Meet 1 : Assignment on Mashaweer Case Study

GROUP 2

CASE STUDY: MASHAWEER

Case Summary

Mashaweer is the first personal service company in Egypt. They are purely dedicated to saving its client’s time and effort acting as personal assistant 24 hours a day. They most common service they provide is buying groceries or other goods from store, paying bills, and acting as a courier. The idea of Mashaweer was created by Mohamed Wahid, Ahmed El Kordy and Aly El Shazly. Since starting the company in Alexandria in 2010, Mashaweer has since expanded to Cairo and operates around 600 orders per day. To place an order customers call the Mashaweer hotline and within minutes, they are at ease knowing that they have someone paying bills or picking up groceries on their behalf. Mashaweer’s success relies heavily on its flexibility, as it fulfils even the most a typical client request. Mashaweer serves individuals and business in both Alexandria and Cairo. Mashaweer’s investment in its technological infrastructure enables the company to deliver a high-quality experience to each customer from the placement of an order through its delivery. The technological infrastructure will also enable Mashaweer to scale both within Egypt and in the middle East.  

 They plan to expand even further geographically within Egypt and to other countries in the region as well as enhancing and increasing the services they provide. Mashaweer’s future strategy is provide their online supermarket that will enable people to do their grocery shopping through Mashaweer’s website and get it delivered by its representatives within 30 minutes of placing the order. Mashaweer also plan to offer advertising services including recorded messages played during call centre wait times.

Case Study Questions

   1.  What Kinds of applications are described in this case? What business functions do they support?

As Mashaweer planned to expand their services with full force so that there would be a high barrier of entry for any competitor they decided that their competitive advantage would to have to be in investing in Technology. 

A. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

At first they wanted to get an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system but the cost is too high. ERP systems are integrated enterprise-wide standard information systems that automate all aspect of an organization’s business process. An ERP systems that enables a company to manage the efficient use of its Resource. Among the most important ERP attributes are the ability to:

• Automated and integrated the majority of an organization’s business process including production planning, cosy and development, sales and marketing, manufacturing, inventory management and shipping and payment.
• Share common data and practices across the entire enterprise
•  Produce and asses information in real-time environment

Since the cost of ERP to too high, then started their own information technology   company, Innov8 (innovate), where they created a customized ERP System, which     they then connected to their customized PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) through a cloud computing system that was made by LinkDotNet and Mobinil. Each rider receives tasks one at a time on the PDA, which also includes a GPS to provide             detailed directions.

    B.     CISCO 

To reduce cost and ensure quality, Mashaweer does not rely on outsourcing in any of its stages as long as it can do the work with the same or better quality. One further example of Mashaweeer’s in house capabilities is its call center. The company investing in an innovative contact center and using CISCO, which supports up to 3001P phones, a reporting module and a module and a recording system made it much easier for Mashaweer to track its received calls and work on any problem that might face its customer service agents. Mashaweer call center is expected to make up an important revenue stream for the company as their sales and marketing strategy.

   C.    Mashaweer’s Server

Another software components developed by Innov8 include the Mashaweer Server. The Mashaweer Server is a centralized application that manages the following  elements:

•  Orders (Placement, editing, pricing, review, tracking and reports) 
•  Routes management and optimization
•  Clients (Management, reports, discounts)
•  Packages tracking
• Contracts
• Call Center
•  Satellite offices 
•   Representatives
•  Cash transactions and expenses tracking or representatives and satellite offices
• Asset tracking and satellite offices
•  Asset tracking of vehicles, PDAs and mobile printers 
•   Management reports.

    D.    Application Programmers’ Interface (API)           

The Application Programmers’ Interface (API) is a set of programming instructions and standards for accessing a web-based software application or web tool. A software company releases its API to the public so that other software developers can design products that are powered by its service. The API is a method of integrating Mashaweer ordering system with third parties. This allows third parties to automate their delivery system and integrate Mashaweer into their existing CRM/dispatching systems, opening a wide opportunity for business expansion. For example, Mashaweer released its API so that other software developers could more easily access Mashaweer’s products information. Using the Mashaweer’s API, a third party web site can post direct links to Mashaweer products with updated price.

    E.     SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition)

SCADA is a category of software application program for process control, the gathering of data in real time from remote locations in order to control equipment and condition. SCADA is used in power plants, as well as in oil and gas refining, telecommunications, transportation, and water and waste control.

SCADA system presented on a big screen will be available at Mashaweer headquarters to monitor all live orders and measure the traffic in case of rush hours, thus enabling the operation team to react and try a preventive and corrective action.

   2.      What are the benefits from equipping their riders with PDAs?

Personal Digital Assistant also known as a Palmtop Computer or Personal Data Assistant. Is a mobile device that functions as a personal information Manager. The Mashaweer PDA (Personal Digital Assistants) application is installed on each  representative PDA and manages the following elements:

• Order items progress tracking 
• Collection of order fees and other costs, against a printed invoice 
• Package handling (barcode scanning and destinations) 
• Messaging 
• Cash and expenses tracking 
• Synchronizing data periodically and at the beginning of each shift  
• Monitor and control of employee i.e. riders

            
Mashaweer invested in PDAs to enable the operation process to be monitored accurately since is provides date like GPS tracking to track each order and the location or stage the messenger is located. Through this technology, Mashaweer decreases the amount of errors due to the fact that the messenger is tied to an    automated process where he receives his tasks through the PDA handheld.

