Taj Al Bustan Technical Services LLC — SME Case Study (UAE)

Taj Al Bustan Technical Services was founded as a small enterprise in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in April 2015 by Hassan Ali Mohammed. He is an ambitious Pakistani national but has years of technical work experience in the UAE. Taj Al Bustan provides glass fixing services to newly constructed buildings and offices, including repair services in old buildings and offices. Previously, Hassan was working in a construction company on a salary of AED 3000/month and used to send all this money back to his home to support his family. Later, his salary increased to AED 5000 within the first few years of his work, but it seemed there was no chance of further increment. Hassan Ali Mohammed is an ambitious person and he realized he has much experience in construction, so he started his own construction company. Due to lack Taj Al Bustan Technical Services LLC of funds, the construction company became a dream, but he started providing technical services to other construction companies. In his first company, he provided skilled labor and material to build support structures for new construction sites. This was not a common idea at that time but useful. Hence, the enterprise became a success. Taj Al Bustan was his second venture, looking at the success of his first company and profit ratio.

Hassan discarded the idea of investing in a construction company as competition was already high. He founded Taj Al Bustan Technical Services LLC to provide further services to construction and architect businesses in Dubai.

A company which started with only five staff members has now grown to 15 employees and is expecting further growth in the coming years (Taj Al Bustan, 2020).

Mission To provide the work of honesty and help others achieve their goals.

Vision To become the first and most recognized technical service provider in UAE so that technical people behind large constructions can get recognition of their service.

Organizational Structure

¡ CEO/Founder: Hassan Ali Mohammed ¡ Manager/Glass fixing Expert: 1 ¡ Technical officer/ Glass Fixing expert: 1 ¡ Office Administrator: 1 ¡ Accountant: 1 ¡ Marketing and sales: 2

¡ Driver

¡ Purchase Officer: 1 ¡ Junior technicians: 8

CEO/Founder Manager Technical Officer

Driver Driver Office Administrator Marketing and Sales Junior Technician Figure 1: Company Structure Hassan Ali Mohammed is the founder of Taj Al Bustan Technical Services LLC. He is from Pakistan and has more than 20 years of experience in the UAE. His first profession was a supervisor in a construction company. He earned his first salary of AED 2,000 and highest salary of AED 5,000. He is well aware that the hardest work usually comes from the lower level staff in most construction companies, and that they are usually not getting a high salary. This was the main reason he wanted to start his own business. His first company was to provide initial support material and labor to construction companies.

After being successful in that business by looking at the profit ratio, Hassan decided to open another company offering technical services. He then chose to offer glass installation, glass replacement, and repairing for glass doors, windows, walls, etc.

Though Hassan is leading his company, he selected some other staff capable of good leadership to support him in the success of his business. Jamal is a glass fixing expert, and is also the supervisor or manager of the whole organization. He makes decisions in the absence of Mr. Hassan and was with Taj Al Bustan from the very beginning. Due to his smooth and clever work, dedication towards the job, and having leadership qualities and characteristics, Hassan appointed him to supervise the company.

In order to lead the company in a good direction and to motivate employees to contribute in the success of the organization, it is important to have a suitable leadership style implemented within the organization. There are six leadership styles considered primary in management

and they are following

¡ Autocratic

Autocratic leadership style is not much different to that of autocratic government, where only one person will be responsible for decision making and his rules will be accepted.

¡ Authoritative

This style of leadership is also called visionary leadership, which is having confidence and can make decisions about the future.

¡ Pacesetting

Pacesetters are those leaders who extend their help and motivation toward their followers.

¡ Democratic

Democratic leaders tend to be supportive and innovative because they prefer the ideas of their followers.

¡ Coaching

These leaders have special qualities to become the coaches of their team.

¡ Affiliative

This style of leadership is considered opposite to that of autocratic because it empowers the employees and followers. (Kleefstra, 2019) Which Leadership Style Are You?

Autocratic Visionary Affiliative Democratic Pace- setting Coaching Figure 2: Leadership Style Chart Looking at the specifications of each leadership style, it is said that Taj Al Bustan Technical Services LLC has mixed leadership styles of authoritative and coaching, because the ultimate hold on the organization is of its owners but they are also working to coach their employees and provide them chances to get stronger.

The company initially was composed of five staff members, but with increase in their contracts, the employee base was extended to 18 before COVID-19.

Looking at the growth ratio of orders, the management decided to expand the business and to take it to another level by hiring more employees and adding new extensions to the business. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic distubed their plans. Instead of increasing the staff based on their contracts, they had to eliminate some of the employees. One of the junior technicians and one technical officer left their jobs and were sent back to their country. This is the reason that the current number of employees turned to 16 instead of 18.

Taj Al Bustan is a service-based company which offers services like fixing glass work in offices, homes, villas, and in under construction buildings. The following is the list

of services offered by Taj Al Bustan Technical Services

¡ Windows glass fixing and installation ¡ Installation of glass doors ¡ Installation of glass walls ¡ Repairing of all glass work ¡ Cleaning of glass windows, doors, and glass material fitted outside the buildings for the purpose of decoration.

The following are the business strategies deployed by Taj Al Bustan Technical Services LLC.

¡ Differentiation Differentiation is when a company finds unique ways to win from the industry competition, especially paying attention toward those values appreciated by customers.

Taj Al Bustan is in this regard creating the difference in

following ways

o By achieving maximum customer satisfaction o By offering high quality of services o By being available after sale services.

¡ Focused Low Cost Strategy In this strategy, businesses try to attract customers by offering lower costs than the market and from competitors. Taj Al Bustan is also lowering its costs looking at the needs and wants of the job assigned.

