 We're just going to wait a few minutes, it's 10 o'clock already, we're just going to wait a few minutes until our audience are online for us to start and click off the session please, thank you. We'll be starting in one minute. Salute please if you can put your mic. Ibrahim can we put everyone please. Thank you. Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem as-salam. Can you hear me everyone? Umar you can hear me right? Great, okay. So Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem as-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Good morning everyone, my name is Ramon Suleiman Saeeduddin. I support leading the digital transformation for the SMEs at the Ministry of Transport and Communications. I would like to welcome you all and thank you for attending our sixth digital forum under the title of the importance of digitalization shifting business models that the Ministry of Transport and Communication is organizing in collaboration with Qatar Development Bank. The development of the SMEs and their assistance in the digital transformation is certainly an essential element in contributing to build the knowledge economy and achieving Qatar's national vision 2013. We at MOTC work to achieve the goals of this vision. The Ministry is working on several programs and initiatives that work to develop and sustain the ICT sector. And we seek to support the development of the country's knowledge based economy by providing and developing an innovative and sustainable digital community environment in Qatar. The digital transformation of SMEs program encourages SMEs to start using information technology where we raise the awareness and the benefits of using modern technology in the business sector, which contributes to the digital transformation and building the desired future for Qatar from several projects. And one of these projects is the DTSME project at the Ministry of Transport and Communications. Since we started the program in 2017 until today, we have worked with more than 3000 SMEs and supported more than 1000 to start their journey in digital transformation through more than 300 workshops that we have supported and delivery and collaboration and partnership with our service providers. Our forum today will highlight the importance of shifting of the business models and starting the digital journey and we will be explaining as well what is the impact of digitization on a global level and especially in Qatar. Please allow me to introduce the first session and it will be an honor to introduce Ms. Amna Al-Mazroi, the customer experience manager in Qatar Development Bank, who will take us through the importance of shifting the business model. And what is the impact of digitization by highlighting some of Qatar Development Bank's offers and programs and products to achieve this goal. Please Ms. Amna. Thank you very much, Rawan. I would like to take this moment to thank you and thank the all the team who was at MOTC supporting the SME and supporting actually the whole national scheme towards digitalization. Allow me to share my screen. So I'll try to keep the session very simple and I like to call it a journey because it's as much as SMEs are embarking on digital transformations, we as well at QDB are pushing ourselves as well to go through the journey ourselves. So just a little bit about me. I'm a very curious person. I like to ask questions and learn. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. And I know we have a special Q&A session towards the end. I know time is not going to be enough for us to address all your curiosity and the questions. So please feel free to reach out if the session is not enough. I am here for you. I am here to extend the support and represent the QDB and their offering towards digitizing the SME ecosystem. So I think Rawan you've mentioned that's I think the sixth session that MOTC takes in and it's been really great. I think the audience that you have had in the past sessions and I believe we're having right now is a very diverse audience. So we've tried to cater to all of the interested parties. So you might have a business manager will have something for you. If you're a startup owner, we're going to have something for you. Or if you're just in here to learn or a researcher with as well curated a content that would be of an interest for you. So what will be covering today? First of all, I'll tap on some of the external factors that we have identified based on some of the research that QDB published on what's happening really at a national level. How does the structure of the current ecosystem, SME ecosystem look like? And why would it matter for digitalization? Second, and I think that's the most valuable and I think that's why I kept it in the center to grab your attention, which is what are the offerings that the bank actually have in order to support either SME digitize their services or SMEs who are in the digital sector and what can we do about that? And third is I will as well showcase some of the digital transformation success stories that we have embarked on internally because I think that's something that every organization regardless of their size is taking on. So these are some of the interesting insights that happened at a national level. I'm not sure if some of you have seen it when COVID hit in 2020. There was this cartoon that said who was responsible for digital transformation, who was the capitalist of digital transformation. And the joke basically said it's COVID. And I think that's as many people resonated with that. I think it's circulated a lot. It's not really true. There has been significant national efforts that have been taking on. I think MOTC is a great example for that. We've had that pillar in the Qatar National Vision 20, 30 years ago, whether it's going pro environment paperless. So it's something that Qatar have actually taken on way before COVID. Yes, maybe COVID it's something it made a pressure for us because you sort of don't have any other option. And that's why we witnessed that topic being magnified in the past two years. Another interesting insight if you look at the numbers that we've published in the state of SME report, the age group of entrepreneurs between 25 to 35 is actually dominating in the year 2020. And why this impacts digitalization is because these are the generations who basically grew up and are only used to digital. So even the way that they look at things are purely digital, and hence is as well supporting the digitalization and actually impacting the shift towards digitalization. The other insightful as well piece of information that we have seen in our reports is that, again, the majority group which was 32% of the enterprises are less than four years old. So what does that mean is as well, these are businesses that were established at a state where digitalization was a must. So again, strengthening the proposition as to why digitalization is important at a national level, which brings me to the last point. The SME, the always we refer to small and medium enterprises, are one of the most spoken about customer segment. And when you look at that number, I think you know now why, because the economy and other is hugely based on the SMEs. And I think a great point in here is that besides MOTC and besides Qatar Development Bank, being large players in the entrepreneurship ecosystem, there are as well so many other entities who are pushing the agenda of supporting SMEs and supporting digitalization. These are all winning cards for Qatar, for us to represent Qatar and succeed not only locally, but put it at a global global context. So this is another story. When we decided to not only take on digital initiatives, but we decided, okay, this is the time where we need to have a proper strategy as to A, what digital offerings do the customers need, and B, what initiatives we actually in the bank need to take to embark on digital transformation. We did the survey in February of last year, where we asked our employees, you know, what does digital mean, and where do you see it going. And that's a very complicated map, as you can see, but it honestly represents reality. Because when you do talk about digital, it's really difficult to pinpoint what does it really mean, because at the end of the day, you will have to choose a definition, and you will have to choose an objective that is applicable to your own organization and your own ambition that relies back to the strategy that you have, a core strategy that you have. So for