Background

Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DCCI) has a bright record of four decades of excellence since its establishment in 1965. Since then, the DCCI has been playing a crucial role in helping improve the business climate of Dubai .

DCCI offers value-added services such as Data Management and Business Research, Mediation, State –of-the art Library, Arbitration, Trade Mission and Delegation, Trade fairs, Convention & Exhibition, Foreign Relations, Entrepreneurial Training, Commercial Services and Business Policies.

Daily operations at DCCI comprises of tasks such as issuing certificates of origin, registration of members, certifying commercial documents, receiving business delegations, serving business groups.

Currently Dubai Chamber of Commerce & Industry is servicing around 80,000 members & has formed 19 business groups representing various sectors and initiated the Dubai Business Women Council.

The Challenge

Being Dubai’s official representative of the Commerce and Industry Sector, DCCI is committed to adopt the latest technologies that would ensure its excellent representation in the market by providing the best costumer services to its members and being part of UAE’s “e-government” initiative.

The DCCI sought after investing in its infrastructure by planning to implement a powerful Content Management System that is capable of:

• Handling and automatically archiving the day-to-day significantly increasing amounts of documents and records with an extended plan for their lifecycle within the system
• Structuring the internal processes by using the newest collaboration applications that could provide employees with a more centralized and efficient knowledge-sharing environment
• Managing the requested services that are either submitted internally between the DCCI different departments or either externally by DCCI Members, while providing new set of communication tools that would help DCCI’s Customer Relations Department provide Excellent service in less time
• Automating the internal and external correspondence system to reach the goal of having a paperless work environment
• Providing a fast access way to the stored data with flexible searching tools in order to speed up the process of service providing and ensure a higher quality customer service support
• And finally, providing scheduled or upon request reports about the different processes status

The Solution

Referring to ASSEt’s successful record of system implementation within the UAE governmental sector and in the Middle East, Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry was eager to assign this challenging project to ASSET Team.

As the customer needs and the timeframe were the major challenges facing ASSET Team, a well studied plan was put into action just a few days after the agreement was made with DCCI.

ASSET Team presented a solution that would smoothly integrates with Oracle CRM and provide the users with an easy-to-use, customized interface for content archival, retrieval and exchange. All in addition to a full automation of the internal and external correspondence system used by all DCCI’s departments.

While the internal processes handling was quite a major problem within the DCCI’s departments, another solution was offered that would ensure a more collaborative way to manage the inter-departments processes and services requests (like: vacations requests and approval process, event preparation process, request for administrative service process…etc.) and a successful way to meet DCCI’s goal of reaching a paperless work environment. Another extension to that solutionwas presented that would automated and link the remote services requests to the internal processes, so whenever a request is submitted online or through a mobile service, it automatically start its cycle within DCCI’s Customer Relations department. 

Based on DCCI’s structure, activities, used applications and set of requirements, ASSET recommended a solution based on Jupiter Enterprise Suite including:

• Business Process Automation of all the internally provided services and activities using guided procedures that ensure a smooth collaboration between all the DCCI departments involved in the process of issuing/requesting, reviewing and finally approving a requested service or document. All in addition to presenting a unified interface that smoothly integrates with the existing systems (including the HR and the attendance systems).
• Documents & Records Management for handling the capturing, organizing and retrieving of all DCCI  documents as well as planning for each document’s lifecycle within the system. An extra tool was provided to facilitate the backlog documents capturing and insert into Jupiter system.
• Mobile Applications & E-Services Gateway used to build Mobile applications and Online eServices for the Commercial Services Department that will result in providing an additional service that will allow DCCI Members to check their membership license through mobile (ex: license expiry date).
• Jupiter’s Integration Kit with Oracle Portal to help DCCI’s Commercial Services Department deliver an e-Services Portal and automate the internal requests initiated from within the portal.
• Directory Listener for auto-archiving of the newly created documents. This technology detects the existence of new documents and automatically capture then into Jupiter system.
• Office Integration helping users to be more productive by storing and retrieving documents directly from within MS Office interface.
• Fax Integration resulting in cost and time reductions by activating the immediate archiving of the faxes into the system that integrates with the internal correspondence system.
• Full Text Retrieval that locates the documents, not simply by their keywords, but by the text that is contained in them and generate reports to support the decision making and research activities.
• OCR for easy conversion of the scanned documents into text and storage in the implemented system.

The solution filled perfectly all DCCI requirements for an automation and archiving system, resulting in providing a single point of contact between all departments. Full automation of the internal processes was successful implementation and applied in the following departments:

• The Director General Office
• Board of Secretaries Department
• General Administration Department
• Financial Department
• Human Resources Department
• Public Relations Department
• Business Promotions Department
• Business Development Department
• Data Management and Research Department
• Commercial Services Department
• Information and Communication Technology Department
• Dubai  International Arbitration Type Center 

The Results

The overall system development and implementation in DCCI took about eleven month to deliver a fully functional system. Special Training sessions were conducted to DCCI staff within all the departments according to each department system usages and based on the users roles.

Jupiter implementation in Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry resulted in:

• Combining all the used application under one unified system interface.
• Easy-to-Use documents retrieval, archiving and exchange system.
• Automating the workflow and internal service requests within DCCI’s different departments.
• Receiving services requests from DCCI Members through the online forms available on DCCI’s new portal or through Mobile Services Gateway.
• Faster response to the submitted service requests by DCCI Members with the support of a powerful follow-up system.
• Reducing the operational costs by using digital documents for the internal correspondence and integrating with the Right Fax.
• Strict security measures for internal documents transmission to ensure confidentiality of each department’s data.