Oracle has announced that the Jebel Ali Free Zone (Jafza) has gone live on the Oracle E-Business Suite "in order to enhance customer experience and improve operational efficiency," Oracle officials say. This customer relationship management (CRM) centric product serves as an integrated platform for all Economic Zones operations in line with Dubai World's enterprise application strategy.
Salma Hareb, CEO, Jafza and Economic Zones World, said they needed a product that could "scale with our growth and be flexible in adapting to varied requirements of the different economic zones and logistics and industrial parks in our portfolio, while enabling a consistent business process model."
Hareb added that in his opinion the introduction of about 100 additional eServices will result in "exceeding 90 per cent e-enablement of Jafza's customer services."
Awareness of the importance of customer relationships is improving in Dubai and across the Arabic world. Earlier this summer, crediting the bank's CRM project as a contributing factor, the National Bank of Dubai accepted the Asian Banker Award for Best Retail Bank in the UAE for the year 2007.
Suvo Sarkar, Group Head-Retail Banking, received the award on behalf of the National Bank of Dubai in Shanghai.
NDB was selected by an international panel consisting of figures in the world of retail banking. Winners were selected on the basis of a scorecard of ten categories used to rank banks and their retail banking units. Among the criteria used are retail banking performance, long term prospects, retail sales figures, how well the retail bank is managed and the quality of staff training.
"NBD is committed to providing our customers with innovative value-added products and the highest levels of customer service," said Suvo Sarkar. The bank has expanded its branch and ATM
network to one of the largest in the country, and "a new 24/7 state-of-the-art call centre supported by CRM technology has recently been launched," company officials say.
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David Sims is a contributing editor for ContactCenterSolutions. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.