About YBA Kanoo Group
YBA Kanoo Group is one of the largest independent, family-owned groups of companies in the Gulf region with business activities across the world’s most dynamic industries including Shipping, Travel, Holidays, Machinery, Oil & Gas, Power & Industrial Projects. In 2021 Kanoo used the Voxxify platform to measure and understand IT user experience across the group, providing a critical business metric for their ambitious digital transformation initiative.
Video Testimonial
The Opportunity
The 131-year-old business conglomerate is adapting to a constantly evolving environment, with the family ushering in change internally as they diversify its reach into new areas, with a particular emphasis on technology. YBA Kanoo Group Chairman Khalid Mohamed Kanoo said:
“Our strategic investment in digital transformation will underpin our focus on empowering our employees to deliver excellent customer service and support regional economic visions to 2030 and beyond.”
In early 2021 Tom O’Reilly was brought in as Group CTO, tasked with overseeing the company’s ambitious digital transformation initiative. Being new to the group, the first challenge for O’Reilly was to get a full understanding of how IT was performing. O’Reilly shared:
“Gathering feedback from end users across the different businesses was a major challenge as there are so many touchpoints, and most of the information I could access was very general. I needed a solution that would quickly identify where specifically we have issues, not just in a general sense, but pinpointed by office, city and country.”
Anas Kamaluddin, Head of Group IT added:
“We had started doing some very basic surveys developed in-house using different tools, but they were not mature enough. They created a lot of overheads for the IT team to capture, analyze and then digest the information, taking up valuable time and relying on a lot of guesswork.”
Why YBA Kanoo Group chose Voxxify
Voxxify’s experience measurement tool offered a powerful alternative to other available methods. Once the survey was complete, machine learning analytics generated insights within minutes, enabling the team to quickly validate assumptions and prioritize initiatives. Importantly, the geographic drill-down of the data highlighted where to focus regional efforts.
The intuitive design secured a high response rate (60% of employees), ensuring the insights were reliable, providing unbiased data they could trust. For O’Reilly, Voxxify was instrumental not only in baselining, but also in providing the “missing metric” of IT Experience for measuring future progress:
“We are moving the conversation towards IT delivering greater business value. How effective we can be at enabling end users is going to be a critical piece of the puzzle, and Voxxify is going to empower me to measure the progress and provide proof of value for key stakeholders in the business.”
Business Benefits
Using Voxxify, the group‘s new CTO was able to generate a valuable baseline against which he can measure the progress of further change and quickly identify digital blindspots and emerging issues. He also made the dashboard available to IT managers across the organization, empowering them with the data they needed to shape and drive action plans.
Drill-down by division & location: The drill-down by division and by location enabled the team to track the performance of all IT services across different parts of the business. For example, the helpdesk performed very well across all countries; while one region experienced persistent bandwidth issues.
Business case for investment: The data and insights provided important evidence to demonstrate the business rationale for targeted investment. Kamaluddin outlined:
“So now we have the proof in a report that we can take to management detailing the highest priority issues that we need to address now to avoid business impact. It has really helped us focus.”
Data-driven prioritization: Voxxify’s Influence Score made it clear what should be prioritized for investment. For example, the team learned they had exceeded their original objectives for the IT service desk, enabling them to move their investment focus to updating legacy business applications and upgrading the network in some locations.
Employee engagement: The process helped strengthen IT’s relationship with staff by showing that their opinion is valued and they are listened to. O’Reilly shared:
“Another key benefit for me was employee engagement – seeking the opinion of every end user helped bring everybody along and buy-in to the process. The survey was really well received”.
Team alignment: A further, unexpected benefit for the company was the power of unbiased impartial data to align team members:
“Having insights based on end user experience provided by a trusted third party helped build consensus, allowing us to formulate action plans and move forward together. It put everyone into alignment as a team,” Eman Al Bustani, IT Project Manager, explained.
Summary
Compared to any other methods available, Voxxify delivered results much more quickly, with great clarity.
“The tool itself is intuitive,” said Kamaluddin. “The questions were pinpointed and it gave us clear, accurate results. It was perfect.”
As a new member of the management team, O’Reilly needed a quick, impartial way to understand how IT was performing across the group, with drill-down by division, location and by service. Voxxify delivered this, and more:
“Voxxify gave me that information that I need today, much more quickly, much more easily than I could have done myself through any other methods.”
Today, O’Reilly uses the Voxxify dashboard every day to help communicate to key stakeholders how IT is performing across different parts of the business.
“It’s a really powerful tool. The dashboard provides a comprehensive overview of the performance of IT across multiple regions, aligning both IT and management on areas to prioritize.”
As IT moves towards delivering greater business value empowering a distributed workforce, O’Reilly notes that Voxxify will be “a critical piece of the puzzle” for the group’s digital transformation.
