Page 51 - SAMENA Trends - April 2020

REGIONAL & MEMBERS UPDATES SAMENA TRENDS

UAE Banking, Education Sector Lead Digital Transformation

The UAE’s banking and finance, education, Protego. By 2022, KPMG predicts that 80 Smart University. As UAE malls have closed
and retail sectors are accelerating digital percent of revenue growth will depend on for the foreseeable future, retailers and
transformation to deliver business digital offerings and operations – meaning restaurants are re-orienting to deliveries
continuity, customer happiness, and early adopters will have a competitive and developing plans to launch virtual
smart services in the face of COVID-19 edge. The UAE’s banking and financial malls. Personalized customer shopping
pandemic, industry experts said. The Dubai sector has already been using Big Data, offers, geo-location services, and targeted
Department of Economic Development AI, and machine learning to personalize marketing are delivering the goods and
recently mandated 80 percent of private customer services. Now, the challenge is services that maintain business and
sector employees to work remotely. moving desk-bound employees to remote society. “UAE organizations should turn to
As a result, the BFSI, education, and working. Firms have had to purchase knowledgeable and experienced channel
retail sectors have led in innovation, hardware, secure access to data and partners to align strategic business goals
argues Condo Protego, the leading UAE- applications, and adopt collaboration with information management tactics in
based IT infrastructure and information platforms. About 1.1 million public and hardware acquisition, IT infrastructure,
management consultancy and solutions private school students have moved from and business software,” added Andrew
provider. “In the face of coronavirus, the classroom to e-learning platforms Calthorpe. Condo Protego (Latin for “to
remote work, distance learning, and virtual such as Google Classroom, ClassDojo, store and protect”) is a leading regional
malls are examples of the UAE’s private and Seesaw, with distance learning now consultative solutions provider. Serving
sector supporting short-term business through the entire Spring 2020 academic enterprises of all sizes, it focuses on data
continuity, happy customers, and digital term. Supporting remote learning, over storage, virtualization, data protection and
resiliency, and transforming industries 42,000 educators received e-learning security, providing 24/7 support in just 30
and business competitiveness in the long- qualifications from the UAE Ministry of minutes.
term,” said Andrew Calthorpe, CEO, Condo Education and Hamdan Bin Mohammed

Digital Payments Flourish in Pakistan

In light of the recent coronavirus outbreak, several companies
have selflessly promoted online payments. Banks enabled this by
waiving their charges from internet, mobile and ATM transactions
to ensure the safety of their customers and employees during
the outbreak. Essentially, these digital payments have received a
big push; people are reducing the use of banknotes out of fear
of contracting the virus. Pakistan’s e-commerce index shows
an increase in digital payments and a rise in demand for online
shopping during the lockdown. Recently, Daraz launched Pakistan’s
first e-commerce index at an online event, hosted by Daraz,
showing an increase in digital payments and growing demand for
online shopping. Federal Secretary for IT and Telecommunication
Shoaib Siddiqui attended the event. The purpose of the index
is two-fold. Firstly, to provide insight about consumer behavior
online amid the coronavirus pandemic; and secondly, to also help
stakeholders linked with the e-commerce industry, understand
the online shopper. Data on the platform showed that digital
payments in the country started picking up in 2019. On Daraz,
digital payments contributed 32% of the total consumer spending growth of e-commerce sector has largely remained a challenge.
and the use of e-wallets increased 8.2 times in a year. According According to JS Bank Head of Digital Banking, Noman Azhar,
to the index, changes were witnessed in consumer demand almost payments through the JS wallet rose from 10 to 12% since the
reflectively; that is, during the second and third weeks of March government and SBP encouraged the use of digital transactions
2020, following the outbreak of coronavirus in Pakistan. During amid the lockdown. “Traffic from branches has shifted to the JS
this time, sales of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) doubled wallet,” he said. Carrefour Pakistan Country Manager Jean Marc
on Daraz. In fact, they were expected to rise further to 70% of total Dumont pointed out that as a result of rising public health and
sales on the platform in the coming weeks. Pakistan’s economy safety concerns, a majority of Carrefour customers are now forced
still majorly relies on cash. Hence, collecting reliable data on the to adopt a cautious shopping behavior. “Conventional shoppers

51 APRIL 2020