(Yuliansyah et al., 2017)

Business Strategy Maximum customer satisfaction High quality of services By being available after sale services Differentiation Focused Low Cost Figure 3: Mission/Vision of Taj Al Bustan

The operational strategy of Taj Al Bustan is derived from its vision and mission statement.

¡ The business focuses on hard work along with smart approaches but of high quality ¡ The ultimate purpose is to achieve customer satisfaction ¡ To give recognition to its technical staff ¡ To emerge as the biggest technical service provider in the region.

Today in the world of competition, businesses struggle to reach their audience. Thus it is necessary to have the best and most suitable marketing strategies to help reach towards customers. The following are marketing strategies Taj Al Bustan Technical services employs to enhance the reach of their business.

o

Online Marketing

They are currently using online marketing including email, website platform, and social media marketing to reach maximum customers.

o Direct Marketing The marketing department of the company is also using direct marketing to reach out customers by approaching them in person.

o Targeting marketing The company is also using target marketing for government and multinational organizations because they have expertise and capabilities.

o Word-of-Mouth marketing The first marketing strategy which has proven to be most effective for Taj Al Bustan Technical services is word-of- mouth marketing. (Zinkhan & Pereira, 1994) Online marketing Direct marketing Word of mouth marketing Target marketing Figure 4: Types of Marketing for Taj Al Bustan

The UAE is a developing country and it is providing ease to the new investors, but still there are many complications to starting a new business and maintaining that business. Taj Al Bustan has gone through a series of legal troubles and governmental requirements. The first was to find a local partner to sponsor the business because in the UAE, especially in those times, it was next to impossible to open a business without the sponsoring a local partner. Currently, things have changed and there are more opportunities to open a fully owned business in free zones, but those businesses also have some limitations set on them. Finding a local partner is not an easy task due to the fact that a business owner has an investment while the local partner does not, instead charging some amount to be the partner. In that case, the partner will not share any responsibility or risks.

Without proper cooperation, business will sooner or later become a failure rather than a success. To overcome this challenge, there were a series of requirements by the municipality and Dubai government. In order to meet those requirements, the budget to invest in the business became short of cash with no budget. Since the business was a small enterprise, banks were not providing them with the loans needed to meet the requirements.

¡ There is no way to overcome the problem of finding a local partner. The investor had no other option if the company is an LLC. So the founder of Taj Al Bustan also struggled to find a local partner who is reliable and cooperative.

¡ In order to solve the finance problem, the founder had to sell some of his property in his home country to start the business.

¡ Once his company started earning profit, he hired more employees.

The founder and CEO of the organization is already having good and high experience in this business, thus in order to make Taj Al Bustan Technical Services a successful enterprise, he followed some of the points mentioned below to best practice his business.

¡ He let the workers get involved in the success of the company by offering a certain percentage on each completed task.

¡ Staying committed was another best practice of this business, so once they made the deal although it was not favorable to the company, they tried to finish it just to stay committed.

¡ Always looking for the satisfaction of their customers and not working in a hurry just to get the task done, it should be done with efficiency.

¡ Even in their marketing, they stayed clear to target the audience.

No successful business is prone to failure. Similarly, Taj Al Bustan also faced failures. In the beginning, the marketing was a big failure where it was becoming hard to get projects because big competitors are available in the market. But then with hard work, dedication, and honesty the new contracts started to open and tended to increase with time.

In the beginning the company had an HR officer which also turned out to be a failure for two reasons. The first reason is that the expenses of the company were increasing and the second one is that the productivity of employees was decreasing. Currently the owner is hiring new staff with help of his administration officer.

Taj Al Bustan Company’s success can be determined by the fact that it faced the tough time of COVID-19 with resistance, but managed not to eliminate or shed any of its existing employees regardless of the two employees that left for personal reasons. Due to the increase in the unemployment rate and with the presence of the pandemic, it can be said that the business has a bright future in the long run. Currently, Taj Al Bustan is employing 18 people and is seeking to increase their number by the end of 2021. The company is currently earning a revenue of AED 2 million per year.

It is difficult for small businesses on a longer term because they are always short on funds. But Taj Al Bustan is a good example of a successful small business where the management worked with dedication and is now enjoying the fruit and outcome of hard work. However, for further success, it is recommended to apply for a loan from banks and to recognize the company on a higher level. It is also recommended to develop leadership skills in all the staff members even if they are of junior scale because with experience they will grow and set examples for newcomers. Finally, it is recommended that the company should use online means to show their presence and to reach a larger audience, because this is the time of technology and people are looking for easy ways to find services needed.

Taj Al Bustan was a small sized company which turned into medium size over a few years of hard work. Its case study gives various lessons to learn which can help turn a small business into a success. The following are some

of them

¡ Never get discouraged from problems ¡ Find the solution for each problem and never leave it unattended ¡ Work hard and with honesty then wait for reward ¡ Continuous struggle is one way of success ¡ Always listen to customers and try at maximum to satisfy them

Taj Al Bustan Technical Services was founded as a small enterprise in Dubai, United Arab Emirates in April 2015 by Hassan Ali Mohammed. He is an ambitious Pakistani national but has years of technical work experience in the UAE. Taj Al Bustan LLC provides glass fixing services to newly constructed buildings and offices including their repairing services in old buildings and offices. Started in 2015 with five employees, Taj Al Bustan Technical Services currently employs 18 people and is sure for further success in upcoming years. The company works with dedication, hard work, and always finds satisfaction in customers. With all these struggles, it is earning currently AED 2 million per year as revenue. Taj Al Bustan Technical Services LLC is a great example of a successful small business.