Letswork — SME Case Study (UAE)

Letswork is the largest community in the UAE providing coworking spaces for consumers across the region. Established in 2018, with the company being completely supported and funded by EMAAR development, the brand aims to leverage various real estate facilities that are available in the country and transform them into strong coworking spaces in the region. The business model of the company is focused on developing partnerships with beautiful hotels, cafes, and other venues allowing professionals from across the country to work, innovate, meet, and provide them with multiple amenities. The choice of the company is based on the limited employees who form the company as well as the high turnover in revenue that the organization has been able to generate using various revenue streams that it has.

Letswork The focus of this case study is to evaluate how the company has been able to develop its base in the UAE market with minimal levels of investment involved, and how it has focused on building a strong community within the region that allows for constant professional growth and development in the region.

The mission of the company is to improve the facilities of working in teams and enhance the level of entrepreneurship and creativity that can be seen across professionals in the country. The current focus of the company is to be able to create an ecosystem of professional networking and interaction for various individuals across different industries, providing them with multiple opportunities of entrepreneurship, career development, and growth.

Vision Statement The vision of the company is to be able to revolutionize the coworking ecosystem in the country and to grow professionals into a large community. Based on the current scenario and the environment of a work-from- home (WFH) landscape, the aim of Letswork is to be able to provide its consumers with shared working spaces in a confident, vibrant, and safe environment.

Further, the focus of the company is to provide multiple networking and growth opportunities to allow for growth of different talents and professionals.

Organizational Structure

The company currently identifies itself as a part of the real estate industry of the country and was founded in

• The focus of the company presently is on being

able to provide an open and dynamic work process, as well as a framework that allows for operations to take place in the organization with the least level of micromanagement. Hence, the organization does not have a defined structure or departments within the company, given the elimination of hierarchy and presence of a low volume of employees. The company has been able to receive multiple benefits from the use of a less defined organizational structure, such as the ability to take quick decisions and be able to transform the various opportunities that are available to the company, such as leveraging the various expectations that the consumers, investors, or stakeholders have from the company.

Leadership Team Currently, the organization operates with a team of between 1-10 employees, which qualifies it in the category of an SME in Dubai. The owners of the company, Omar AlMheiri and Hamza Khan, launched the company in 2018 under the strong financial and strategic support that they received from the E25 Startup Program. The focus of the leadership team and its strategy has been to convert the various spaces available as strategic locations in Dubai into spaces for interaction, working, and meeting. Additionally, the leadership team also focuses on how a variety of membership options and packages can be provided to consumers during the changing environment. The leadership strategy or format that is followed by the company is that of the transformational and situational leadership, which helps ensure that the company can adapt to changing strategies and situations in the organization.

The offerings provided by the company are focused on delivering high-end services to the consumers in the form of seating spaces, locations, and amenities that allow it to work, interact, or meet with teams remain the core service of the company. Letswork provides a variety of coworking spaces, meeting rooms, and office spaces to consumers. The coworking spaces are accessible to the consumers either using a daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly pass based on a variety of prices that they are ready to pay, whereas the coworking spaces are available through individual packages.

Accessing meeting rooms and office spaces is often done through hourly rates that the company charges to the consumers across different locations and based on the number of people who would be occupying the space. Consumers are also able to access various facilities when they purchase the package provided by the company, such as unlimited check-ins in any Letswork location, reserved seating, free parking, offers on food and beverage purchases, unlimited beverages, access to various community events, and a membership card by Emaar (U by Emaar).

From a strategic perspective, the focus of the company and its plan of action is rather flexible and highly adaptive to the changing dynamics of the region, which allows the brand to be successful in providing its services and building a strong community of coworking professionals.

Based on these aspects, Letswork currently focuses on being able to create disruption in the market of coworking spaces and shared areas for teams to interact by building memberships and communities for them with more effective and necessary amenities that they can access. Hence, the company has been able to efficiently apply the focused differentiation strategy by providing a unique value to the consumers and being able to work in different kinds of environments with a set of amenities and ability to network with diverse professionals. The business strategy of the company is to be able to provide entrepreneurs, professionals, and small teams across the UAE with the ability to interact, innovate, and work together without being able to rent expensive offices or spaces for their SME. Various restaurants, hotels, cafes, or business centers that want to be a part of Letswork can directly register with the company website, which allows it to provide its services to a range of consumers.

The operation and the process through which the company provides various services to consumers is using a mobile application of Letswork based for members in the UAE. The company currently provides membership options to consumers wherein after purchasing packages, these individuals can work from any location that Letswork has partnered with. The company gains its revenue from the packages purchased by the consumers as well as pays its royalties and fees for partnership with restaurants, cafes, business centers, and hotels that are a part of the community. These partnering retail chains provide the relevant space, amenities, and other support to the consumer. The costs of operation for the company are low since the entire transaction, as well as customer support, is provided to the consumers using a mobile application. In addition to this, the company has a lower cost of operation since its operation strategy is focused on utilizing existing real estate assets in the location, as compared to its own assets of use for the services provided to consumers.

Marketing activities of Letswork are mostly undertaken using social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn to attract its target audience.

The marketing of the company helps to increase awareness about different locations that have become a part of the community. In addition to this, the marketing activities are also focused on communicating various consumer testimonials and experiences to allow for more confidence and trust in the brand. From the perspective of social media marketing, the focus of the company has been to highlight the experiences that members or consumers receive using live Stories and Highlights, which makes it easier for consumers to be reminded constantly about the brand and the value that it provides. Consumers are also made to engage with the brand using live quizzes, opinion polls, and ideas that they have on how the company can develop new locations and add to its existing community of members.