us at QDB, we decided, okay, we want something that is real time, simple, efficient, flexible, transparent, and that's essentially what digital transformation means for us. Which led us to creating four key hitters, I would say, towards our digital transformation, and you see that the small and medium enterprises come at the heart of it. And what I mean when I say it comes at the heart of it is regardless of what initiative we take on, we need to really wear a hat of an SME and say, what do they need out of the service, how can we deliver it in the most effective and efficient and transparent way. So if you notice in here, the first one was the performance enablers, and that's mainly the goal of today's session, how do we partner up with SMEs to help them succeed in delivering either a digital transformation of their own, or actually help improve the digital sector here in Qadar. So let's zoom into a little bit into that context. There are again so many proactive decisions or parameters as to why you need to take digital transformation on. And as I mentioned earlier, these are the five key components that I think every organization would need to consider. Now what is the weightage that you put as a priority would vary depending on what your organization does. But these are five key components that when you are thinking about digital transformation, it's nearly impossible that you will not be talking about them. We talk first about the overall economic impact. That's again something that I think MOTC is looking at. Looking at how can we digitize not only SMEs but I think another art also talks about how do we digitize the government, the services. So essentially what this means is that when I say impact on GDP, organizations that are operating effectively, it talks about manpower, it talks about efficiency, it talks about productivity in the government and the private sector. So the first thing that we talk about over here is the impact on GDP and your ability to serve more and more customers regardless of the size or the capabilities that you have with your resources. A second question comes into mind is the sustainability. How do you continue to increase revenues with a limited amount of resources or what we call scaling up with limited amount of resources? How do you do things better when it comes to cost saving? How does technology enable you to do things better in your operations or day-to-day operations? Your objective could be customer experience oriented. You want to make sure that you can reach multiple product offerings. You want to give a platform that is easy to use. You want to service your customers faster or it could be tech adaptability. We all know and I think that's something that is not spoken of enough when it comes to digital transformation is talent upskilling. And I think a great notion that people are talking about is technology or digital transformation is going to replace jobs. And that's okay for us to talk about it because you have to articulate. It's not about replacing a job. How do you upskill? How do you use technology into your own benefit and actually find a valuable job that you can do and upskill your resources, upskilling your talent to adapt to the technology? Technology maintenance is a great component as well. Digital is something that would work to your benefit but as well it shouldn't be something that is such a huge asset that is boiling down your cash flow is actually hindering you from continuously adapting. So a part of digital transformation is asking yourself what tools should I invest in? Are they agile enough? Are they light enough? How long is this tool going to stay with me? 5 years? 10 years? Do I have to pay for maintenance? So again, digital transformation helps you think about these things. And that's one of my favorite points which talks about analytics. Only with data you're able to actually say what is happening and actually be able to feed into your management and feed into your decision making. Do we continue? Do we increase our customer base? Should we stop and just do the services that we have right now? And that's a great component as to how digital as well can help you with that. And last, it's something that all of you have witnessed, which is the operational readiness. We were in February, everything was normal and all of a sudden March businesses have shut down and we now have to completely serve your customers in a new way. So how do you have change management when it comes to digital transformation? And another question is regulatory compliance. So many countries all of a sudden said, you know what, we're not going to have cash. It's all digital payments. So you need to think about these things if these situations or regulatory requirements do come and what's your readiness to continuously adapt to going digital. So again, just to recap on this slide, the weightage that you have as a business owner or a person who's considering digital transformation is going to be very different. I might value overall impact on economy as 50% and I'll separate the rest as 5 and 10. But for you, maybe sustainability is the 50% parameter and hence you would focus your digital transformation on that. But these are the key things that I urge everyone to consider and think about when embarking on a digital transformation. And I think one of the key things that I'm not sure if the metric is accurate, I read it a year ago, and I think the value that I read was 50% of digital transformations actually do not succeed or they fail. I'm not sure what the value is today, but I know it's something that is scary. And this is why there are some assessments or what we call success criteria for you to say, okay, this is where I am and have a proper baseline as to your readiness to digital transformation and have reasonable agile action plans against them so that you are as well encouraged to keep pushing forward. Let's talk about them and very simple. I'm not going to detail this slide much. So the first question is, does your current strategy support digital evolution? Because I think a key question is, we don't want to do digital transformation for the sake of doing it and for the sake of everyone talking about it. You would have to rethink how does it look like when it comes to your own strategy? How does the whole strategy shift towards digital? And that's a key component that we address. The second thing is your organization open to adopting new ways of working. And I think new ways of working is something that everyone is talking about through the experience that ourselves working from home, working remotely and interacting with people literally across the globe. So what's your company's readiness to adopt new ways of working? The third question talks about agile transformation. And to put it simple, how open are you for failure? And how open are you for feedback? And how open are you for improvement? And that's a key component. It's not a process that you put in. It's not something that you say. It's a culture that you built and it's a culture that is literally built at the owner's level. And you have to have an open mindset around it because as I said, many of digital transformations fail. So you'll have to do it in a small chunk because understand what's happening and continue to push forward. The fourth aspect talks about your current technology stack. Do you have any technology platforms currently in place? How do they look like? What's your platform software development and all these questions? And the last question is how flexible are you to flex when it comes to changes in the market? Again, that's something that talks about the COVID situation, which I believe is a great exercise that actually pushed everyone to try and test their digital transformations on the ground. So how do I put the theory, I would say, into practice when it comes to Qatar Development Bank? So Qatar Development Bank, I know the name gives it. Many people associate this as being a bank. But we are genuinely a partner of the SMEs and the partner of the entrepreneurs across their different journeys. Essentially, we consider ourselves to be a one-stop shop, whether it's helping you develop an idea up to financing you and actually taking you globally, taking you to other countries across the world. The bank has been established since 1997. Initially, the bank was established as an industrial, but with the Qatar National Division with the changes towards a diversified economy, we've opened it up to be sector