Out of sight, out of mind.
Doing business across the globe has never been easier with the technology available, but if you want to make deals in the Middle East, nothing beats face-to-face meetings.
The payoff from travelling to Dubai and Abu Dhabi can be high, given the thriving economy there.
Secure City Solutions, whose software-based systems apply commercial-grade security to voice and video communications knows the importance of being on the ground when trying to make business deals.
“We were trying to expand our footprint from United Arab Emirates to Saudi Arabia to Qatar and then to Oman; that’s why we went three or four times,” says Siva Kumar, CEO of the Ottawa-based company, which has received assistance twice though Canadian Digital Media Network’s Soft-Landing Program.
Their first soft-landing trip to the Middle East was in August 2013, with a second one in January 2014.
“In the Middle East it is more relationship-based” than in Canada, says Kumar.
He explains that companies don’t follow a strict procurement process there like they do in Canada, and the focus isn’t on lowest cost, but the value received.
“It’s good to build a good relationship and show them the value,” he says, adding “If you can show them the value then contracts automatically happen in that part of the world.”
For Kumar and the team, who are part of CDMN hub Invest Ottawa, that’s exactly what happened on their most recent trip to Dubai.
Dubai is more like Toronto than Ottawa in that it is “the epicentre of the Middle East, the hub for things going from North America to United Arab Emirates,” he says. “It’s very modern and they won [the bid for] Expo 2020.”
Expo is a global event that has been taking place for more than 100 years, as a showcase for international culture and industrial progress.
In just over five years, millions are expected to attend Expo 2020, and like any event of that size, security is of the highest priority. That’s where Secure City Solutions comes in.
“If I had not gone there at the right time before they won the Expo, the probability of us, a small company from Canada, to be part of their solution would have been much weaker,” says Kumar, who won the contract with Dubai Holdings, which is partially owned by the Crown Prince of Dubai.
The company is currently in the design phase of implementation of their technology.
During the Expo, their OmniSHIELD product will be used to provide secure communications throughout the city. Because it operates on a lower bandwidth, it can send live video feeds across 3G or as low as 2G networks.
Secure City Solutions provides value by reducing the number of people required to operate the system, and their products can be added to current systems that are used to manage commercial buildings, like hotels and offices.
“Our CDMN funding helped us to go there and meet the customer and the end user. Without Lisa [Cashmore] and CDMN’s help, most of these things wouldn’t have happened,” Kumar says.
Thanks to their trip, there are other business deals still in the works for Kumar and the team, who are in talks with Emirates Transport about putting their systems into school buses there.
What surprised Kumar most was not the Middle Eastern culture, but the experience with CDMN.
“The most surprising part was the forward thinking of CDMN; they were so nice, they processed us so fast and the paperwork was so small,” he says, “and Lisa’s help was outstanding.”