Along with this, the marketing activities of the company are highly focused on ensuring that there is a considerable level of partnerships and networking that the company develops with local and foreign companies within the region. Through this, the marketing and advertising strategy of the company is focused on building relationships with potential clients and its various employees who would be able to access the various facilities that are available to them provided by Letswork. Hence, the company is focused both on being able to enhance its social media marketing activities using online and digital marketing activities, as well as through personal marketing activities which helps it maintain a strong level of client relationships.

The major business challenge that the company currently is facing relates to how, because of COVID-19, various coworking spaces have been shut down because of government restrictions and the constant fear consumers have of being in public places. This has drastically impacted the level of revenue that the company gains on a yearly basis and the size of the community. In addition to this, the major challenge for the company relates to how, because of the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, it has become extremely difficult for the company to be able to provide the location for a variety of activities such as live events, seminars, conferences, demonstrations, and small-scale product launches that the brand was famous for in the region. These aspects indicate how the overall revenue of the company has massively declined and impacted the growth potential in the target market of the UAE.

Solutions Developed To enhance the revenue levels and deal with consumer fear of not accessing public co-working spaces, Letswork engaged in strong evaluation of the different locations that it partnered with to understand if it took the necessary precautions and environmental safety measures for visiting consumers. In addition to this, the company also ensured that it developed more flexible packages for its consumers to allow for increased participation within the Letswork community and to allow for exposure to a wider range of shared spaces.

Along with these aspects, Letswork has also added more spaces into its network to reduce the excessive dependence that consumers might have to work in a specific region. Through the expansion of various other spaces added to the membership and to the network, the company has been able to grow its members as well as provide them with the unique experience of working from a variety of cafes. Through the consistent efforts, the brand has also been able to resume a considerable level of networking events and activities such as seminars and conferences, with most of these events focused on providing remote access to consumers or restricting the number of participants with strict precautionary measures at all Letswork locations and events.

Successful Practices The most successful practice of the company relates to how it offered discounts and promotions to consumers along with weekly, monthly, as well as quarterly packages which made it affordable for consumers to work at coworking spaces. The cost that it paid for these packages was lower than the prices that it would have paid if it worked from any café or restaurant which was not a part of the Letswork coworking space community.

In addition to this, the company was also able to succeed in the UAE market since it partnered with real estate facilities that were underutilized and created earning streams for them as well.

Another integral aspect of why the company was able to succeed relates to how the value and the benefits provided by the company were not only meant for a specific set of audience, but were accessible and affordable by a range of consumers such as students, freelance professionals, coaches, trainers, education providers, entrepreneurs, and creative teams who require different environment amenities and quality of space to deploy their talents and grow. The business model which was suitable to a diverse range of audiences across various demographic and psychographic platforms allowed for the company to be successful in its growth.

Although the company has highly succeeded in the current business model that it has, a major scope of improvement that is present relates to how its pricing strategy when it comes to booking coworking spaces for teams is rather restricted and inflexible based on the demand that the company faces. Further, the company only has a limited number of locations where it provides services to consumers with most of them being cafes and restaurants. This restricts the ability of the consumers to access other amenities such as desktops, printers, or digital resources for work, which are often available when individuals choose business centres or professional coworking spaces to work in.

Present Situation Analysis Presently, the use of Letswork coworking space has highly increased in the current environment, wherein as more consumers work from home or indulge highly in freelance tasks, they find it more appealing, profitable, and comforting to work from a coworking space. The various factors that can be attributed to the success of the company relate to the need for increased networking and employment opportunities, exposure to people from different industries, and departments when working with different individuals. Additionally, across the UAE market, as more teams find it difficult to cover the operational costs during the current market dynamics, utilizing services provided by Letswork such as coworking spaces, meeting rooms, or even office spaces, it becomes more affordable for these small and medium sized companies to continue their business operations. Among these aspects, one integral factor of the present situation relates to how despite companies and smaller teams wish to work together to allow for a high level of interaction, they still face a variety of restrictions and challenges due to limited capacity in restaurants and cafes, which is bound to have an overall impact on the business of Letswork.

Conclusion and Recommendations The focus of the report has been on providing a considerable level of analysis on a prominent small business in the UAE aimed at providing the benefits of coworking space to professionals in the country, in a highly defined and qualitative manner for the prices that they pay to access these locations. Based on the analysis and evaluation of the company in the case study, an integral recommendation relates to how the company needs to ensure that it develops the use of its assets in a more efficient manner, providing various virtual events to consumers and members of the company. For instance, Letswork locations that are most used by students and educational professionals could be provided with virtual events and workshops that are focused on specific study subjects or industries that would allow them to be intrigued to join and work in the specific location. Another example of this is how locations where freelancers work could be provided with creative workshops on how they can develop professional networks and enhance their overall talent portrayal. These suggestions and ensuring that the locations by the brand are rather focused on different audience segments would help ensure that the consumer loyalty is maintained and that the perception that they have about the brand understanding and providing to their various needs is strongly heightened.

One of the crucial lessons that can be learned from the business model is how rather than investing a considerable size of capital, both in the form of physical, financial, and human resources, small and medium size entrepreneurs need to identify and evaluate how they can utilize the existing resources within the market to build collective revenue streams. In addition to this, another crucial lesson learned and implemented from the case of Letswork relates to how companies in the initial startup stage can build a strong and efficient business model through building partnerships with existing brands and other successful business setups in the country, which would provide them with a strong exposure. Furthermore, among the various findings of the study, it can also be seen how using a more flexible and less restricted organizational structure for the company, it is easier for it to be able to respond to changes in the environment and demonstrate higher levels of efficiency. The major lessons learned from the case study are linked to efficient utilization of assets and understanding consumer needs to provide them with shared value and resources.