agnostic. And there are a few sectors that we have noticed an increase of them in the past. We've noticed that the birth basically of the digital sector, we've witnessed the birth of the fintech, we've witnessed the birth of sports industry, the tourism. So so many sectors are actually are on the rise and QDB strategy has been very agile to witness what's happening at an external aspect and taking it on into our strategy on product offering. We have so many product offerings, but I did you a favor in the sense of summarizing what I think would really be impactful for the mandate of today's session. And I've selected for you six different offerings, and I'll walk you through them. And I'll tell you what are the benefits that you could realize when you're embarking on the service. And of course, we're happy to take your application one on one after today's session. So let's start up with the incubations and accelerators that we have. The first accelerator that we have is digital and beyond. We have this with partnership with we do we do group. It is with cubic. And basically, it's goes over a few weeks. We've had several waves happening before making the application is open for this for this one. The second one is the fintech. Again, an incubator and an accelerator. This is something that we've started last year on the financial technology. We've received so many applications across the globe, not only the local and we've taken and we've graduated so many waves that are operating right now in the successfully in the in the ecosystem. This is with the other fintech hub. I as well encourage you to visit their website and see the services that they offer. The third product that I wanted to talk about is the smart, the SME equity program. The SME equity mainly focuses on businesses that are I would say an average of two to three years old who had some experience running their business and they are ready to take on the scale up. I'm very happy. I think Amar from ebutler is a great success story for the SME equity. We're happy to have him with QDB family and he'll be talking about his experience with ebutler and the transformation that they have. But that's one example of the SME equity. There are more than 20 digital. More than 20 digital businesses that are part as well as well of the SME equity portfolio that we have within the bank and the portfolio is continuing to stay growing. The fourth service is the capability development. That's I would call a very light service. It's mainly training. I think what I've heard you as well mentioned that MOTC as well is doing trainings. I think some of the trainings that we hosted was in partnership with MOTC. The topics are really of the day to day needs. So last year topics came in as IT security and digital transformation, change management, creating a new revenue stream virtually and more. So I would follow QDB on their social media and when the training comes up you will be notified. The other service that we have, this is actually our newest, one of the newest services that we have. It's actually technology and digitalization solution financing. It's very, very new. And if you're interested in that as well, feel free to reach out and apply to our website and review your application and see what is the support that is needed. And this takes me to the last service, which is the QDB hackathon. I really push everyone who's interested. I think registration closes next week. This is the second time that QDB hosts the hackathon. It's a virtual competition promoting cutting edge solutions for a wide range of challenges across different industries. It's taking on more of an agile, it's all virtual. You're going to get to interact with coaches, mentors across your team. This is the second wave. This is the first wave that we had was very successful, more than 1000 applicants came in and we were proud to award for different businesses for this. And we cannot wait for this year's winners. So this basically concludes my segment when we're talking about, okay, what do we offer? How do we have the SMEs to digitally transform? But as I said, we are as well pushing ourselves to digitally transform our services and operations internally. And I wanted to shed light a little bit about that. So we've established a vision, which is something that I told you we were, when we started off with the employees defining what does it really mean. This is when we established the QDB 2.0 vision, which is basically a digital bank that serves all the products and services end to end digital, literally paperless, deals with productivity and efficiency internally as well. So it's not only a platform that the customer sees, it's genuinely a whole strategy for us internally to efficiently serve our customers. Within six months of execution, we were very happy to build the first end to end digital industrial financing. The benefits realized of this journey are already great. There is huge improvement in the huge improvement in the turnaround times. There is a huge improvement in the customers who are encouraged to apply for it. There is a huge improvement on the number of requirements and the ease of applications. The third aspect I remember that's component that I said is very important, which is basically the upskilling. So not only focusing on what do we offer when it comes to digital product development. Our team, QDB family, is as well a key component of digital transformation. So we pledged and we have trained more than 100 different colleagues on the basics of digitalization, either when it comes to how to deal with agile methodologies, how to evaluate a service, how to adopt a service and more. Our plan for this year has been working very hard, it's to continue to build and launch more value-added services. To demonstrate this strategy, I just wanted to show you two different examples that we had. So this is the first story that we had, which is NEMO. NEMO is basically QDB 2.0, it's the platform of QDB 2.0. This is basically the platform. This product, which is the industrial financing, you're talking about QDB's oldest product. So that's the product that the bank was established on back in 1997. So the challenge in here was how to completely make it digital. So you are reimagining a product that is really the core of the bank. We were successful to do that. We did it again in six months, internal capabilities with upskilling, etc. And we were receiving positive feedback from clients about that. And our ambition is to continue to open the financing for other sectors. The last story that I wanted to say, and that's something that is close to my heart. When the pandemic happened, the state of QADAR issued a 75 billion stimulus to support the private sector. QDB collaborated with other central bank with all the different commercial banks in the country to issue the National Response Guarantee Program, which is the three months cash flow financing against rentals and salaries at the time of the lockdown. Why this is close to my heart? Because there was a sense of responsibility. We knew everyone was in their homes. There was a complete lockdown happening. No one was going out at that stage. And we knew that the private sector was in need of this program, such a program. So the program was fully digitized and offered, again, fully digitally within less than 10 days, which is, if you're talking digital language, it's literally a sprint where we have completed this offering. The banks had their portals to submit their applications. Customers interacted with this application as well digitally. And as well for the stakeholders in the state of QADAR, there was an MIS system that generated the reports automatically for that. So I think in the reason that's why I conclude my session with this story is that as much as people like to portray digital as being inhumane, a robot in the sense of replacing people, I think digital, when defined in the right way and put within the right context, can actually help people, help the country save problems, solve problems and actually create opportunities for the economy. Please do reach out to us. We are a very open organization. We take pride in serving you. We take pride in being your partner and the challenges and our opportunities for your growth. Visit our website, follow us on social media. And if you were interested in any of the services that I have demonstrated, please do apply. And if you wanted to reference the PDB and MOTC discussions so that the team as well can know the services that you are interested in and we can serve you in the best manner. Thank you, Rowan, and I'll pass the floor back to you. Thank you so much, Amna. It was a very beneficial session. Thank you for the all information you have shared and thank you for sharing the touching moments to your hearts and your beautiful programs. I'm sure that our attendees and our SMEs and Qatar will be very interested to know more. They can contact you directly and the end of the session we have our Q&A session. We will be more than happy accepting your questions and answering and clarifying your needs. Thank you so much, Amna, and thank you for QDB for being a part of the session. The next session will cover a live successful story, as Ms. Amna mentioned earlier, of an SME that's undergoing digital transformation plans and adoption of modern technologies. Please allow me to introduce and welcome Mr. Umar Ashour, the co-founder and the CEO of E-Battler. Marhaba, Omar. Marhaba. Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Rowan. Thank you, Amna. To me, this is a pleasure to be part of this program and I'm happy to share all the information about what we have done so far. Let me just take a moment to share my screen so I can start the presentation one second. Okay. First of all, maybe a bit of background information about E-Battler. So we're here to talk about the importance of digitalization, kind of taking the time from Amna and moving forward of how we are implementing it in some ways differently and having QDB and MOTC empowering us to do so. But before we start, let me just take a moment and talk about E-Battler. So who is E-Battler? Some people have heard about us. Some people have just heard about us for the first time. Basically, we address a very, very big problem now that the world is becoming very, very complicated. It's simply too much of everything, right? Too many apps, too many ads, too many providers, too many chores, too many tasks. Everything is taking so much time and causing a lot of stress in a digital first world where all our attention most of the day is on a screen that is in our palm of our hands, right? And if I go forward, here we are kind of there to declutter all of this for you, to give you one funnel where you can actually have a curated experience that is beneficial for you in the city that you live in. We don't have chatbots. We have real people, highly trained lifestyle managers, but empowered with amazing operational tools and a smart recommendation engine powered by AI machine learning to make your experience even better and better. This is a sneak peek of our new app that will be launched in the next couple of months. We are very excited about it and hopefully you guys will experience it firsthand soon. We're focused on hyper local approach to curation and that means working close and hand in hand with service providers, with local SMEs and not kind of dealing with global players, but we want to empower the local ecosystem. So we vet our service providers on 100 plus points to make sure that the quality is top tier. We help local and small, you know, small medium businesses reach more customers online in a marketplace approach. And obviously we require these providers to achieve a certain level of operational efficiency to make our customers happy to be part of their growth in their operations and so on. So we found that there's a big challenge right off the bat. We saw that there are so many SMEs dependent on kind of old ways to approach things. They're not utilizing all the software available for them. They're not being efficient in a way where they can really reach their capacity. A lot of companies are dependent on people. But as you know, people can go to other companies can go back to their home countries, take vacations, you cannot be dependent on a human chain, but also have more of a structure system and have these people be empowered by your software, not the other way around. We saw that the more we tried to add good companies and cut off for our customers, it was difficult. We couldn't depend on some companies because they just couldn't handle the scale that we gave them of the number of orders that they get every day. We found out that they're not fully equipped to manage online orders. They relied on WhatsApp. I mean, if you look at your phone, how many WhatsApp groups do we have now these days, right? I mean, it's very efficient in some cases, but obviously WhatsApp is a social media channel kind of chat tool, not a tool where companies build their whole operation on. And obviously, some orders were getting lost, missed, delayed. And then the COVID-19 pandemic made the problem even worse. And having to kind of jumpstart them to go into this digital economy and not only be part of marketplaces, but have their own channels as well. And at that time, we saw that for us, we need to build kind of this operational tools for them to use for their entire operation, independent of what we saw on eButler. And having this online management space, we had to do something that will help them. And we stopped up and QDB and MOTC definitely helped us, especially when they saw that we are really focusing on building a product to help with the digital transformation of SMEs. We are happy to talk about our product and it's called Enable, enable.tech. Enable.tech is eButler's B2B brand aimed to help SMEs achieve digital transformation and beyond. Build their self-owned online presence, avoid the hassle of managing and maintaining complicated tech stacks, and get paid online. Obviously, there are different stages with digital transformation. MOTC and QDB are doing an incredible job with information spread, teaching entrepreneurs and business owners on how much it's important to have digital transformation in these companies and kind of have these perseverance type of tactics when it comes to different sales channels instead of just the physical channel. But at the same time, people want to go online fast, and we wanted to give them an option for them to get familiar and see the results that online selling can bring to their business, which makes them more committing to the actual digital transformation, knowledge-based economy, attracting skillful talents with technical talent to kind of have the tech stacks managed internally. We give them access to tools and technologies that improves our overall operations management. I mean, we're talking about POS integration with aggregators or order management tools, delivery management tools, high-tech marketing tools, a call center solution, contact center solution. I'll give you more information about it in a bit. And it basically the modules that we've provided so far is an order management system, a call center solution, right? The ordering channel, which is very important, a web store, a website that accepts e-commerce sales. Think about a restaurant being dependent on only aggregators, how much commission they're losing every time. And they're actually dependent on Kalavat for three things. Two of them, they can do something about it. So number one is obviously Talabat has variety. If I take Talabat as an example, of course, there are local players that are doing amazing like Snunu, like Rafiq, like Fudak, like Akli. But if we take an example of these aggregators, obviously they have variety. Having one app with 300, 400, 500 restaurants is useful. But the second and third thing that people like is the fact that they can buy online for a contactless experience. The third thing is that they can actually make an order without having to talk to anyone. A lot of people don't like to talk on the phone or message the order. The ability for me to make an order in 30 seconds without talking to anyone is amazing. So we give you a website in two days. That's how fast we're onboarding clients and giving them an online channel. And it's equipped with every payment solution. We are, as they call it, payment, basically, we're integrated with Q&B, integrated with Doha Bank, integrated with commercial bank. If people have to do their own payment gate to integration, that takes a lot of time. By having us pre-integrated, we just kind of give you a shortcut to sell online quickly. Call center solution, we partnered up with Uridu and having this amazing SipTrunk technology where you can actually have 10, 20 calls at the same time for people that like to order online. Having a centralized solution where you can have an agent receive a phone call, place it on the system. It brings