   3.      Was it a good decision to expand the business to Cairo? What are the implications of information Systems?

     Yes, we think it is a good decision to expand the business to Cairo. When Mashaweer was first introduced in Egypt, it captured 100 percent of market share for such a service, because it was the first and only company of its nature. However, the market was not aware or used to such a service, so it started growing slowly in Alexandria until people grasped the idea and got accustomed to the fact that there is a company that can take your errands. In contrast, when the company started operating in Cairo, it grew as surprisingly fast pace.

    There are several factors are expected to affect the target market and make it easier for Mashaweer to penetrate it aggressively. At the beginning, people’s assumption is that using Mashaweer is too luxurious and costly. When they use it for the first couple of times, this perception changes and they begin to rely on this convenient service. As more and more people get accustomed with the service, it creates a cultural change that significantly affects the demand on the service. 

     Another factor that is expected to facilitate working conditions and reduce costs is the technological advances that occur every day. When they decided to expand to Cairo,  they decided to adopt a completely different  strategy. They wanted to be able to cover all of Greater Cairo, as a whole and not just specific area, from the very beginning. They planned to enter Cairo with full force so that there would be a high barrier of entry for any competitor they decided that their competitive advantage would have to be in investing in technology. Mashaweer heavily depends on technological tools, and would benefit from the advancements and price reductions that continuously take  place. As a result, Mashaweer’s total costs will decrease, enabling it to decrease its prices and further improve its quality to become even more convenient for a large number of people.

   4.      Do you think that Mashaweer will be able to accomplish their future strategy and sustain its market share?

      Mashaweer’s future strategy is as follows:

a) Mashaweer Market: Mashaweer is an online supermarket that will enable people to do their grocery shopping through Mashaweer’s website and get it delivered by its representatives within 30 minutes of placing the order. This will be made possible by having access to a large number of supermarket around Cairo and Alexandria, so that representatives can pick the order from the closest outlet and deliver it to the customer as quickly as possible.  All products will be displayed on the website. Mashaweer is hoping to reach an average of 4000 orders daily in return for a delivery charge of 5 Egyptian pounds per order.
Suggestion
      

     A solution to make this work would be not have 30 minutes delivery time in place and have the website generate how long the delivery would take based on what is ordered such as if under 10 items are ordered the half an hour delivery time could stay in place, but anything over may require a 45 minutes delivery time and so on and so  forth

b)  Call Centre: Mashaweer’s call center is expected to make up an important revenue stream for the company in the near future, as the company starts introducing marketing campaigns. In addition, Mashaweer is planning to expand its call center to   include other companies other than Mashaweer.

           

Suggestion 

Mashaweer could automate a lot of their processes with fully utilizing the   Mashaweer’s website to include online requests to be send straight to the PDA so as not fully rely on the call center to make orders. This will allows Mashaweer to save  their cost by making their service more convenient and easily accessible online and allows workers to works on other project/tasks. This suggestion will generate profit to Mashaweer while being able to keep majority of their current clients.

Another suggestion is that, Mashaweer could consider a mobile application to make direct requests straight from client smart phone.

c) Geographical Expansion: Using the technology they have invested in building their infrastructure, Mashaweer now has the potential to easily enter and penetrate other  markets in different regions as a very low initiation cost. They plan to expand to other regions within Egypt, in addition to expanding to other countries within the Middle East. In October 2013 they will open their first franchise in Beirut, Lebanon. They are also looking to expand to several countries in the Gulf.

 Suggestion

            
The challenge with geographical expansion into other locations is that it’s a costly process to fully capture the market. However, Mashaweer has already proven that is possible to expand into other regions through Egypt with their 2011 expansion from Alexandria to Cairo. The suggestion to this strategy would be to expand throughout Egypt and the Middle East with full force to fully capture the Egyptian and Middle Eastern market. Mashaweer need to plan strong strategy to facing local competitors.

These three strategies have the potential to success and will be able to accomplish their future strategy and sustain its market share if these strategies to be implemented and executed correctly. For example a 30 minute margin with the current 130 motorcycles and 10 cars would not work or would struggle to work and will putting stress on the works and this will decreasing performance and morale. Utilizing the call center for other business practices could greatly improve profits and sustain its market share because it is a small impact on current business if they move the operations online they can fully utilize call center for other business and market strategies. Expanding into the rest of Egyptian and the Middle East could prove to be success so expanding into the rest of Egypt and Middle East could huge profits and dominate the personal assistance business.

  5.  Do you think in near future, the competition between Mashaweer and Wassaly will be aggressive? Why?

No. Mashaweer is the only company of its kind in Egypt that operates on this scale. However, there is a company called Wassaly that was established in Cairo after Mashaweer’s success in Alexandria. This company operates on a much smaller scale. Their indirect competitors include other courier services (e.g DHL, UPS, TNT and FedEx). However, they have positioned themselves as the flexible courier in contrast to the couriers available in the market today; they offer same day delivery rather than next day delivery. Mashaweer has several other advantages that make it very hard for others to compete:

•     Database of thousands of loyal clients.
•     Self-investment is manageable
•   Highly qualified and carefully selected riders due to the high salaries compared to the delivery sector in the Egypt.
•   Various revenue streams.
• · Being the owner of the IT company Innov8 fosters technology integration in Mashaweer.

Mashaweer also has several unique selling propositions. The main two aspects are   being the first in the market, and the only of its kind. Also the most important differentiator is the flexibility of their service, which addresses all of their customer’s needs and requests.