Category: Manufacturing & Engineering

Vishal Sharma, senior vice president of Ecolab’s Middle East and Africa region, sat down with us to talk about the challenges they have faced and initiatives they are using to grow their business in the Middle East and Africa.

Ecolab is the global leader in water, hygiene and energy technologies and services. Around the world businesses in food service, food processing, hospitality, healthcare, industrial, and oil and gas markets choose Ecolab products and services to help keep their environment clean and safe, operate efficiently and achieve sustainability goals.

How was your company’s 2016 performance?

Ecolab is a global Fortune 500 company. We have a broad geographic footprint spanning more than 170 countries and 1 million customer locations, where we deliver comprehensive solutions and on-site service to promote safe food, maintain clean environments, optimize water and energy use, and improve operational efficiencies. The depth and breadth of our business makes for a strong and balanced portfolio. Despite energy and foreign exchange market headwinds last year, we delivered $13B in sales and have continued our strong stock performance over the years.

In the Middle East and Africa region, we delivered both top-line and bottom-line growth. Our region has experienced geopolitical volatility and faced continued low oil prices, but that didn’t stop us from serving our customers with excellence, introducing value-driven innovation and growing our market share in key industries.

Our goal is to be our customers’ most valued partner and we do that by continually investing in innovation, enhancing our on-site personalized service to solve increasingly complex customer challenges and last but not least, by investing in and attracting top talent.

What is your outlook for the economy in the GCC during 2017?

The GCC has seen a sustained low oil price environment along with regional geopolitical challenges, so reduced government spending is a fact of the economic environment leading to overall fiscal rightsizing in several key economies. However, GCC’s largely futuristic outlook and relentless focus on excellence keeps the region attractive for most industries and multi-national companies.

What strategic initiatives do you have planned in your business for 2017?

Given the geopolitical conditions, oil price and overall macro-economic situation in the region, we have been quite clear that business will have to be driven by share gain. Markets are not propelling businesses forward as they used to earlier in the decade. In 2016, our major focus was to strengthen our capabilities and position ourselves for growth, and we are seeing the results and a good momentum this year.

Our long-term purpose remains unchanged. Everyday, we make the world cleaner, safer and healthier, protecting people and vital resources. We continue to deliver on our purpose by:

1. Developing water reduction, reuse and recycling capabilities to optimize water management for customers in every segment.
2. Strengthening our food safety and public health capabilities.
3. Expanding our enterprise digital capabilities to drive customer connections and digital innovation in our offerings and business model.
4. Focusing on attracting and developing the world’s best talent.
5. Strengthening our internal infrastructure to ensure we have the internal capabilities to continue to grow and meet global customer demand.

What are your company’s plans for growth in 2017?

In the Middle East and Africa region, we remain focused on delivering customer excellence, and ensuring we are creating value everyday. More than ever, we are focusing on attracting, developing and retaining talent across our organization. We know our people are our greatest asset. We recognize the needs of the current millennial generation, and realize these employees may have different career aspirations and needs than previous generations. We are working to remain an attractive and a long-term career destination for all generations.

We believe the region provides huge growth opportunities and we continue to build our capabilities to win here. Our recipe for success is to deliver the best product and service portfolio to our customers, while focusing on taking care of our employees. There are few companies in the world that can offer the diversity of long-term opportunities and the stability of a consistently high performing business. We are in a unique position to help address the global trends shaping the future of business – including population growth, the increasing demand for food and energy, and water scarcity – and are focused on delivering expertise and solutions to help our customers navigate these challenges.

Tanya Ellis, Chief Executive Officer of 4D Consultancy sat down with us to talk about what challenges and initiatives they are using to grow their business in the Middle East.

4D Consultancy was created to help CEOs push beyond current and future challenges through their people. Challenges may be the result of expansion or diversification strategies, or they may be the result of organic growth previously requiring the implementation of short term solutions. Regardless of how the difficulties you are now facing materialized, our aim is to help you ensure you have the right people strategy to fulfill your vision.

How was your company’s 2016 performance?