in the branch, giving you more efficiency, allowing you to be optimal in your overheads and not having to spend money on unnecessary overheads, but then you spend money on online marketing, for example. And obviously, we're integrating with third-party delivery, last mile companies. So we're talking about Mr. Delivery. We're talking about Be Delivery and Nahla. We're talking about Crave that do it. So Nuno have last mile deliveries. So instead of being dependent on commission-based, you can actually have a fixed rate where you can do your own delivery through a third-party or hire your own drivers, and we equip them with a delivery app and so on. We made Enable Simple and Easy, aim to reduce your cost, kind of shortcut the whole technology agency model. You're having to hire developers and you don't know how to manage them and you want to start slowly, but you want to sell online quickly. So that's the problem. We're kind of giving you a quick approach for you to kind of learn as we, as you see what we've done for you. And at the same time, not be dependent on external vendors in other countries where they trick so many SMEs to buy software, let's say, for X amounts. And then they want to change something and then they have to pay also X amount and they're confused. But why did you charge me the same amount for the whole website? Why do I have to pay more to upgrade? And it's just the rabbit hole that keeps increasing cost. And we saw that so many SMEs have such bad experiences with these external vendors that they are, you know, they're worried about digital transformation. With us, we're trying to make it as a SAS model, software as subscription, monthly based, you try it for a month, for two months, you like it, you continue, you don't, you get away. And we want to talk about, you know, obviously one of the most successful stories from our clients who helped shift their business from only having seven, eight branches physically to now reaching all of Qatar through their online web store. And the aim is to reach a wider audience and not have physical restrictions of where you sell. I mean, some people are affected by the construction that's happening in Al-Wab Street, for example. They're basically have no physical customers coming to their stores. What can they do? Is there only option to go to aggregators like Talabat and Snounu and Rafeeb and then take away from their commissions? Why not build resiliency and have their own channels and fulfillment process? And at the end of the day, we helped many businesses survive COVID. It was very tough times for so many people and we're happy that we're now next to the next stage of growing revenues instead of just surviving during these pandemic times. We're very happy to talk about bono chocolates and flowers. They are doing amazing. And we've seen how much they've grown over the last year, you know, having an online selling presence with a fulfillment process that's unparalleled when it comes to others. They recently marked their first year anniversary of successfully launching their e-commerce website. And basically, before e-butler and enable, bono managed things the traditional way. They have to do it manually through Excel files, through WhatsApp, and they did a great job. But think about the efficiencies, gaps, and the operational headaches that they survived. I mean, if you talk to bono in Ramadan and the Eids, it's a disaster. I mean, they get overwhelmed with calls, they get overwhelmed with WhatsApp. It's just amazing times for them, but extremely stressful. And so we worked with them. We sat with them. We saw what things that they need. And we kept plugging in different technologies to help them achieve digital transformation and superior operational efficiency. Thank you. Can you hear Omar? He calls us and says, can you please share your location on WhatsApp? Omar, we lost you for a couple of minutes. Okay. Yeah, I'm not sure where did you guys... We lost you after the Eid and Ramadan overwhelming for bono. Yes, yes. I was talking about how it's very stressful for employees kind of having to deal with all of this. Some of them actually quit because they can't handle the stress anymore. There's no room for mistakes. Before the old process was everything done manually. I'm sure everybody gets annoyed when a driver from the aggregators call you and say, hey, can you share your location on WhatsApp? But I have my location on Talabat or the app. Why do I have to share with you again? So we tackled all of this. Now the new process is highly automated. The customer can pay online. A big problem in Qatar is the lack of drivers. We made bonus drivers 30% more efficient by reducing the fact where they come and they take change and they have to give money, physical money, or they have a card machine and they have to look for a service to get the signal to get it processed. Now everything is automated. They have a central branch that dispatches orders to every branch that is closer to the customer. They have a delivery app onboarded to their 12 drivers and everything is done in a highly automated way. Now they tell us our complaints went down by 90% during their Eid or Ramadan. The ability for them not to lose money and make customers happy at the same time has been incredibly rewarding for the team and incredibly rewarding for them as a business. Obviously the new process is fewer steps to completion, more convenient for clients, more efficient for the driver, less cancellations overall. Everything is already in one dashboard in an omni channel. Now we give them WhatsApp business where they can have three, four, five agents and they can handle WhatsApp at the same time instead of one phone and one desktop browser. So I kind of went ahead, obviously 65% less human errors, went up 14% for retention, 35% more customers with the same staff. They were able to handle more customers with the same staff and overall they save so much money on commissions that otherwise was going to aggregators. Now we have clients benefiting from Enable, the Enable Suite, and we are so proud to see the success stories of many of our other clients and I wish I had more time to talk to you about them. But obviously we had some help along the way. For us, we had QDB and MOTC has been there for us from the beginning. Our mission to help SMEs benefit from the digital economy meshed well with QDB's goals for Qatar and the DTSME initiative with MOTC. And since piggybacking on what Amna was mentioning, there's a lot of things where we benefited firsthand from QDB's programs. So we were part of the Lean Startup Program in 2018 at Qubic. We participated in the Lean Accelerator Program in 2019, and we had access to incredible investors, angel investors, and actually QDB invested directly in Ebutler in our seed round in 2020. At the height of the pandemic, when startups like us really had to step up to help the local economy, QDB fueled our growth and our passion to kind of do this from a holistic play, not only for the marketplace, but also to empower SMEs for their own channels. And gave us international exposure by sponsoring our trips to global amazing conferences that is inspiring, like CES in Las Vegas, like Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, which it's back in physical form in November of 2021, and recently St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in Russia. We are incredibly appreciative of what QDB has done for us. Their investment now, we are in talks with them to invest in our Series A as we start expanding to the region of GCC and beyond. Thank you so much, and I'm sure there's a question and answer session at the end of the session. Thank you so much, Amar. It's always interesting and unique to hear Ebutler's achievements, and especially that MOTC was there from in the beginning. I actually have one thing I forgot to mention, if you don't mind. This is something like a sneak peek of what we've done with Bono. We've done a 3D virtual tour of their shop. I'm sure you have seen this, but the thing that is very interesting is that we're doing something incredibly unique. That you actually can take a look in their store and be like, oh, this looks interesting. You click on it and you can actually buy it from the virtual store. You can keep going. If you want to see what this is, you can add it to your cart, and at the end you can check out and buy online and get it delivered. Sorry, that was the last thing I wanted to show, but I forgot. It wasn't in the presentation. Lala, take