Seamless Middle East 2020

Seamless is the fastest growing payments, retail and ecommerce event covering Middle East and surrounding regions. With a magnificent booth, standing out like a beacon of digital innovation, Emakina was happy to have taken part in the 2020 event with some of our greatest regional experts present. We also hosted a presentation by Commercial Director Khalid Khan.

“Design thinking allows businesses to perfectly balance what the customer needs with what is technologically feasible and economically viable”

We take pride in the digital transformations we offer to leading organisations, and nothing compares to mounting a stage to tell an interested audience about the wide array of technologies, tools and solutions we can provide for their businesses to grow, flourish and most importantly in these times: adapt.

Technology has always been a key influential factor on every business’ set-up, organisation and management. The retail industry, for example, underwent a full transformation from brick-and-mortar to digital omnichannel platforms. Primarily, technology drives trends and transformations, and the speed at which it is being driven is constantly increasing; catapulting us into what we call the Era of Turbulence, in which organisations feel the heat of outdated systems and are pressured into pivoting for a rapid digital transformation.

“In the Era of Turbulence the velocity of change in consumer behaviour and needs will continue to increase and businesses must be able to react. Recent history is littered with companies that failed to do so.”

8 driving factors forcing businesses to transform:

1. Democratisation of access
2. New business models
3. Distribution
4. Online computing
5. Personalisation
6. Decentralisation
7. Automation
8. New business cultures

Businesses need to rethink their internal organisation, architecture and the technologies to support it. Essentially, they need an architecture that is scalable in all directions, making sure continuity is manageable in this era of turbulence.

Traditionally, technological architectures are very robust, built with the intent of a long-lasting product with a somewhat fixated design. In this current era of turbulence, built architectures need to support ease of potential editing and adapting because of rapid transformations. Especially when it comes to customer-facing systems, an organisation needs to be ready to iterate, change and adapt to the shifting customer needs and demands.

It is our job to help businesses with this dichotomy between the robust, dependable and long-lasting technology in the hands of the CIO and the user-oriented layer of systems run by the CMO. As for some necessary solution when responding to turbulence ensued: start by studying consumer behaviour changes along with technological evolutions as well. We work to ensure you freedom of attaching and detaching services and solutions to help your users, without necessarily harming any existent infrastructure.

So to answer the ultimate question of “What’s the role of technology in business, master or slave?” Khalid’s answer is: neither.

In all honesty, technology is versatile enough to take both forms: master and slave. We position ourselves in the pilot seat to pivot it in the direction we desire, aiming for eventual business success. In this era of turbulence, our greatest driver is consumer need, and that’s only going to get more essential in this turbulent market.