Ahdaaf Sports Club — SME Case Study (UAE)

Ahdaaf Sports Club AHDAAF Figure 6: The Ahdaaf Logo

Ahdaaf Sports Club is a Dubai-based pitch rental and sports center that was formed in 2008 under the institution of HH Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid for small and medium enterprises (SME) development.

Ahdaaf’s concept is that it is a one stop shop that includes everything related to sports whether it is football, cricket, or batting net.

Ahdaaf Sports Club The main aim or objective of starting the concept of Ahdaaf Sport Center was the innovative idea of Yousef Alhashimi, an Emirati local entrepreneur who wanted to promote the healthy lifestyle amongst youth and all ages in the United Arab Emirates as a whole, and specifically, in Dubai. AlHashimi is trying to build the bridge between different communities through sports as the United Arab Emirates is a diverse country with over 200 nationalities living and working within the United Arab Emirates and sports is a way of bridging the gap between those communities while it is also known that sports unite people and bring them together.

This case study is based on gathering information through an interview with Ahmad Sanyo, a branch manager and football coach at Ahdaaf Sports Center.

Ahdaaf’s

Ahdaaf Sport Club’s mission statement is to promote a healthy lifestyle and close the gap between different communities while encouraging the youth in Dubai to participate and engage in sports.

Ahdaaf’s Vision Ahdaaf Sports Club’s vision statement has always been “believing in giving back to the community is crucial, we aim to raise health awareness on a local and global level while promoting a healthy lifestyle through the journey.” Ahdaaf’s Organizational Structure The organizational structure of Ahdaaf Sports Club, located in Al Quoz, Dubai, consists of the CEO Wael Jabir, who is the founder and chief executive officer.

Under him is Ibrahim Kaleel, the senior manager of finance and operations who is in charge of the operational aspect and the financial aspect of Ahdaaf Sports Club. The receptionist is Carlbert Carpio, who is in charge of arranging meetings with the management of the SME. The rest of the organizational structure consists of five employees who are in charge of coaching in the Ahdaaf Academy in all six branches, as well as 15 employees who are in charge of booking the pitches and answering phone calls in all the branches. Last but not least, there are developers and accountants who are in charge of the Malaeb application founded by Ahdaaf, where customers get to book pitches through the application.

Ushers 15 Employees Coaches 5 Employees Receptionist Mr. Carlbert Carpio CEO Mr. Wael Jabir Senior Manager Mr. Ibrahim Kaleel Application Developer 2 Developers Figure 7: Organizational Structure of Ahdaaf Ahdaaf Leadership and Team Ahdaaf’s leadership and team consists of the founder, Alhashimi, who started the company along with Anas Abu Khash, another Emirati local entrepreneur, back in 2008. They are the guys who are in charge of the innovative idea of being the first rental football pitch in the United Arab Emirates. The team of Ahdaaf Sports Club consists of 22 employees who are distributed among six branches, five of which are in Dubai and one that recently opened in the capital, Abu Dhabi.

The team consists of ushers and coaches who are in charge of the operational aspects of the company and in the pitches themselves.

Ahdaaf’s Restructure During the interview with Sanyo, he stated that Ahdaaf Sports Club has had a set of unfortunate events during the current outbreak of the coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, due to the freezing of all sport activities during the country’s lockdown back in March 2020.

This led the company to shut down for around five months, which gave the company a hard time trying to cope with all the rules set by the government of the United Arab Emirates in order to re-open the pitches and club after the pandemic. The restructure during the pandemic’s main marketing stunt was providing students with discounts upon booking pitches of Ahdaaf when it reopened.

Moreover, the restructure of Ahdaaf Sports Club after the pandemic saw a huge set of events and promotions in order to encourage customers to go back to the healthy lifestyle after the lockdown was erased, events such as tournaments with strict guidelines and precaution measures for the safety of the customers.

Due to the outbreak, Ahdaaf Sports Club had to have a sanitization campaign on all six branches while also having to set marks for social distancing and following measures, such as temperature checks upon entry, while also following the guidelines and rules of the United Arab Emirates, such as having to wear masks, which is a mandatory thing to do in order to keep up and have profits up to how it was before the pandemic.

