Fahad’s Al Hadhrami Blog

Working as a product manager requires different skills from different fields. It is not a job that requires one, two or even ten skills. It is like starting your own business and you must have different skills from different fields. It requires Skills from marketing, creativity, technology, pricing and leadership, etc… Always I do ask myself: “What is the most important skills working as a Product Manager?”. I decided to enter Linkedin and post a new discussion in a popular group called Product Management that have more than 9,987 members and in Telecommunications Product Development Group that have more than 869 from different industries and I had more than 79 comments from different professionals. They had highlighted different skills. Some of them mentioned one skill and others more than one skill. The number one was Communication. 47 professionals say it is an important skill. Number two was Stakeholder Management (Managing Internal and external stakeholder). 33 professionals say i...

Product design from region to region differs for many reasons. I have been working in this field for more than seven years and made lot’s of product design which I had learned many things. Would like to share my knowledge and experience with different professional working in the field. Marketing Communication The way to reach customers in gulf differs from USA and Europe. One of the examples is marketing through web sites. Customers do visit local web sites but will not buy online from a local web site. Same Customer will buy from http://www.amazon.com as he trust it as an international web site. Many customers in USA and Europe have high internet access. In gulf, Penetration of internet is low and speed is low comparing to Europe. You can not use the internet to show high quality videos to gain more customers. We use here different methods. For instance, in Oman Marketing for government sector through news paper is very successful as the newspaper is delivered to the employee daily. C...

Time-to-Market methodology is a popular methodology discussed worldwide in the market world. The first time I had heard this concept was with Orange from France. I liked it and in many services I try to implement it to make it successful service. Time-to-Market is a methodology which is from the start of the idea till it is ready for selling it. Making the service ready from all the different directions. For example if a company needs to finish launching a project with three categories which are: Vendors tasks, commercial side and technical side. The Time-to-Market methodology target is to finish the project from the different categories. Time-to-Market not only focus on time. It also concentrates on the resources. It’s target it to reduce the resources. One of the resources is the amount of cost of vendors, buying equipments, services requested and others. I want to tell you about one of the experience I had for one of the services in my work. Many challenges do employee who is respon...

Market research is an important role and task working in the field of marketing. Being a Product Manager, Marketing Executive or Marketing Manager the Market Research is an important responsibility. Personally, I enjoy doing Market research. From collecting data to the last stage which is preparing the report to our Senior Managers. Some of the companies in the Gulf let the Market Research part of the responsibilities of one of their employees in the marketing department. Some of them let a dedicated employee with the Marketing Research job title. The first step in doing Market research is defining the objective of the Market research. The Market research is divided into two types in terms of purpose which are: For operational and strategic. The objective of operational is for the daily tasks in the company. The second type strategic purpose. In the Gulf we do go to some global companies and ask them for reports such as Forrester Research, Hall & Partners and Gartner Group. We do a...

I have been working in Marketing for more then six years in the Gulf. Every business whether small or big wants to market their business to get more customers, generate more revenue and grow their business. Marketing in business which sells products to women is different from marketing products which sells to tourism shops. I will share with you some of the features of B2B market and marketing that I saw in gulf. Generally, we can divide marketing into two types. The major types are B2C which is Business-to-Consumer and Business-to-Business Marketing which is B2B. The following are examples of selling in the B2B market. This week Oman Fisheries Co won a contract from Ministry of Defence to supply Fishes for three years. Another example, Etisalat is providing Broadband Internet service to their business clients in UAE. Marketing in B2C is different from marketing in B2B. In B2C, companies market through leaflet as one method with is popular. Some of them had used new technology like Mas...

In Oman we do have three companies providing petrol stations services which are: Al Maha Petroleum Products Marketing Co. SAOG, OMAN OIL MARKETING COMPANY SAOG and Shell Oman Marketing Company SAOG. The three companies are listed in Muscat Securities Market. Shell is among the MSM 30 Index companies. The net profit of the three companies had increased in 2010. Al Maha had increased OMR 528,000, Oman Oil had increased OMR 1,135,505 and Shell had increased OMR 769,000. Furthermore, Earnings Per Share of the three companies had increased. Al Maha Earnings Per Share (EPS) had increased mostly by OMR 0.076 and Shell Earnings Per Share (EPS) with the lowest OMR 0.007. Al Maha had opened 5 new filling stations during the last year. Shell Aviation Business had won new contracts. Some of the projects are Fly Dubai and Shaheen Air. Oman Oil had signed an agreement with Vale S.A. (VALE) to Invest in Sohar Iron Ore Pelletizing Plant. Personally, The net profit and Earnings Per Share (EPS) shows th...

During 2010 I had the opportunity to go to Abu Dhabi and attending a conference called "New Essentials for Leading Change in your Organization" . It was nice experience and had learned from Daniel Goleman and John Kotter. Individually, personally, senior manager, entrepreneur, member of an organization and ministry dream of a change. Some leadership do success and some do fail. Steve Jobs CEO of Apple succeed in establishing Apple and launched successful products such as iPad, iPhone and iPod. Bill Gates CEO of Microsoft established the company and launched many successful operating systems and softwares. In the middle east, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid made Dubai one of the most popular cities in the world and very successful city in the middle east and world wide. During our professional life we always see a problem and we want to change it. Sometimes businessman see their business is not working well or does not make revenue and decide to sit with himself or the members and ...