your time. Thank you so much, Amar. Like I said, it was interesting here in your experience. And Ebutler's development, especially that MOTC was there from in the beginning. And thank you so much for QDB, for believing in Ebutler, one of our entrepreneurs and startups in the Ministry of Transport and Communication. Amar, before I tell you, thank you for ending your session, and I would like Amna as well to interfere. Amar, do you have a word to tell the SMEs? What has Ebutler done unique for a very important financial institution in Qatar like QDB, and to take ahead that part in their investment for you to give like a lesson learned, and what was special about Ebutler for QDB to take it ahead? And then we can hear from QDB, why did they believe in Ebutler and being a part of their investment opportunities? Sure. I think the most important thing that any startup needs to do is to create value for your end user, for your customer. If you cannot, you can have an amazing marketing campaign. You can have an amazing, beautiful product. But at the end of the day, if you don't make your customers happy, it means nothing. And we've done an incredible kind of effort to make sure every customer is happy and satisfied whenever they book a service on our app. And we did that by going, you know, getting our hands dirty in the operations and building technologies that no one else sees, but it's behind the scenes. And when we showed that we're growing month over month, that people are coming back, they love our service, that they saw that we're actually helping people stay at home safely during the pandemic and bringing everything to them instead of them going out and risking their health when we didn't have vaccines. All of that made QDB see, OK, these, you know, these group of individuals and I'm not alone, I have a co-founder, his name is Dr. Saifuddin Baalag, who is a tech genius. He has a PhD in computer science. We have amazing people, Nadir, who's our chief growth officer. We have a group of, you know, 18 developers, our operations team, lifestyle managers. When they saw that we have an amazing team that is working day and night to help the local economy, to help customers have more time in their life, that's when they decided, OK, let's back this startup and empower them to do even more. Thank you, Ammar. Amno, do you like to add anything? How was QDB's experience with Ebutler and how did this beautiful, beneficial partnership start and went ahead? Sure. I think every investment opportunity is reviewed uniquely. Similarly goes with the financing, but I think a key component that we have, I think, correct me, Ammar, if I am wrong, because as well, I want to extend huge thanks to the investment team who have been there with Ammar, I think, since the beginning. So the team have been working and partnering up with Ammar on day-to-day basis. But I think, and that's something that I heard from the team, is that Ammar and similar applications or businesses that we had particularly in the SME equity program usually come in and they have a viable product. So I think, Ammar, what was your business when you approached QDB? I think we were one year, one year from launch. OK. We launched in 2019 and we started talks in early 2020 and it materialized during April of 2020. Yeah. So I think the key question, Ramon, and I'll try to make it as simple as possible. How does the scalability look like? What's the strategy that Yibatli, for example, has? Are they good? Because essentially when an institute like QDB enters as an equity and not only as a financing, there is an expectation that you're scaling up, that you need not only access to finance, as Ammar said, it's more than that. You perceive it as a shareholder, as a partner. So the value goes really beyond the financial input that we have. So we have to believe that there is a scalability in the platform and there is a very key component of review of what's the strategy? How are they going to service more customer, more services, etc. And the last thing is a proof of concept. So I think when Ammar came in, he already had the proof of concept. And the average that we've seen with our portfolio, businesses that are among two to three years old, who have a proof of concept and they need that scalability with QDB. And that's where we come in. Yes, absolutely. I think any venture funding that happens for startups needs to prove that they can scale and serve more customers and scale stable, right? In a stable way. It's not going to break them and so on. Absolutely. I confirm everything that you mentioned. Thank you so much, Ammar. Thank you, Amna. Ammar, if you can share on the screen again your contact details. And I will ask Ms. Amna to do the same just for our audience to write down the contacts if they would like to share any further information or contact E-Buck or QDB. Until Ammar and Amna share their screens, we will start receiving the questions for us to be able to address it to the right panelists and see how we can support our attendees into the session. So we are ready to start receiving your questions and answers. We received one question until now, but we will wait for the rest. For us to start sharing these with our guests today. Should we go with Amna? Yeah, okay, please. Thank you, Ammar. So Mr. Ammar Ashur, the co-founder and CEO for E-Buttler, he has his email, his link and account and his mobile number. You can find me. Yes, this is the mobile number of the main E-Buttler team. And definitely they will be more than happy to support as I'm currently actually traveling. So I still wanted to be part of the session and that's why I'm kind of online remotely. Thank you so much, Ammar. We appreciate your time and your belief in MOTC's initiatives and partnerships in our forums. And Mr. Amna, if you can share your contact, QDB's contact details again, please. Thank you so much, Amna. Okay, I will start. We received a couple of questions and we will still wait to receive the remaining. The first question goes to QDB. Mr. Amna, how does QDB measure the digital transformation success for QDB to take any initiative or any business further? Can I clarify on that point? Well, I'll try to address it on two ways. So I think if you remember in our vision, we had what initiatives we have or product portfolio that we offer to the customers and our own digital transformation, our own journey of transformation, transforming our operations internally. And I'll try to summarize both answers. The first one, it comes to the digital offering to the customers, how we measure the success of that. We are very agile in our approach. We do few things. One is that every product and service, especially when it goes digital and you see it, it has actually been co-created with the customer. And what we mean when we say it has been co-created with the customer, we literally have like an advisory panel of people who are the potential clients of this product offering. We sit down and we actually talk about their needs of the offering. And we have another step, which is basically the prototyping step. So we do not immediately launch on a digital platform. We do have prototypes where we show the customers and we actually get the go-aheads from the customer. When they see the platform, they see the offering, they say it's good. That's what we need. This is when we actually release. And obviously after the release of the digital offerings to the customers, we do a couple of things. We do surveys to gauge the satisfaction of the offering. We monitor the inflow of customers against targets that we have set for ourselves based on the benchmark that we have witnessed. And accordingly, on a strategic level as well, we have a product portfolio review that takes place internally in QDB for all its offering at a strategic level on an annual basis. This covers basically how we validate things from a customer point of view. Internally, how we are pushing our own efficiency is basically evaluating how many steps we're able to reduce in the process. How many documents we eliminated. Do we still receive complaints about a specific process? How much did this process improve? So internally, we try to keep it metric-based because we do have the systems and the capabilities to report on numbers. But when it comes to customers, because it's usually new offerings, we try to use empathy. And what I mean when I say empathy is the understanding of what the customer needs and involving them in the process. And this is how we measure the