Ahdaaf’s Product Description As it was mentioned in the introduction, Ahdaaf is a concept of pitch rentals that is provided to all ages and nationalities that live on the ground of the United Arab Emirates. Ahdaaf has a list of products and services that it provides through six branches across Dubai and

Abu Dhabi

¡ Hourly pitch rentals: Where customers get the option of booking the football, batting net, and cricket fields.

¡ Football Academy: Where customers get to participate in getting football, batting net, and cricket lessons by certified coaches.

¡ Sports events: Ahdaaf provides organizing creative sports events such as birthday parties with a sports theme.

¡ Team building programs: Where people get to communicate and connect through sports and create a friendly sports community in a healthy environment.

¡ Sports Tournaments: Ahdaaf Sports Club hosts and organizes tournaments for players around the UAE to engage in a challenging environment and get the best out of individuals and teams.

Business Strategies of Ahdaaf Corporate Social Responsibility Customer based Organization Setting Objectives Analysing Competitors

Figure 8: Business Strategies of Ahdaaf Sports Club The business strategies of Ahdaaf Sports Club consist of following a corporate social responsibility process which relates to an unprofitable business that cares and that is socially responsible and accountable. Ahdaaf believes in giving back to the society and by following corporate social responsibility, Ahdaaf has a strong organizational structure and is socially responsible by hosting events to give back to the community. Setting objectives is a part of the organizational and business strategies where Ahdaaf tries its best to ensure setting goals and tasks. Since Ahdaaf is the first pitch rental place, the competition and the innovative aspect of competitors who provide the same service has been changed since 2008, so analyzing competitors and keeping up with them has to be in the business strategy of Ahdaaf Sports Club. The last business strategy is corporate social responsibility, with Ahdaaf’s main aim to create a healthy lifestyle that relates to customers who are willing to be a part of the club.

Operational Strategies of Ahdaaf Monitoring Systems Time Management Setting Goals and Objectives Team Meetings

Figure 9: Ahdaaf’s Operational Strategies The operational strategies of Ahdaaf relate to all the operational aspects of conducting everyday services such as pitch rentals, where time management is the main and most important aspect of Ahdaaf. Services need to be provided in a timely manner in order to gain customer satisfaction, and since booking pitches require setting a time for the booking, customers need to be on time since other customers might book the next hour and it really relies on both the customers and employees in order to receive customer satisfaction where both need to stick to the timing. Monitoring systems such as cameras and quality measures is a part of the operational strategy that Ahdaaf uses on a daily basis, and Ahdaaf ensures the safety of employees and customers while also maintaining quality control measures.

Setting objectives is also an important part of the operation strategies where setting goals of expansion has always been a part of the Ahdaaf Sports Club strategy.

Marketing Strategies of Ahdaaf The marketing strategy of Ahdaaf is something that the company built throughout the 13 years of operating in Dubai, where it consists mainly of word-of-mouth while also using technologies and following trends on social media. As for promotion and advertising, Ahdaaf uses billboards and visual marketing strategies to gain customer outreach. Moreover, marketing through the main website of the business alongside email marketing is something that Ahdaaf specializes in.

E-mail Marketing Promotion & Advertising Website Social Media

Figure 10: Marketing Strategies of Ahdaaf

The business challenges that face Ahdaaf are always due to poor time management of customers, said Ahmad Sanyo, a branch manager of Ahdaaf, where the challenge is set to compensate time for the next booking, which leads to the conclusion that time management of both customers and employees is something that is taken very seriously at Ahdaaf Sports Club.

Moreover, the current situation with the pandemic is by far one of the difficult challenges that the SME faced, when the company faced a full lockdown on all the branches and pitches for about five months, which led the company to recalculate and take risk management more seriously.

