Oracle wins CRM deal with Jafza

Jebel Ali Free Zone (JAFZA) has deployed Oracle's E-Business Suite in a bid to improve its customer service offering and achieve greater operational efficiency.

The free zone, which is located in the Jebel Ali area of Dubai, said the customer relationship management (CRM) solution would enable it to significantly enhance its customer service experience and boost the number of services that is it able to offer online.

"We needed a solution that could scale with our growth and be flexible in adapting to varied requirements of the different economic zones and logistics and industrial parks in our portfolio, while enabling a consistent business process model," Salma Hareb, CEO, Jafra and Economic Zones World commented on the implementation.

"Oracle's ability to meet our requirements efficiently made us choose this solution," she added.

Jafza expects to achieve a 300% return on investment from the implementation within a couple of years, Hareb told ITP.net.Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Almost 90% of Jafza's customer services are now online, with the other 10% expected to go online over the next year, Hareb said.

Oracle said the implementation with Jafza was probably one of the most advanced integrations it has done in the region.

"Jafza is transforming itself to meet increasing customer demands and economic pressures to be more responsive, efficient and competitive," Sergio Giacoletto, executive vice president, Oracle, EMEA said.

Owned by investment company Dubai World, Jebel Ali Free Zone is one of the largest business hubs in the Middle East housing approximately 6,000 companies from 120 countries across the world.

Teo Chin Seng, group CIO of Dubai World, said that the Oracle implementation provided a strategic piece of its technology solution, enabling consistent business processes across diverse business units.

"Jafza's business model requires a seamless flow of information across financial, property management, customer relationship and human capital functions," he said. "We have used components across the Oracle E-Business Suite that are pre-integrated, allowing us to deploy a configurable workflow based process model," he added.

The free zone began implenting Oracle's E-Business Suite in 2005 with the final phase of the implementation taking place in fall this year.