want to know what the customers want…we did not do any customer surveys, we did not know what customers expected.  Normally companies in the region would go for McKenzie, (another company names), (another company name), all the big names, to bring an international advisor that would tell you what customers want.  We thought – we’ll ask the customers what they want.  We have the address of every one of those. We have their phone number, and so we sent them all a message, and to all the papers.  Make your mobile your way, tell us what you want from us, and you will win a prize.  So all those who sent a message and said to us, we want this from you.  And this campaign is the first of its kind in the region, and it has been very successful for us.  We got many many interesting SMS’s back.  People were asking for many different things from the mobile company, but somehow what was even more interesting to me – some asked for a house, and some asked for a holiday somewhere.  But we collected all the information.  We put all these requests aside, because if you think about it, they are gift ideas and prize ideas.  They are the things that they wanted.  But the mobile things are for us, for us to think – we have to work on that.  And we did.  We created many products based on this campaign.  We had lots of international praise on this campaign. 

I just said there was one organization.  Now there are six actually.  We knew we had qualified staff and we had to attract more because we were growing very fast.  And we knew that the other new organizations would also be searching for those qualified staff.  So we thought that the best way to do this would be to use (name of online hiring system).  We were the second company actually, (name of other company) was one of the first to use this software, which is an online hiring system. I’m sure this is quite common in the US. (Name of other company) was the first one to use it, and we were second.  Through this system, we were able to attract 1,000 applications per month.  And believe it or not 80% of those who were applying are people who have jobs already.  So we were able to become very effective very quickly because of this link to traditions and globalized new modern images.  Now out of the staff we have 7% ex-patriots who now help us and are continuing to help us achieve our goals.  We have achieved the highest GCC in terms of all companies, not only telecom, any organization.  So out of the 93% Omanis that we have, 24% are women.  And remember this is a technical company, and if you notice, those (something) were all boys because they go all around the country. And with the culture in mind, we didn’t want to hire lady engineers for that, not just yet. But we are building them into that.  There are some that go with them, but when they have to stay overnight in a small tent, we say don’t take them when you have to go to places like that.  But we are building them into that kind of culture.  But we are accommodating the local girls. 

The other thing we have to do to become an international company is to have no visits to the office.  Remember how I talked about the hospitality?  Well we also have hospitality in the office.  People visit people in the office in Oman, and you can’t say to people “don’t come to my office.”  So when we wanted to declare a No Visits to the Office Policy, everyone told us that was anti-social, that was anti-Omani tradition.  So we came up with a solution.  We created a beautiful coffee shop annexed to the building.  Now we said, when you have visitors, take them to the coffee shop.  Don’t take them to the offices because we have now created an open office space, so it’s not a locked office anymore, so you can’t have visitors to the office anymore, to enjoy your chat without disturbing others. Hence, you have to take them to the coffee shop.  So we accommodated the hospitality of the culture, but also the global way of business. 

We also eliminated another part of the culture which is the office boy.  You know, all of those offices have office boys going in and out bringing tea and coffee and all of those visitors wanted those drinks.  Now we stopped that.  Even for the staff.  Now we have coffee machines.  And the coffee machines not only provided staff with any sizes they want, they also allowed them a way to communicate with each other, especially a way to communicate with the 7% who are ex-patriots who have come to us to transfer knowledge to our staff.  This picture shows an Omani lady with an Omani guy talking to a man who is one of our Swedish friends who is hopefully talking of some of his knowledge while they are talking and having coffee.  Now, in order to actually move people into a new culture, we had to actually move them from the building we were in because it is all based on flats and there were closed doors.  So we moved into this new building, it was not actually new, but we renovated it completely to get a new image. 

And we had hired younger people, we lost some of the more experienced staff to some other company so we ended up hiring more and more younger people and those people work at a different pace.  The X generation, they talk about the X generation.  Now, we have had to accommodate their habits, so we take them to adventure events.  That is a picture in the see somewhere, I’m actually in here but you can’t see me after two hours in the sun.  This was a way to demonstrate some of their skills.  And we had special events to demonstrate some of their talents.  Some of them could really make a lot of money if they could get people to pay them to stop singing.   And that way we were able to basically accommodate that energy. And add those people to a relatively controlled way of work with a large space to innovate and enjoy themselves.  Now this is the part about hospitality, for example, this is maybe a parent visiting his daughter.  This is the normal receptionist.  She meets him here; the receptionist will call her up.  She will take him to the coffee shop, and then he can go for an escorted tour of the whole building, not only her office.  So that way we are connecting with the parents, we are connecting with society. 

