Dubai
            

Dubai Municipality is the government entity that oversees services and facilities in Dubai, the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates. Established in 1954, the Municipality is tasked with planning and maintaining city infrastructure, ensuring public health and safety, and driving environmental protection. The Municipality has 11,000 employees across 34 departments.

Dubai is a place that’s synonymous with change. From a sleepy fishing village on the shores of the Persian Gulf, the Emirate has grown during the past 50 years into one of the world’s most dynamic and extravagant cities. Today, it is a major hub of global business, home to the tallest building in the world and a government bent on developing a happy and sustainable city. Dubai Municipality, the leading driver of the city’s growth and evolution, is a mission-critical government entity. So its business processes must be efficient—and deliver performance that matches Dubai’s world-class profile.

A few years back, efficiency was suffering. One of the Municipality’s critical functions is providing services to residents. It offers hundreds of services, from urban planning and supervision of construction, environmental protection and improvement, to public health. Yet with an influx of expatriates driving rapid growth, the Municipality struggled to keep up with demand, leading to processing delays in many service areas. On top of this, it lacked the means to assess how much each service cost and whether it was charging appropriately.

This was especially important because Dubai, which has no income tax, is heavily reliant on service fees. This lack of cost transparency, combined with a push by Dubai’s government to improve customer service across the Emirate, called for a top-of-the line business process management solution. Smartly, Dubai Municipality turned first to Software AG’s ARIS for business process analysis—and ultimately to Software AG's full ARIS portfolio.

A needed dose of transparency

Dubai Municipality was drawn to the solution in part because it was already an ARIS customer. Since 2008, it had utilized ARIS Architect & Designer to design and document its business processes. But the Municipality was unable to effectively track process execution and uncover the bottlenecks that were causing big delays. What it needed most, management realized, was ARIS Process Mining. The core element of the ARIS platform uses process intelligence to discover, measure and analyze digital business performance—a sure way of diagnosing what was going wrong.

So in late 2016, Dubai Municipality signed on for an ARIS Process Mining proof of concept. It began with a service in particular need of a boost: customer product registration. In the Emirate, fragrances, detergents, biocides, health supplements, cosmetics and personal care products must be registered with the Municipality to ensure they comply with local health and safety standards. Simple in theory, but in practice it was taking ages: roughly double the 45-day standard spelled out in the city’s service level agreement. The municipality had long struggled to understand why. Was it a shortage of staff? Was something else wrong? In only two weeks, Software AG used ARIS Process Mining to run a host of simulations that uncovered the root of the problem. The biggest issue was not a lack of manpower—but a muddled application approval process whereby documents were being reviewed too many times by too many different people.

“Software AG’s findings were a wake up call,” said Dubai Municipality management. “They enabled us to see for the first time what wasn’t working and helped us design solutions that were far more efficient.”

Toward full-scale business & IT transformation

Dubai Municipality emerged from this pilot so impressed that it not only purchased ARIS Process Mining—but every product in Software AG’s business process transformation platform. After the deal went through in late 2017, uptake of ARIS Process Mining was swift. Since then, working closely with Software AG Professional Services, the Municipality has utilized ARIS Process Mining to streamline and additional 27 services—enabling it to design, re-engineer and continuously monitor processes to improve service delivery, cut costs and enhance customer satisfaction. What’s more, departments across the municipality can now isolate the cost of a single transaction—enabling them to make far more informed pricing strategies. “ARIS has given us a clear view of processes that used to be opaque,” Dubai Municipality management says. “We’re no longer flying blind—and residents are noticing a major difference.”

With the full ARIS stack in hand, Dubai Municipality is now working with Software AG to create roadmaps for further implementation. Plans are in the works to adopt ARIS for risk & compliance management to better assess and analyze risk. The Municipality is also exploring the use of Alfabet, Software AG’s “whole view” IT planning and portfolio management solution, to better harmonize business and IT operations. As Dubai continues to evolve, the authorities driving its growth know business processes must evolve with it. And now it has the tools in place to make that possible. “ARIS has only been the start,” said Dubai Municipality management. “Thanks to Software AG, we’re steering Dubai into the future with confidence.”