Globitel gains from the Middle East's growing telco sector

Globitel started business 11 years ago and has four main product lines, with three targeted at telecommunications operators and one aimed at contact centres and customer service departments. Halawa's brother Samer is the firm's President.

'We are essentially a software house and for telco operators we provide value added services as well as roaming and network solutions. For call centres, we offer a call monitoring system, which is essentially a quality management service, and this is one of our most popular products.'

Quality monitoring leaders

Globitel's call monitoring system is used by companies from a number of sectors including banking and also governmental departments, which are attracted by its call recording function for legal purposes. But it is telecommunications operators who provide Globitel's main market for its SpeechLog monitoring product.

'The recording system was how we first started out but gradually we added more modules to the product as our clients increasingly wanted to look at quality monitoring. We are now one of the leading companies in the Middle East for quality monitoring and I would say about 70 per cent of the region's mobile operators use our products in their contact centres.

'As we develop our solutions in-house, we can provide very flexible systems and can customise our products to the needs of the operator to fit better into their specific quality standards. This has made us very popular with large contact centres across the region.'

Globitel considers home and abroad

Halawa believes that showcasing the firm's products within the Middle East is a crucial marketing tool, but he is also beginning to look further afield for expansion opportunities.

'Our main focus at the moment is the Mena region and we are concentrating on building up trust between ourselves and telco operators. They can often feel insecure and will choose three or four vendors for the same service. We started the process at home with operators in Jordan where clients recognised we were flexible, were very competent technically and they then felt comfortable working with us.

'But we also plan to start knocking on the door of the wider African market by the end of the year as the boom is yet to come over there. We have already been to Sudan, assessed the situation there and it is very competitive. Our plan over the next two to three years will be to cover the Middle Eastern, African and also the eastern European markets.'

Creativity and innovation

Jordan has four mobile phone companies fighting for market share in a country with a population of just over six million people. Zain (formerly Fastlink), Orange, Xpress and Umniah need to make sure their products remain attractive and unique and they will often turn to the likes of Globitel to seek fresh ideas and solutions.

'The competition in the Jordanian market has definitely been to the benefit of the consumer. It has meant operators need to work hard on developing innovative services. Jordanian consumers are increasingly technologically minded and they have become very selective. With mobile number portability, moving from one operator to another is also a lot easier.

'So our role at Globitel is to help the operators with regard to creativity and innovation. We hold regular meetings with them to discuss what new services might prove popular. Due to the level of competition in Jordan, operators are being driven to take risks and are happy to try out new services.

'We also generate a lot of new ideas independently and we will then take these to the service providers. Our fully automated speech enabled contact centre is a case in point. We took this to Zain, they were prepared to try this out, to take a risk, and recently it was nominated for a regional award.'

The increasing liberalisation of the telco industry across the region and the aggressive expansion policies of some major players have also brought their benefits to Globitel. Its intelligent traffic steering system is being used by Zain to direct subscribers on to the networks of other allied operators in its group when they are roaming in Jordan, Sudan and Bahrain.

Outsourcing opportunities

Having worked for more than a decade in Jordan's telecommunications sector, Halawa is well placed to comment on the kingdom's desire to build up its involvement in the outsourcing industry and, unsurprisingly, Globitel also hopes to be at the forefront of this.

'We have already been in contact with call centres in Egypt, which is also developing its outsourcing activities. But, in Jordan, a lot of focus is being put on this sector and one or two large call centre projects are likely to be unveiled shortly and Globitel may well be directly involved in some of these schemes.

'Jordan is an ideal centre for outsourcing, particularly for IT firms, as the country can offer employees with technological know-how. We are sure this sector will pick up and a lot of funding is coming into Jordan's outsourcing business and the government is really pushing for it too. At Globitel, with our software products and also our consultancy experience, we hope to be major players.'

See also:
Optimiza: A Jordanian firm with pan-Arab aspirations
Microsoft deal boosts Jordan's ICT ambitions