Now the other way we were able to connect with society is through the services.  These are a number of services.  Now I will not bore you with the details, but I will take one example, which is the one for the service.  We did a survey; people are more interested in the local news.  People want to know the international news, but there is very little they can do about the international news, and very little of that news affects their day-to-day life.  But the local news- royal decrees, changes in government structure, those are very important for us.  So we established a news service that prints that news.  And it is very important. Did you know that we have holiday Saturday and Sunday?  I could have forgotten this. Subscribe.  It’s called Sabaq.  And we use the money for our services to connect with society.  When I call Mubarak, and I can’t find him, the next time I find him I ask him, “weinak?” “where are you?” So we call this service, “weinak?”  One of the services that you can see here.  In everything that we do, we connect with society. And we use global names and icons to connect with society.  Well, I don’t want to talk too much now with the way forward, I want to allow some time for questions.  A lot of our investors are worried about the way forward.  They say, you already have one competitor, another one is coming, and we know for sure it is coming because Oman will let it in and the competitor will be there. So what will happen with this company? Is your market share going to continue to be?  We tell them no, we have a number of other steps that we are taking in order to basically make sure that the future is bright.  One thing that we have learned from our link, you know to make your wish and other subscribers, that it is best to be the leading edge- not the bleeding edge, the bleeding edge is the philosophy of some companies in the region, where they have a lot of money.  They’re either paying it as hefty license fees, in new countries that they go and buy licenses for.  You know that the UAE won the Egyptian license for 17 billion Egyptian pounds,.  That’s too much.  And this has been counter-globalization in a way in the region because if your local companies, the original companies, put up the licenses very high, then global companies, like vodaphone, symphonica, and others cannot come because their business models – they have different cost models. They cannot afford those licenses.  For Oman, the license fee has been very reasonable, it was 100 million (or billion??) US dollars.  In comparison to Saudi, my market is 1/10 of the Saudi market. The Saudi license was sold 30 times, it should be just ten times, but it was 30 times.  So our experience says people are not hostile to technology.  You don’t buy the technology as soon as it comes out, it is expensive, it is full of problems.  You wait until your society is ready for it and then go ahead.  Be on the leading edge on the services but not on the bleeding edge. 

Now if you take our messages, Oman is pursuing a challenging but sustainable economic development model because by actually encouraging local economies in those rural areas we are going to sustain the model because it’s not going to depend on urban cities.  I’ve been to cities in Europe that were fake industrial cities.  One to remember is Hull . Has anyone been to Hull, England?  It is now almost like a deserted town.  That was a big fault.  All the industries have deserted it.  Now most of the Middle Eastern telecommunications market are controlled by the government state operators because some of them, even through competition, still keep a lot of control because of the regulations, or because the regulators are also the government that are governing the competition.  There is very limited competition in the fixed? market.  That is an area where globalization has not really touched very much.  (something) mobile is able to survive in the globalized era because of our recognition of our weakness and addressing them, capitalizing on the global trends while accommodating the traditional values.  I truly believe that a lot of people recognize and appreciate the fact that we are supporting and upholding those traditional values  And that is one pillar of our success.  We truly believe that development is for the people who are customers.  This is why I want to close with this: we have known of people who strived to do things correctly, by the book, whether they end up with the correct product or not.  We have known people who do the correct thing and we have to adopt the processes they do.  We also know of people who guard the rules and say: no I will not do this because you are not 21, you do not have a bank account, I will not give you a subscription.  We want our customer service agents to assess the person in front.  Do they think that this person is illegible for a subscription, and do that, without feeling persecution because the rules were not vague.  Allow them to make a few mistakes, but in the end, our results were always positive.  Our profits – that was two and a half times the something in the year when competition started, the year when we were using something prices.  The first marker this year – three times the first marker last year.  Thank you very much.

Q: I’m curious, have you seen your business model adopted by any competitors or any other industries within the country? And you mentioned you have close ties with 150 other operators, do you think a possibility exists that any of these larger companies could at some point come in and try and take over Oman mobile? 

A: People have been fascinated by the fact that our model has been linked to the culture, by the fact that our model has been successful the way it was without having to make major investments in technology, or reduced the prices so much.  Just to give you an example, just before the announcing of the third operator in Egypt, the value of the subscriber, which is called something was reduced from 14 to 11 in two weeks because they are prepared for competition with reduced prices.  We believe that our model is unique in many ways, but it is one that is being looked at very closely by a number countries around us, particularly UAE and Qatar because they have not started competition.  There is still a monompoly is UAE which will be broken this year, and a monopoly in Qatar until next year.  They are looking very closely at our model and I think our chances of getting away with this kind of model are better because of the variety of cultural aspects that we have in Oman. The other economic factors and the model that I talked about earlier in the presentation, that has kept those values intact in the region where we were able to tap on them.  Where the regional development plans have, in my opinion – I’m not in economics, I’m a software engineer – those models were based on creating big cities, big urban centers.  So the variety that we had is not there in many of the countries around us.  But if go to North Africa that model could work.  At the beginning as I was talking about, there are going to be 12 operators in the region, but they’re not going to change it.  It will still show an Omani guy, Hazan, we call him, going from one Dubai port to the other but he is being played by other countries’ subscribers because it is the first in Arabic.

Q: With your background in computer science, where do you see the future of developing the technology?  You know, instead of sending students to Shanghai or students in India, but is there a future in actually developing the technology itself in Oman?

Page last updated 05/07/2007