Proven Consult’s Hilel Baroud on adoption of robotic process automation in the region

Image credit: Supplied

In your opinion, what are some of the key technology trends that you see in the Middle East?

The Middle East has been heavily focusing on technology in the last decades. The region has become a pioneer in advanced technologies, attracting niche talents from all over the globe. The major countries in the Middle East have implemented countrywide transformation visions in various are-as related to technology, such as “UAE Digital Government Strategy 2025” and “Saudi Arabia Vision 2030”.

Technology trends are rising in all sectors, from digital transformation programmes to Smart Cities and everything in between. Technology is being implemented everywhere, with Smart Gates at airports utilising AI facial recognition. Governments are moving towards Paperless technologies and implementing Digital Apps serving the residents. We are witnessing massive adoption of key technologies like RPA and ML in all major organisations, making the execution of processes reliable and efficient.

The adoption of emerging technologies such as RPA and AI have boosted over the past few years. But what are some of the challenges you see in this area? How can you help overcome them?

Robotic process automation (RPA) and artificial intelligence have become a necessity for large organisations in the region. RPA eliminates the mundane and repetitive tasks allowing employees to execute more advanced tasks. The challenges that we face regarding RPA as a local system integrator are mainly related to change management. Resistant from employees towards the technology often cause reasonable hinderance to RPA and AI adoption. The best approach to overcome this is to educate the employees on these technologies with awareness sessions and informative workshops.

Explaining the purpose of implementing these technologies and inviting the employees to work hand in hand with these technologies creating a cohesive and collaborative workforce of humans and digital bots. We keep the employee in control by having RPA collect data from different sources and pass it on to an employee to take a decision.

Regarding AI, the challenge is somewhat different. AI requires huge data to work efficiently. For AI to accurately operate within an organisation, we need to train the AI solution with company specific data. The challenge is that the data is not always accessible. The solution is to train the AI solution offline and on a smaller data set. In a nutshell, there is widespread adoption of RPA and AI and the positive impact on ROI and efficiency is clearly evident.

Tell us about your operations and partnerships in the region. Do you have expansion plans?

We are leveraging our in-house AI-developed technologies like Sanad.ai (Arabic and English OCR) and Habot.ai (Arabic and English chatbot). We also have partnerships with leading vendors and partners in AI, ML, data analytics and intelligent automation. Our company operates across the MEA region with a focus in Saudi Arabia, providing customised intelligent solutions to our partners and customers.

In terms of expansion, we currently operate across the Middle East and Africa region. We have recently had a change in management and we are currently evaluating our go-to-market strategy as well as our expansion plans. The main focus will be to further expand our business into new territories within MEA. Proven Consult is a strong customer-oriented firm fostering innovation and forging strong partnership collaborations.

How are you helping businesses accelerate their digital transformation journeys’? Can you provide some examples of successful digital transformation projects that you have undertaken in the past, and the impact it had on the client’s business operations?

We have implemented RPA in major utility companies in Saudi Arabia. With over 200 process automated in Semi-Government and utilities companies, the business operations and in particular, the process executions are currently more efficient, more accurate and error free. Our customers have reduced their operational costs and increased operations security. Now our customers have a dashboard displaying all the digital workforce operations within their organisation that provides advanced governance over their day-to-day process executions.

What are your plans for the year ahead?

For the year ahead, we will continue to advance our solutions offerings by investing in research and development for Sanad.ai and Habot.ai. We strive to explore new markets and to extend our customer’s reach. Being a trusted advisor of technology to our customers comes with high responsibility. We will continue to invest in our team’s skillsets by offering tailored training and career growth opportunities.

Eventually, what we are striving to do is to enable organisations in the Middle East to realise their innovation vision and improve their work operations. Proven Consult will be at the forefront of delivering high-tech innovations, striving to become the partner of choice for many organisations that are seeking enablement in the broader Middle East vision.

Also read: TMF Group expands into Saudi by acquiring Proven’s corporate services business