Outlook 2022: “Investment in Digital Journey is Key to Ride Out Unforeseen Challenges and Threats”

Jamal AlMahamid, the CEO of Palmira Software House, speaks about what worked for 2021, what didn’t, and the key opportunities and challenges expected for 2022

Describe how the market landscape looked for Palmira Software House in 2021 and how your company fitted within that.
After slowing down considerably in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the market in 2021 saw a marked increase in activity once again, with an appetite for new opportunities in digital transformation finally returning to the market. The pandemic proved to be a positive lesson for businesses across all industries and sectors. Consequently, business leaders realised that in order to sustain business and be resilient to adverse market conditions as witnessed during the pandemic, banks, government, and telecommunications, among others, must invest in their digital journey in order to ride out unforeseen challenges and threats.

What would you say were Palmira’s key achievements in 2021?
We expanded our services in additional business verticals, namely within the banking sector, through serving their open banking and fintech initiatives that utilise our extensive experience and expertise in API management. We also expanded our portfolio on a regional level, serving clients in Saudi Arabia, providing business process management and corporate performance management services as well as implementing integration requirements.

What opportunities do you forecast for 2022?
In terms of opportunities for 2022, there are two main drivers. The first one is centered on planning that assesses the current business situation, identifying and defining gaps, and consequently designing the desired outcomes. This requires a strong practice in Enterprise Architecture, business process planning, and corporate performance management (CPM). And then there is big data, which is the much-needed fuel for the decision-making process.
There will be an increase in the demand for digital transformation projects, more specifically in Integration, API management, and CPM.  We also forecast creating deeper inroads into the Saudi Arabian markets.

Do you see opportunities within regional markets?
Absolutely. Markets are hungry to serve their population with a better digital experience, faster client services that require better performance management systems, and a solid integration layer.

Describe the key focus areas for your business in 2022.
Like all businesses, our focus is always to better serve our clients’ vision through increased quality, professional services. Once again, it comes back to API management, CPM, and big data and how that is implemented in order to help drive our clients into becoming a responsive business with resilient operations and sustainable capabilities.

What milestones have you set for 2022?
Knowledge, quality, and innovation, all of which drive business growth. In terms of knowledge, we are already known within the sector that we operate as being the most certified partner of Software AG globally and, therefore, with such knowledge, we believe this enables us to deliver better services.

Service quality is imperative for any successful business. For us, it always comes first and we aim to continue this approach and improve upon it through implementing our projects on international standards and keeping our operations up to date.

On the innovation level, our solutions and products are innovative, which enable our clients to speed up their digital transformation, as well as and providing better insights for management that ease the decision-making process.

Setting such milestones helps us to set our goals higher since it is our firm belief that knowledge, quality, and innovation return greater outcomes. Consequently, we expect our business to grow by 30 percent in 2022.

Compared to 2021, how will you approach 2022 differently?
We will build on our previous successes and continue to do more of what we are already doing, such as investing in our team and products in order to serve our clients with even higher standards and provide cutting-edge technologies.