impact of digital transformation in QDB. Thank you so much, Amna. I will take the second question and I will address it to Eibatlar, Mr. Omar Ashour. How will digitization affect the daily life in the future? When it comes to businesses or individuals? They did not specify, but let's try to cover both. That's covering both. Okay, so definitely as individuals, I think I'm not proud of my screen share on my phone, right? Your phone can tell you how much time you spend on your phone and I'm trying to get that number less. I think we need to have a balanced approach. We can do so much more now, especially with companies hiring distributed teams from all over the world. People can work from home, people can work from anywhere now. So kind of giving us the freedom, so digitalization is giving us more freedom for individuals to kind of work in any space not only tied to a desk, so that's great. On the other hand, social media is kind of having a bad effect on our children, so that needs to be monitored. So I'm not equipped to handle that part, but for businesses, if no company will survive in the next 10 to 20 years, if they're not online, or they're not operating in a digital form with the operations, the same way real estate and physical space has been the most important part in the last 100 years, now it's becoming digital, digital space, and people are not going out of their home to get something, they're getting it on their phone now, right? It's as simple as requesting anything to come to me. So if a business doesn't have this kind of antifragile mentality and to diversify their income streams and their channels, it's going to be a big problem for them, and that's why educating themselves is important because you'll be shocked. We sit with so many businesses and they kind of don't understand what we're telling them because they don't know how to take the step. So we started simplifying and simplifying and simplifying and educating them for their own benefits. And that's why we made our approach kind of no commitment, try it for a month, see it for yourself. So there's a big gap on that, and I'm sure your initiatives are doing an amazing job to kind of educate business owners on what needs to be done for their digital transformation. Hopefully I was able to answer that question. Thank you so much, Emma. I'm another question for QDB. A lot of digital transformation efforts evolve around cultural shifts and change management, especially in a larger corporation. Can you share QDB's efforts to enable this, to enable the change management and culture shifts? Sure, that's a great question. And it's something I think tapped into in my talk a little bit, but I'm happy the question has been asked so that I can detail it. So I've mentioned the word, particularly the word I used was DNA. And what I meant was with the DNA is that at the end of the day, people are the ones who are driving digital transformation. So it has to come from the heart. We have realized or have put in key changes within the organization to make sure that our DNA is open for this cultural shift. One thing that we have actually put in is a corporate KPI for all our departments who are running similar initiatives, which allows for a failure. So we no longer say how many initiatives have succeeded. That's of course something that has to be taken care of. But we as well had a KPI of, okay, how many of the initiatives have you actually prototyped with the customers? And you said, okay, I don't think it's a wise investment because customers do not love this product, do not take it forward. So essentially what we have done is we have put in a culture from the top that it is okay. I wouldn't say to fail, but a culture of fail fast, learn and let's move forward. And that's something that you've put in at a key parameter. The second thing is the training. And I cannot emphasize enough on this. Employees internally need the time to think and to strategize. So we actually do pre-booking their diary sessions for prototyping sessions for ideating the new offerings. And we deliberately put cross-cultural teams. So teams who are usually do not interact, we put them together in order for them to increase that interaction and actually break the cycle of large organizations. The third thing that we have done is actually, and that's something really unique and maybe that's something that that first time I'm sharing it, we actually are, we take customer feedback and input very seriously. Honestly, every complaint, every input that we receive in addition to the satisfaction reporting that we do is actually being reviewed and analyzed at the highest level. So the CEO actually sits on the, as the head of the table where we have a committee that is all about the customer experience. How are the customers doing? What are their needs? What are the emerging trends that are happening? So I think the culture has to come from the top and you have to have proper metrics in order to enable for that and you have to devote enough time for the employees to actually get creative and start participating in the digital transformation. And the last, but not least, communication, communication, communication. We try to be very creative internally. We do videos, we do communication, we do interviews with our staff and more. And that's something that, again, encourages people and excites them about the transformation to make sure that everyone does get on board with it. Thank you so much, Amna. There's a question that's divided between eButter and QDB from a QDB perspective and from a business perspective. Let's start with QDB. What are the challenges and opportunities that firms face when purchasing digital transformation initiatives in Qatar? Amna, please. And then we'll take it ahead with Amna. Can you elaborate, please, Rawan? I don't have the screen open with me. Can you elaborate on the question a little bit? What are the challenges and the opportunities that firms face when purchasing digital transformation initiatives in Qatar? What are the challenges that you are and the opportunities that you are facing? Okay. I'll name a few and let me reposition the questions so that I address it correctly. So let's assume QDB is an organization and we want to benefit from digital offerings or, let's say, small and medium enterprises or other businesses that are coming to QDB and actually offering their digital services. So what are the challenges that we face? The first is, I think, one of the main challenges that we face is that so many companies and vendors only focus on the technology aspect of it, so they only sell the technology solution and they don't sell what the objective of it is. So I think alignment of what would this platform or what would this digital tool achieve from a business goal? So I think, and that's something that I highly encourage, especially when you're running a digital or a tech company or a digital company, you need to wear a business mindset and align the business objectives with the organization. This is one thing that I would actually highly emphasize on as a challenge, as a common challenge that we face. Thank you, Amna. Omar, please. A very interesting question and obviously QDB does this as an initiative to develop the local economy so it's giving it for free and this is amazing that there is these kind of programs and I urge everyone to take advantage of it. For us, it's a bit different because we're a for-profit business. We're selling products, so we have to convince people to pay for it. So the challenges when it comes to digital transformation products for SMEs is the lack of understanding, first of all, I think some of the key decision makers are not understanding the different parameters of how we're affecting their business and because they haven't seen it for themselves and obviously there are so many salespeople that promise the world but deliver nothing close to that. So it's that challenge is definitely something that we need to overcome. The other thing that we see is that a lot of these business decision makers are worried about the frontliners, right? They're worried, will they be able to even understand the system that you're giving them? I mean, some people are just trained to answer phone calls and write on a piece of paper but to learn on an actual dashboard to update, they're worried that their team is not capable of learning this. And in some cases it's true. In some cases, I mean, change management is always a burden for every company but it's about, you