Don’t import labor, outsource!

As the costs of operation increases in the UAE, outsourcing becomes a lot more attractive to companies, big and small. It is no longer an IT-only domain either. Outsourcing helps contain costs while continuing to be competitive.

Balancing efficiency and happiness

I thought both are one and the same. If you are efficient, then you would be happy. It made sense to me. Unfortunately, real experience tells me otherwise. The first impression people have when they walk into my office is awe. No, not the great design. It is the fact that everyone is completely involved […]

A day with the auditors

I spent yesterday’s evening with the auditors to go over their report. Mind you, this is my first audit ever, so it had to cover 2 years. In hindsight, I should have done the audit earlier. This is primarily for a few reasons:

Tremendous amounts of mistakes could have been avoided
An incredible amount of information and […]

CRM - What’s that?

CRMs are a vital part of efficiently managing your customers. I am no longer surprised by the lack of deployment of such systems by most SME’s here.
Most managers would shrug it off as something only large corporations use. They are very mistaken. That is rather unfortunate, as it is such a valuable tool.
When we first […]

High Turnover Rates

So, we are switching back to 6 day weeks for our main operations, while keeping the main admin staff on the 5 day weeks. Backlash? You betcha! We already have a few threats of resignations, which I would be happy to accept.
The general rule is, keep your turnover at an absolute minimum. The problem is […]

Flexibility is high priced

You always want to be flexible. You always want to do what’s best for your client. The problem with this, is that the more flexible you are, the more the client will treat you badly. This is especially true to those in the services industry. You agree to provide certain services, the paperwork is stuck […]

Managing for Efficiency — Part II

Frustration would be the best way to describe it. I have just spent the past 2 hours going through sheets upon sheets of non-sensical numbers. Only one person managed to enter all the relevant information in the corresponding column. Everyone else seems to think it’s an essay format!
It has been a very frustrating summer period. […]

Managing for efficiency

I have always liked to give people freedom to move, freedom to create… but then I realized that this would only work when the work culture has an appreciation for this freedom. In this region, it appears that this is not the case. Freedom means you can sit around as the walls around you come […]

Working hours (5.5 vs 5 day weeks)

I have always fundamentally rejected the concept of waking up in the morning to go to work six days a week. That just sounded wrong to me. But, like many people in this region, I did what I saw everyone do. I started the business with 6 day weeks. Of course everyone had a day […]

Moving on from marketing to management

I don’t come with the most flattering background, in terms of business education. I have always been a bit of a hustler in school, selling pirated games to the kids. This was back in the day when games were saved on 5.25″ floppy disks.
Aside from those fond memories, I have had a fairly technical education. […]