Beyond Convention: Harnessing digital tech to serve communities

By: Hani Elkukhun, Chief Executive Officer MEA, Beyond ONE

The Middle East and Africa is one of, if not the most, diverse regions in the world. Acting as a gateway between East and West, this part of the world is home to different nationalities, cultures and economic backgrounds. While there is undoubtedly much to gain from this multicultural environment, the broadness of consumer interests makes it an incredibly complex business landscape. Yet, what drew me to my role at Beyond ONE is the business’s vision to take this challenge and turn it into an opportunity.?

Our strategy centers on delivering hyper-personalized services that resonate with these diverse geographies and nationalities. However, the way we target our customer is through creating communities. There are many ways of identifying a community, which can be as broad as nationality or more targeted such as by occupation or by interests.. By focusing on communities, we can tailor our different services to meet the individual needs of the population. Importantly, we are able to leverage the multiple brands in our portfolio to ensure our messaging and services are reaching the relevant audience, while building a digital ecosystem made for everyone.?

The Middle East, in particular UAE and Saudi Arabia, has acted as a valuable springboard for developing this ecosystem. Driven principally by their respective visions,? the UAE 2031 and KSA Vision 2030, both nations are actively pursuing digital advancement – in turn, this has created a fertile landscape for digital platforms to flourish. While educating our consumer will always be a guiding principle in our work, the bigger challenge we face in this digitally savvy market is how to present the most applicable products in a hyper-personalized environment.

Because the Middle Eastern market is so digitally adept, due in large part to its relatively young population, we have had to refine our approach. Strategically, this meant we needed to focus on developing our basic services to be best-in-class, rather than race ahead to launch some of the more advanced products in our pipeline. This is challenging when facing some of the bigger players in the market, but our focus on communities has provided us with a strong understanding of our customers, in turn enabling us to be targeted in the services we develop and evolve.?

Our digital app, designed for true self-service, automates every step of the customer journey, enhancing the user experience. We've introduced new partnerships and services, such as STC TV and Friendi Pay, and are expanding our fintech services in Oman, UAE, and KSA. These initiatives lay the foundation for the future phases of our strategy, as we begin to advance our offerings beyond what is available on the market.?

Looking ahead, digital transformation will continue to shape the Middle East and Africa. Countries in this region are achieving their ambitious goals faster than anticipated, driven by leaders who are personally invested in transformation agendas. For Beyond ONE, staying ahead means constant innovation and adapting to the evolving digital landscape. We aim to remain deeply personalized to the environments we operate in, ensuring that our services meet the needs of our diverse and dynamic customer base.