know, if there's a will, there's a way. If the management wants this change, it's going to go through some tough times but it will be for the benefit of the entire company. We've seen some individuals that think that if I hold the responsibility, then I'm not dispensable for the company. So they want to have this in the old way so they keep their job. This is a very bad approach because then the business won't grow and they actually lose their job for other reasons. So that's the two main points. Actually, we save companies money so it's not about that it's expensive. SaaS is very cheap these days, if you think about it. So those are the two main points. Thank you so much, Omar. One question to QDB. Amna, based on QDB's interactions with SMEs and Qatar, how do you describe the SMEs readiness in the terms of their digital journey? Are they now capable to maximize their businesses post COVID-19 and the upcoming 2022 FIFA World Cup? I think it was one of the published QDB reports. I'm not sure to be honest, whether it's the State of SME or the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor. For the person who asked this question, I highly recommend that you read the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor report. It gives you basically a global view as to these trends that are happening and it actually zooms into Qatar as to what are the trends that are happening. In the report, I actually have read that there has been a growth towards digitalization and it's not only with SMEs, I have seen or the report have actually also confirmed that it's happening as well with the home-based businesses. So even when it comes to home-based businesses, if digital transformation is being adopted at that level, you can imagine how the impact or the seriousness of adapting among SMEs is going to be. It's going to be definitely higher. So the willingness is definitely there. One thing that we actually do in QDB is to help you with an assessment. So there's a service that we have under the consultancy. Even if you're not ready to take on, let's say, enter into an equity or take a more serious accelerator, even if you simply want to have an assessment and say, okay, I want to know where do I stand and what do I need to consider when it comes to digitally transforming my business. And you can apply to this service and an advisor from our team has been actually sit with you, look at your business and start discussing opportunities on where you could go. So the appetite is there. The growth is actually happening. And it's happening across different sectors or different sizes of the businesses. And we're partnering up with the customers as well to help perform an assessment and an ambition with them. Thank you so much, Anna. We received as well some questions that can be covered by all. But if I will highlight that, some of the questions we are receiving is that how are we going to train the companies and the SMEs on the digital transformation? And how do we educate them? I would like to highlight that the Ministry of Transport and Communication, we are on daily webinars to educate the SMEs on the importance of the digitalization and starting a digital journey. We can read more information about our webinars and our training and our partnership with our partners and technology providers on Godigital.motc.gov.qa. I will repeat, it is Godigital.motc.gov.qa. You can Google DTSME, Digital Transformation of SMEs or Godigital and you'll find more information on that. We collaborate and partnership with our partners and technology providers such as QDB and A Butler to encourage the SMEs and train them or educate them on the latest technology and what opportunities and products are there in the market to support your initiative and your journey from a digital perspective. I'm not sure if we have any other questions. I think we've covered most of them. Some are similar of the questions that we have received earlier. Omar, there is a question that maybe you can support. If we start a digital journey, how effective will the business continuity plan be? Because the moment it shifts, we are always subject to cyber attack. How effective will the business continuity plan will be for this company if they shift their business? From your experience, Omar, I know that you directly started from a digital perspective, but maybe from your clients and your partners that you are serving. Yeah, so I think BCP's business continuity contingency plans are important, but not for, in my opinion, a business that is on a small scale like a restaurant that just wants to deliver to their clients instead of Talabad doesn't need to have that huge business continuity plan. Similarly, how companies like us have to have it. So we have to have a proper plan because other businesses are dependent on us. We have a lot of information and so on. That doesn't mean that it's not important. It's just not important to start because the problem is that if we throw these big initiatives at people and cyber attacks, we're actually scaring people to start. At some point, the term will cross that bridge when we reach it. I'm a big believer of that. I don't want to kind of build five years of digital transformation in one month. But what if things change? So from an SME perspective I just want to sell online and diversify their income. They don't need that big business continuity plan and they should rely on their digital partners that they've partnered up with. But BCP in general is very important for platforms like us that even needs to be regulated. SoC2 is a regulation in the U.S. GDPR in Europe and other forms where there has to be that kind of contingency and cyber attacks are, I would say, lean on cloud hosting, right? Lean on Microsoft, Azure, lean on AWS, lean on Google because they've built so many things embedded within these kind of hosting services. But the other part, and we are unfortunately we've had one of our employees credentials got hacked and they used our AWS account to mine Ethereum and we could have simply done multi-factor authentication or two-factor authentication. That doesn't need a business continuity plan. This is actually these things deter 90% of cyber attacks. What is called cyber attacks. So maybe I was able to answer that question but it's a very broad topic. So much, they just shared with me that some of our audience would like me to share the screen where they can find more information about our sessions and webinars on a weekly and daily basis. Can you see my screen? So it's godigital.autc.gov.qa. I'm not sure if you have any other questions they're sharing within the questions. I think we covered them all. Do we have any other questions? So I think we received all the questions. Some of our attendees are thanking Ms. Amra from QDB and Mr. Umar from eButtler. I'm definitely sure that it was a very beneficial forum and discussion. We've shared a lot of information. Yeah. So I think these are the questions for today. Thank you so much, Amna, for your time from QDB. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Mr. Umar, from eButtler. We really appreciate your contribution and your belief in our initiatives, same as QDB. Thank you for our audience. Thank you for your time. I'm not sure if Ms. Amna or Mr. Umar would like to add any questions. I mean, sorry, any feedback or any comments. Thank you. Thank you, Rahman. We thank MOTC and we thank the whole team who's running this program. And keep doing what you're doing to improve digitalization among SMEs and Qatar. I think energy is up. Energy is high. We will showcase Qatar on a global scale, inshallah. Thank you so much, Amna. Thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure. Being part of this ecosystem has been incredibly supportive. All the initiatives from MOTC, from QDB, we are live proof of that. So take advantage of it. We urge everybody to take advantage of all these amazing programs. I mean, from my opinion, from my vantage point, it keeps getting better and better. We hope that everybody reaches digital transformation as soon as possible. And good luck for everyone. Thank you, Amna. Thank you for our audience. Thank you for the time. Thank you for the great questions. Thank you for interacting with us. We look forward to meet you very soon. We will be running a couple of forums that we will be announcing and promoting for it very soon. Thank you so much for your time. Looking forward to meet you all. Shukran, Amna, shukran, Umar. Have a great day. Thank you. Thanks.