Region's first online marketplace celebrates fifth anniversary, highlights new consulting practice

Tejari has enabled numerous e-government initiatives around the region, such as the Dubai Department of Health and Medical Services, to improve efficiencies and reduce costs for the public sector. By facilitating the purchase goods and services efficiently in real time, and enabling sellers to trade at the most competitive prices through reverse auctions, Tejari has also provided a secure, affordable route to market for more than 3,500 trading partners, who have negotiated more than 35,000 online tenders valued at over $1.8 billion in the past 5 years.

"In the five years since Tejari's inception, increasing globalization combined with market deregulation have encouraged organizations in the Middle East to become more competitive and streamlined entities," said Sultan bin Sulayem, Chairman of Tejari. "No business-to-business online enterprise in the region has a wider reach and more prominent brand recognition than Tejari."

Activities fundamental to Tejari's next five years include an increasing focus on services and continuation of its expansion strategy. The online marketplace recently launched Tejari Consulting, a service group to enable its trading partner to optimize their supplier base and unify purchasing. In addition, Tejari is developing industry-specific solutions that meet the business needs of specific sectors represented by its trading community, including construction, energy, retail, healthcare, and government.

Some of the other innovative services offered by Tejari include Tejari Connect for back-end systems integration; the MyTejari portal, providing members with a personalized website with alerts and content facilities; and Tejari Catalog Management, their data cleansing service.

"Tejari's revenue model and the growth of our trading community has enabled the marketplace to achieve a leadership position and brand maturity at an accelerated pace. Our challenge now is to develop new services beyond serving as an online trading hub to drive even greater value in the supply chains of our members," added Sheikha Lubna Al Qasimi, Tejari's Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

Having gained significant traction through its operations across the region including in UAE, Jordan, and Kuwait, Tejari now has an extensive reach across the GCC, while its activities in Africa will allow further expansion over the coming months.

Technology advances
Throughout its five-year existence, Tejari has placed particular emphasis on customer service, and is currently enhancing its technology platform to provide the best-possible support to its trading partners.

Tejari is now using the latest version of Oracle Exchange, and was the first online marketplace globally to upgrade to the most recent software release. This upgrade provides Tejari's members with a host of new tools and features, including facilities to cross-copy auctions and requests for quotations, manage auction award workflow, and support non-catalog requests such as saving items in a shopping cart.

In addition, Tejari has recently completed phase one of a comprehensive Customer Relationship Management (CRM) initiative at its UAE headquarters, focusing on scalable sales and marketing solutions.