Dynamic, Daring and Determined – Ivan Fernandes the Managing Director and CEO of Ducont FZ-LLC, a Dubai Internet City-based company dedicated to the development and hosting of Internet and Mobile Commerce applications. Listed among the International Who’s Who of Professionals for the Year 2003, he is the President Elect of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), Dubai Chapter - the world’s largest group of successful entrepreneurs and is also a member of the IEEE Computer Society apart from being on the board of some of the reputable organizations in the Middle East.

Ivan speaks to Daijiworld.com correspondent Elaine Fernandes (Mrs.) about his Past, Present and Future…..

Question:    Ivan, Ducont is a name to reckon with because of the credibility it has earned for itself in the market.  Could you let us know in brief the success for the rise of your Company and what would you attribute the success to?

Ivan :  Ducont is a very young organization established in the year 2000.  Ducont specializes in developing products and solutions for organizations using the latest wireless technologies such as 3G, GPRS, MMS, SMS, WLAN and Bluetooth. 

The success of Ducont is totally attributed to its competent team that is capable of using the latest technology to help organizations in improving their business through efficient customer relationship management, better staff productivity and improved internal processes.  With Ducont’s products – customers are always in touch with these organizations. As we all know nearly all customers today use a mobile phone (irrespective of age) but that is still not true with the Internet.  Hence, providing the information to the customer at the right time is better achieved over a mobile device than on the internet as the mobile device is personal and always with you. 

So the information is received irrespective of the time and location and can be acted upon immediately.  Earlier, alternate modes of communication from sending information by mail, fax or email were used.  All of them had inherent delays and could have a serious impact on the decision-making capabilities of the customer sometimes resulting in financial losses.

From the corporate perspective, a number of organizations do not have the information on the customers while they are on the road, nor do they have access to their logistics.  Normally when a sale is negotiated, it is based on past information. 

With Ducont’s products you can streamline this process so that your staff have online access to you customer information as well as the logistic information.  This provides up to date information for the sales executives to perform the sale and also enter the purchase order on-line, which can then kick off the supply chain process for execution of this order. 

With such a solution, you have accurate information to provide it to the customer and have the sale performed online, eliminating the need for any paper work.  The management also will get online updates for tracking on the sales process and hence the overall cost of sale and the time is reduced thereby providing a better return on investment to organizations or opportunity to provide better discounts to its customers.  These are key issues for organizations in improving their performances and with Ducont’s products they have an effective tool to achieve it.  This is what has made Ducont a name to recon with in such a short period of time.

Question: You are in international area where you face stiff competition from the world’s largest manufacturers; do you feel that the  Middle East market is equally equipped as compared to the  West.