TECOM’s move towards Excellence & care for Business Partners

TECOM was established to execute the milestone in Dubai’s 2010 Vision for a knowledge economy. Established as a tax free commercial free zone, TECOM is today the largest, fully managed free zone in the world that houses three separate clusters: ICT, Media & Knowledge. The diverse nature of companies & institutions operating out of TECOM continuously strengthens TECOM’s vision of becoming an efficient & leading provider of services to foster the growth of Dubai’s knowledge-based economy.

Allowing companies 100% ownership with tax exemptions (corporate, customs or personal), TECOM offers significant business incentives to foster growth and offers a cost competitive environment for establishing, expanding and/or relocating a business. With an option to lease land for up to 50 years to set up their facilities, in addition to a 100% repatriation of capital & profits, TECOM’s product offering is unique. Operations are regulated by a stringent legal framework with an emphasis on delivering prime quality services through building a culture of excellence.

The Excellence Culture and Path

Since its inception, TECOM Top Management has chosen to adopt a Total Quality Management approach in all aspects of Business. There is a single-window facility for obtaining all government approvals & services including those pertaining to incorporation & licensing, visas, work permits & telecommunication services.
As part of the Government and a Free Zone Authority, TECOM established in 2000 has embarked in the TQM journey connoting diverse quality management tools from implementing quality management systems to specific industry sectors i.e. ISO 9000, 14000 & OSHAS to adopting the Business Excellence Model, utilizing advanced systems to manage its Finance and raising a corporate quality culture.

Excellence is the management philosophy that seeks to integrate all organizational functions (marketing, finance, design, engineering, and production, customer service, etc.) to focus on meeting customer needs and organizational objectives through a frame work of best practices and total quality parameters.

TECOM views the organization as a collection of processes. It maintains that organizations must strive to continuously improve these processes by incorporating the knowledge and experiences of workers. The simple objective of TECOM is “Do the right things, right the first time, every time”. Although originally applied to manufacturing operations, and for a number of years only used in that area, TECOM as a servicing organization; adopted TQM, which is now recognized as a generic management tool, just as applicable in service and public sector organizations. There are a number of evolutionary strands, with different sectors creating their own versions from the common ancestor. TQM is the foundation for activities, which include:

  • Commitment by senior management and all employees
  • Meeting & seeking to exceed customer requirements
  • Improvement teams
  • Reducing product and service costs
  • Quality Systems to facilitate improvement
  • Line Management ownership
  • Reducing cycle times
  • Employee involvement and empowerment
  • Recognition and celebration
  • Challenging quantified goals and benchmarking
  • Focus on processes / improvement plans
  • Specific incorporation in strategic planning

    Establishing a centralized Office of Excellence

    The Office of Excellence, set up in 2004, was established to lead TECOM towards Excellence and started its operations by introducing a Quality Management System that follows the International Standard ISO 9001:2000. TECOM achieved the ISO certification in October 2005.

    The Office is working to ensure that all necessary moves are made for designing, developing and sustaining Excellence. In addition to introducing in each department Policies, Objectives, Programmes, Processes and Procedures that are documented, controlled and evaluated for continual improvement.

    To sustain the move towards Excellence; TECOM has officially established layers of excellence within the hierarchy to monitor management initiatives launched to continually improve the organization. TECOM has an Excellence Steering Committee, an Excellence Improvement Team and Excellence Successors in each department.

    Out of approximately 600 employees, TECOM has made sure to commit the time of a group of 60 employees to work closely with the Office of Excellence. All 60 people were trained with state of the art training programmes on Excellence & Quality Management provided by the British Standards Institute Co., UK & by Lloyds Register Co. UK.

    To create even more emphasis on Excellence, satisfy the requirement of the ISO 9001:2000 international standards; TECOM Top Management took a strategic move by appointing the Chief Financial Officer to assume the role of the Quality Management Representative in addition to his responsibilities to marry Quality/Excellence with Finance for further support.

    Finally, Office of Excellence is TECOM’s point of contact for the Dubai Government Excellence Awards (DGE); established to encourage growing standards of excellence amongst government organizations. Experts in the Office of Excellence put forward a selection of departments for certain categories up for the awards, every couple of years. However, any individual can also apply for a DGE award.