Software Business in the Middle East

As I wrote last time, we decided to concentrate our efforts only on developing Drug Database for United Arab Emirates. The first thing we needed to do was to describe clearly what exactly we wanted to develop and how, who our customers would be and how we’re supposed to reach them.

What to Develop and How to Develop

Basically, we simply specified the scope of the functionality that we thought would be essential for the first version. The list was reviewed several times. We added some of the features and moved other ones to the later versions. The list of requirements for the first version was based clearly on our own experience.

Here we came to the first problem. Drug Database is software that allows you to search for specific drugs by certain criteria and where you can read the full details about the particular drugs. Logically, the program consists of two parts: (a) database and User Interface, and (b) drug details. We had no problems with the database and User Interface - it is all technical stuff, and all of us had IT background and a lot of experience. The problem was where to get drug information from. This was number one in our issue list.

Who Our Customers  Would Be

It was clear that our customers would be doctors, pharmacists and organizations where all these people used to work - clinics, pharmacies and hospitals. The definition of our customers was pretty obvious. In the future, we would also be able to develop a web site available for public, where people can simply go and learn more about drugs they got prescribed by their doctors, but it was just a bookmark for the future ideas.

At that time we wanted to concentrate ourselves only on Healthcare Professionals.

How to Reach Our Customers

When we discussed all these product and marketing issues with my partners, I made an experiment. I called about 50 different doctors in Dubai - some of them I met on Networking Events, some of them were known to the people whom I met on Networking Events, and others I found on Healthcare Directory of local Yellow Pages. This experiment mainly had two goals. First, we needed to hear the opinion of healthcare professionals about our product. The second, I wanted to learn and practice in making cold calls, meeting with people, talking to them and showing them the presentation if time permitted. There were only 3 or 4 out of those 50 who said our idea was crap. It was very good result, I think - the majority of doctors I met with used to have some books with drug reference information they brought from their home countries, some of them used some kind of free and limited software they downloaded form the Web, but none of them had access to any information about drugs registered in UAE. This fact made me feel very optimistic. Another good thing with all those meetings was a good chance to review our list of requirements for the first version. It made a lot of sense to listen to the professionals to understand better what functionality is important for them.

By that time, we saw only one option to reach our customers - by making cold calls. Those 50 calls and meetings made me feel comfortable that I would be able to call about 5-10 people daily to make an appointment and try to make a sell after we have completed the first version.

As the next step, my partners back in Sweden started to develop a prototype of our first version, and I started to run around looking for different options how to get drug information. Drug information is the main part of any drug reference source and it was the most important task for us to find a solution and get drug details for our product.