Software Business in the Middle East

Part 1.

Differentiate Yourself

You have to differentiate yourself among a huge crowd of other software companies that participate in the exhibition. You should have something cool so that people would stop by more often. I don’t yet know how to do it, really. It is clear that candies, fruits, free pens and T-shirts in your booth will attract people, but you have to think about how to convert this traffic into the sales.

If you are looking for potential customers or partners in a very specific niche, you might expect to work very hard to sort the crowd out finding your potential customers.

The very good example was a company that had booth next to us. They make CDs that have very unusual shape. The CD might have a shape of flower, house, car or anything else. Also you might have a CD that will have a smell of your choice. These guys had very amazing business cards that turned out to be CD too! As a standard business card, this one has a name and contact details printed on it, and also it has a company presentation when you put the CD into your computer. These guys had pretty unusual booth due to the specific product. Really amazing things!

I got impression that the majority of the visitors simply picked up brochures and posters just for collection. No idea why they needed it. It takes time and efforts to read all the brochures and then contact the company which products you are interested in. It is much easier to ask all your questions to the people in a booth as this is exactly what they want to do.

Anyway, participation in an exhibition is the perfect opportunity to show your product or service to the potential customers. Normally you do a lot of work hunting for the customers, but exhibition is a place when your potential customers are coming to you themselves. And you might get a lot of visitors who might be interested in what you do. You just have to find a right way to filter who is your customer and who is not, but this job is much easier than making cold calls.

Local ”Features”

There were a few things on the exhibition that are specific to the country and local mentality in Saudi Arabia.

Each day had two parts – between 10am and 1pm, and then between 5pm and 10pm. In between there was a break for lunch and rest, but for me it was the great opportunity to meet our customers and partners.

The first three days the exhibition was only for men, and I saw just white color around as people used to use the national dress that is of white color. The fourth and fifth days were family days between 10am and 1pm, and again for men only in the evening. It is the same in every restaurant in Saudi Arabia – there are always two sections: one for single men and one for families and ladies.

You have lower chances for good sales in Saudi Arabia if your software does not support Arabic language. This is not Dubai where the majority of population is expats and everybody speaks English. We might live without Arabic language support for a while as doctors and pharmacists normally speak good English, but translation to Arabic will be needed in the near future. It might be a very good competitive advantage too. If you have software for a wider niche then Arabic language support is a must for you.

When I was in Saudi Arabia for the first time one year ago I notices that people their do not have any time related limitations. You might have your meeting finished at 12am or even later. One time last year we had a meeting that finished at midnight and I just had one single desire to reach my bed in a hotel room. Very naive – we went for the dinner. And it was not just green salad for the dinner – it was a mountain of grilled meat. I returned back to the hotel only by 2am.
It was the same during this trip. We normally finished by 10pm, and then arrived to a restaurant by 11pm. And you may not say “No thank” – it might be offensive for another party.

The price for petrol will make you happy – just 15 American cents per one liter. I thought that Emirates have very low price of about 45 American cents per liter, but in Saudi Arabia the price is three times better.

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Last week we participated in IT exhibition GITEX in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. It was our first experience participating in an exhibition, and I have summarized this experience below.

The Niche Product

In the beginning I was sceptical about this event – it is general IT exhibition, and I thought that it would make no sense to show there the product for very specific niche.

Our software is not only for Healthcare, it is for such very specific niche in Healthcare software as Clinical Decision Support. I really expected that this exhibition would have no outcome for us. But fortunately, I was wrong. IT managers of hospitals and clinics used to visit such IT events. Doctors and pharmacists visit these events too – they might look for some funny IT stuff, and it becomes surprising for them to find a solution for their daily needs.

You just have to find a way to select the right visitors from everybody who visits your booth. The first day we put our demo CDs on a table in front of our booth where everybody could take them. And everybody got a demo, just because they were lying there for free. The next day we put our demo CDs in a special brochure holder where it was not very easy to pull them out from, so visitors started to ask us about what this program was all about. This way we tried to sort the visitors to pick up only those who are working in Healthcare, or who have friends or relatives working in Healthcare.