Some additional challenge that Ahdaaf Sports Club

faces

¡ Competitors ¡ Innovation ¡ Keeping up with business trends ¡ Keeping up with sports trends ¡ Expansion in strategic locations ¡ Maintaining customer satisfaction ¡ Time management ¡ Exceeding customers’ expectations ¡ Sticking to corporate social responsibility

There has been a lot of ups and downs that the company went through with over 12 years of operating in the UAE, as with every other company that operates in the UAE. Ahdaaf considers its failures as a learning experience since there were a lot of huge companies that were willing to cooperate and conduct sport events hosted by Ahdaaf, but some of them just did not work out. Sanyo states that every unfinished deal or an error regarding business deals is a learning experience for Ahdaaf where it will respect all clients and strive to be the one stop for everyone who lives in the UAE as a respectable sport business.

Successful Practices Ahdaaf Sports Club is a company that strives for success in the sport service industry, and it has a reputation of hosting events that serve the community in the United Arab Emirates.

One of the most successful events and programs that

Ahdaaf Sports Club hosted were

¡ World Cup football tournament ¡ Nike football tournament ¡ Alhemam Institute Cubs ¡ Diego Maradona Corporate Cup ¡ ENBD Little Feet Program ¡ Axiom Telecom School football tournament Figure 11: Events on the company website

As the first indoor sporting facility in the UAE, there were no competing companies in 2008 since it was an innovative and new idea where Ahdaaf’s strategy struck the sporting industry in the United Arab Emirates. However, compare the company when it first started with one branch to expanding to six branches.

As for competition, as it was mentioned Ahdaaf’s concept was unique, which led other companies to take the idea and become competitors to Ahdaaf. In recent years, as Sanyo mentions in the interview, “We came a long way and we executed all the challenges that faced us.” Recommendation and Analysis To sum up everything that has been stated so far, Ahdaaf Sports Club is a great example of a highly growing small business enterprise in the United Arab Emirates that has its print on the sports activity field and market since 2008. However, from my personal observation and research, the company has a clear vision and mission that the company has been working on for 12 years, which proves that the company did proper research and has a clear and valuable business plan. The organizational structure was unclear since the company has different organizational structures for each branch, which is understandable to some extent, however the company needs to provide a hierarchical structure that is standardized among all branches. A recommendation to Ahdaaf Sports Club is to provide a human resource management department and a risk management department since the company seems to not have those departments. Also the risk management department seems to take over all the growing businesses in the UAE after the outbreak of the recent virus.

An analysis that I analyzed from Ahdaaf Sports Center is that the service and product description is too narrow since the company specializes in providing pitches of football, batting nets, and cricket, so it is clear to say that the popularity of other sports such as paddle and basketball in the UAE is high, which leaves me to recommend the company to provide pitches for these sports to enlarge and target more customers and involve in more sporting activities and leaves room for more events and tournaments.

¡ Ahdaaf Sports Club is a sporting facility that is willing to conquer the sporting facility market in the United Arab Emirates.

¡ Ahdaaf has welcoming and well-trained staff.

¡ Ahdaaf Sports Club has a clear vision and mission.

¡ As an SME in the United Arab Emirates, companies need to be prepared for fair competition.

¡ Ahdaaf’s setting objectives strategy gives it a head start to calculate risks.

¡ As a successful leader, uncertainty about the future is a factor that needs to be compensated by being well-prepared.

¡ The change in trends in the current market requires being able to follow up with the trends as an organization.

¡ Teamwork is a strategy that sets a successful organization from a non-successful organization.

¡ Without competition, organizations will never be able to be different and have a competitive advantage.

In conclusion, Ahdaaf Sports Club is an independent, Dubai-based SME that provides events and sporting facilities for rent, which sets it as the first company that was innovative in Dubai to set up an indoor sport facility provided for the community.

The main purpose of the company is to bring people together through sport, and as a customer to the business, I have spent many hours as a kid playing in the pitches that Ahdaaf provides, while also participating in tournaments that were well-organized, which leads me to the conclusion that Ahdaaf Sports Club is a reputable company in the UAE, since it is a customer and community-based company.

The company has strong marketing, operational, and business strategies with a clear vision and mission that give it the competitive advantage against competition while having a brand name that is well-known among the youth living in Dubai and the UAE as a whole.