Mansour Al-Ajmi

Can you elaborate on the establishment of Majorel in KSA, and what are the company’s vision and mission in Saudi Arabia?

Mansour Al-Ajmi: Before, Majorel was a partner of Saham Group, an African investment company that operates in a variety of essential industries and services, and other entities, including Pioneers Outsourcing. We subsequently merged all these fragmented businesses under one brand called Majorel. Majorel wants to have a real impact in KSA; we want to continue to establish our local strength by understanding the market and measuring the dynamics and expectations. At the same time, we are also establishing the high standards of our global customers at Majorel. We have global customers working with us on this as well e-commerce and high-tech solutions. We focus on local strength and deployment of people, and we ensure a wide access to the market, while also having and applying high standards when it comes to operational efficiency, experience management, and technologies. The dynamism of the Saudi economy represents an opportunity for the company. It is critical for Majorel to operate in the Gulf, as we cannot claim to be multinational without having a strong position here. KSA was chosen because it is becoming the hub of the GCC, with accessibility to different geographical situations. Having Majorel in KSA, which was also our strategy since the beginning, ensures that we will be in central, eastern, and western areas so we can have bigger pool of talent from which we can recruit and train.

Majorel was named Global Leader in Content Services, Trust & Safety for the second consecutive year. What is the secret to its success?

Mansour Al-Ajmi: We are tough when it comes to our process-oriented people. We follow the process to resolve all challenges or problems. We reengineer complex scenarios, and once we find an issue, we fix it, and we break it down into pieces. Then, we apply the philosophy of our experience. We constantly apply improvement processes while always reaching the set target.

How do you guide your clients through the digital revolution, and how do you advise them on the right technology to be applied to their operations?

Mansour Al-Ajmi: In this context, the acquisition of IST played a crucial role. IST was founded in 2002 and provides CX technology consulting, application development, system integration, and managed services to blue-chip clients internationally and in the Middle East. IST’s clients are primarily in the banking and financial services, technology, and telecommunications verticals. IST has offices in Egypt, Bahrain, KSA, Turkey, and UAE with around 270 employees, including more than 200 technical engineers and solutions consultants. The acquisition will help cement our leading position in the market. For a long time, we have had labs in Dublin and other countries to partner with key technology providers. The key here is that we are not a technology provider; what we sell is our proven experience. We built these labs, we partner with leading technology providers to adopt their technology in our labs, and we take processes and start doing our experiments. These experiments definitely have an impact. In order to sell them to our customers, we demonstrate a specific case study. Our objective is not to simply sell, because we want to develop a long business relationship with our clients. If we only sell technology, they can replace us with any other vendor. We provide our clients with technology that has been operationally tested and proven to improve their operations.

Majorel is a world-class digital integrated business service provider bringing together technology and human capital. How do you get people and AI to work together?

Mansour Al-Ajmi: Technology is not replacing people; it gives us leverage in terms of the skills we have. We use technology to do the job of a person, and a person’s job has changed to teaching the technology and AI to understand customers’ needs better. In our experiment, the team that was planning to train the agent, we used them to train the machine. Technology has made people’s jobs more important and sophisticated. Humans develop the technology, operate the technology, and configure the technology. In this case, they also train the technology.

You are involved in several different segments such as banking and finance, insurance, automotive, retail, energy, media, and telecoms. Where are you witnessing an increase in demand?

Mansour Al-Ajmi: First, government services. There is currently a significant change in terms of citizens’ or residents’ expectations of public services. I see potential growth in public services in terms of serving citizens and residents. This is also driven by one of our visions, which is the Quality of Life Program. We are always aiming for a better quality of life.

What are your main targets and priorities for the year ahead?

Mansour Al-Ajmi: Our target is to diversify in two things. The first is in the talent itself. We have succeeded in having a solid ratio between men and women, so the gender diversity objective has been achieved. Second, we want to also have multiple regional pools of talent virtually so we can activate them. We are no longer limited to our regional offices or centers, because technology enables us to work from home. This was successful for us during the pandemic. I want to make sure we train talent in different areas, because those talents can truly benefit the company in terms of retention and also help the economy have more people with the same values that we are selling.