There was one Indian guy who asked for a demo being absolutely unfamiliar with any kind of software for healthcare. I tried to explain him that this software is mainly used by doctors and pharmacists and it would make no sense for other people. But the guy just shook his head with the mysterious smile and went away with a CD in his hands. Our neighbours in another booth joked that our program would appear in every Indian shop the next day for the price of 10 American cents

For the future, I think, we would need to show very clear message that this software is for the specific niche market – maybe some posters or something else. In this respect the healthcare specific exhibition would be the great opportunity for the potential sales.

The Quality of Marketing Materials

This is the last thing you would try saving money on. Our demo CDs were made by our partner in Saudi Arabia. The DVD box cover had excellent quality, but CD cover was not as good as it could be. The brown colour became red, and white font was sometimes not very well printed.

Next time we will make all print out work at home where we are able to control the quality, and then send all the materials by a courier. Nobody needs bad quality even if it’s cheap.

The good example is I.R.I.S. that makes OCR software. We have the same partner with them in Saudi Arabia so we shared the same booth. I.R.I.S. prints out all brochures and demo CDs in-house at their headquarters in Belgium, and then they send the materials to their partners and distributors by DHL all over the World. It is more expensive than to print stuff on place, but you will not feel shamed in front of your potential customers. This way I.R.I.S. has full control over the quality as they have printing machines in their marketing department.

Some other companies on the exhibition gave away free pens to the visitors. The quality was so bad that it was very unpleasant to hold a pen in hands. It’s really better to give away nothing than something of such very poor quality.

To be continued.

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Time to time you might see really interesting events taken place in Dubai. One of them this week was a meeting with Craig Barett, the chairman of Intel.

It’s always interesting to listen to the people who have managed to make such amazing carrier as Craig – to see how they think and what they are doing at the moment. In his 69 Craig has clear mind and he seems having a lot of energy living very active live.

Below are just a few excerpts from that meeting.

History of Intel

The company was founded by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore. At that time it was not very common to get funded by venture capitalists – entrepreneurs borrowed money from banks. It was kind of difficult task for Intel founders to get money from a bank as their first business plan consisted of less than 180 words. Somehow they managed to find their first investor – Arthur Rock, whom Craig called as the first venture capitalist in Silicon Valley.

Arthur Rock, by the way, was also an early investor in Apple – it seems this guy has an excellent sense of the right investment.

Entrepreneurship

There are three things needed for successful business – smart well educated people, smart idea and right environment. As an example, three large challenges for Microsoft didn’t come from other big competitors. The large challenges came from individual people who invented Netscape, Yahoo and Google.

Culture and Entrepreneurship

Craig had interesting discussion on how culture affects a number of people who want to start their own business. In Mexico, for instance, it’s not allowed to have a failure. If you fail, you become a looser there – so there are not so many people who want to take the risks. In other countries, where failure doesn’t mean bad thing, there are more people who become entrepreneurs.

It is good not to be afraid of failure, anyway.

Investments into Education

It is almost impossible to calculate the return of investments made into education. Probably, these investments are returned back one day when graduates start working for the company. Or graduates keep using the same products of the company in their daily jobs as they used to during their studing. But formally, there is no proper way to calculate if there is any return.

I appreciate the fact that Intel shareholders, according to Craig, have never expressed any concerns about investments made by Intel into education despite the fact that it is impossible to measure the profit.

Wal Mart in India

Somebody from the listeners asked the question about the protests against Wal Mart entering the Indian market. People over there have serious concerns that Wal Mart will kill small retailers.

Craig suggested to look at the situation from the consumer’s point of view. If Wal Mart gives no value to the customers, then it will definitely die. But if customers go to Wal Mart to buy stuff, it means Wal Mart adds some value for them. As result, small retailers might get closed. But at the end of the day it is a consumer who wins.

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