2016 was a challenging year for many industries in the GCC resulting in much needed strategic organisation design projects.  4D Consultancy was engaged on multiple programmes working closely with clients to understand their exact challenges, short, medium and long term strategies and building agile structures which enabled them to deliver their desired results whilst maximizing upon the talent within their business.

The year was extremely exciting for 4D Consultancy as whilst the financial difficulties faced by clients was concerning, we were able to drive lean, performance driven solutions into businesses enabling them to recognize some poorly designed structures, lack of recognition of their key A-Players and drive performance based cultures which resulted in exceptional results on clients EBITDA.  In short, whilst top line financial results were decreasing LFL on 2015, our work significantly increased Net Margins proving a strategic people agenda is key to high level business performance.

What is your outlook for the economy in the GCC during 2017?

We see 2017 holding the same level of cautious business decision making as seen in 2016.  This is highly positive as we have seen businesses grow too quickly, often unsustainably and continuously resulting in a growth/decline cycle which is both damaging to their industry and employer brand.

We are also seeing a trend to hire highly qualified and experienced talent into organisations who have proven results in their ability to sustainably grow businesses in the local market and wider geographies.  Diversification is decreasing and companies are now valuing the concept of becoming true specialists in their fields and expanding globally with this focus in mind rather than diluting their core offering.

What strategic initiatives do you have planned in your business for 2017?

We are focused on widening our message to businesses on the true value of strategic HR.  The market has sadly placed ‘people’ in an administrative box with low level impact on organisational performance.  We firmly believe in saturated markets, the USP for businesses to focus on, is their talent and attracting, engaging and retaining the very best in market, globally.  We are focusing on businesses who truly want transformational HR solutions and not only recognize but also value their people and see them as their true path to ultimate financial success.

What do you see to be the most dominant risks in today’s GCC market?

We have seen a trend over the years of accepting average in many parameters.  Average performance, average results, average thinking and average strategies.  Businesses need to focus on being the very best and bench marking themselves against their global competitors rather than the trend to bench mark against local competitors.  Only then will they have the capacity to catapult their business to a market leading organisation on a global scale.

What are you companies plans for growth in 2017

We are comfortable with our performance in 2016 and aspire to similar results in 2017.  We are now seeking some pro bona work and wish to work closer with governmental bodies in order to magnify our wider strategic HR impact in this region.

Marie Nina Louise, a leading HR Director for an automotive brand within the Middle East, recently sat down with us to share her insights on a number of topics having an impact on the region.

What is your outlook for the economy in the GCC during 2017?

On a macro level the market situation is challenging in many sectors, I believe we will see this continue throughout the year. This can of course also mean opportunities, especially if you are cash flow solid and ready to invest in businesses. You can also reap the fruit of quieter time and invest in yourself as an employee.

What do you see to be the most dominant risks in today’s GCC market?

No surprise, but talent shortage is a key issue. The markets grows faster than capabilities, which poses a risk of losing out/slowing down/not being able to capture all the potential. As the region also “normalizes” (packages look different, VAT coming) there is a challenge of managing expectations. I sometimes have very interesting discussions with people who left Dubai some 8-10 years ago and still expect it to look the same as when they left, which is not the case.

Where do you see the areas of economic growth to be?

Long term I still think we will see growth in GCC, as the overall development take place, the purchasing power grows as well.

What is the best thing about working in the Middle East market? It is truly dynamic and diverse. You meet people from all over the world, working beside and with each other. UAE is very progressive as well which is inspiring.

What new initiative are shaping the HR world now?

Being able to address the customers’ needs and views on the company, and align internal efforts to improve the customer experience. Clearly HR analytics as well, but I see many companies still in infancy stage (which is a huge opportunity). In the region, I believe the old Ulrich Model is still under development. I hear feedback on insourcing back operations which was earlier outsourced.

What’s the number one rule you have learned during your career?

I always work with myself and my teams on 3 P and 1 C, Be proactive (d not wait for someone to tell you what to do, they will not), Be pragmatic (reduce waste and think about the end user in whatever you do), Have passion for what you do (as soon as you lose the passion, it is time to do something different) and have Courage (challenge and stand up for what you believe in)