Free «MAWAQIF Individual Assessment» Essay Paper

Introduction

MAWAQIF is the electronic system that aims to ensure parking places management in the city of Abu Dhabi. The advantages of the system are the high level of the product attractiveness for the clients, the effective services mechanism, and the ease of its usage for the drivers. Nevertheless, the company keeps improving its services to increase their digital convenience for the customers. These actions include the implementation of mobile payment methods and the issue of rechargeable cards. In this essay, it is necessary to discuss current business and operating models of MAWAQIF to define the recommendations for the future development of the firm.

MAWAQIF Business Model

The aim of the business model of companies working in the sphere of e-commerce is the demonstration of the mechanism of profit receiving. In general, there are three main elements of the business model: the value proposition, which serves for the estimation of the product-specific features, the value architecture that shows the structure of the product production and connected costs, and the profit equation that summarizes the information about two previous elements of the model for evaluating the process of profit obtaining (Lehmann-Ortega, 2017). In this essay, it is important to discuss the elements of the MAWAQIF business model.

Value Proposition

For the value proposition element of the business model, three key characteristics are important: the potential clients, the characteristic of the product, and the price. The actual customers of MAWAQIF parking system are all car drivers of Abu Dhabi. The system is oriented on the provision of parking places for residents and the reduction of the risk of parking places absence. The MAWAQIF system is a net of colored kerbstones situated in Abu Dhabi that have to inform the customers about the availability of parking places in the separate districts, the prices of parking, and available parking time. The level of demand for the service is extremely high due to the constant and quick development of the business sector of the city. Thus, the problems with finding legal parking space often occur. The existence of MAWAQIF allows the drivers to avoid the necessity to use illegal parking places and undesirable fines. One more attractive feature of the system is its reasonable pricing – AED 2-3 per hour of parking.

Value Architecture

The value architecture includes three major elements: value chain, resources, and competencies (Lehmann-Ortega, 2017). The value chain implies the process of product creation and the connected costs. In the MAWAQIF system case, the value chain includes the actions of colored kerbstones installation and maintenance, the issue of rechargeable cards, and the operations with the customers’ electronic accounts. The value chain of MAWAQIF mainly includes the costs connected with the operation of the system and customer service. At the same time, the logistics, marketing, and sales are not the costs-related elements that should be included into the value chain of MAWAQIF.

The resources of the company involve tangible assets that are used for the installation of kerbstones and the maintenance of the system performance. The intangible assets are the software needed for the operation of parking system and client support services. For MAWAQIF, the qualified employees constitute one of the main resources since they are able to guarantee high quality of MAWAQIF operations. Here, the competencies of the staff should be equal to the company targets that were earlier discussed.

Profit Equation

The profit equation element of the business model includes the discussion of revenues, costs, and capital employed in maintaining the operations of the organization. MAWAQIF gets the main part of its revenues from the parking fee that the drivers pay. Another source of income is the operations of the service center, which provides pre-paid cards and residential permits for customers. The costs include the maintenance of the existing infrastructure and payment to the staff. The main elements of capital employed are the software and hardware needed for the parking system operations support.

MAWAQIF Business Operating Model

In contrast to the business model, the operating model describes separate actions and operations that are included in the process of company profit obtaining. The operating model discusses the advantages and limitations of the organization performance in the certain areas: staff, business processes, governance, business culture, and tools and equipment (Belington Group 2011). Therefore, it is necessary to discuss the specific of MAWAQIF operating model to define the ways of the company work improvement.

Personnel

Each employee of MAWAQIF is oriented on the fulfillment of a separate set of actions. At the same time, the company has managed to implement the IT system that could guarantee the integration of all business processes occurring inside the firm. As a result, the management has access to full information about the situation concerning the actual IT processes that can be used to support its business decisions. The decision-making processes are unified and can be also improved for providing the highest quality of MAWAQIF work.

Governance

Due to week data transfer technology, in MAWAQIF, the senior management is able to provide the effective IT governance that includes the analysis of the current features of the IT system and the means of its improvement. The availability of relevant information about the situation in the digital sector of the company allows the managers to respond to the occurring threats effectively and timely.

Operating Model Grid

The best way to present the IT operating model of MAWAQIF is to use the operating model grid that is demonstrated in Appendix 1. The aim of the operating model grid is to show the link between the tasks of standardization and integration for the main processes connected with the company IT system. This approach allows the managers to define the specifications of the IT business processes in the organization and the ways of their improvement. Here, the coordination characteristic of the IT business process highlights the processes with low standardization and high integration. The unification means both high standardization and integration. The diversification, on its turn, defines low level of standardization and integration. The replication implies high standardization of business processes and their low integration.

According to Appendix 1, the main advantage of the MAWAQIF IT system is the high level of decision-making processes standardization and integration that the availability of relevant data concerning current state of affairs in the firm causes. Another competitive advantage of MAWAQIF is the standardization of all of its digital business processes. At the same time, the processes that require flexible approach include close integration that allows the management to provide the most attractive services and conditions to the customers. It would be appropriate to use this information for business strategy development.

MAWAQIF Digital/Leadership Capabilities

The analysis of the previously discussed business and operating models of MAWAQIF allows determining the current level of digital and leadership capabilities in the organization. It is necessary to analyze this aspect of the company business structure to understand whether the existing actions in the sphere of digital development are effective or they lead only to the increase in the inconsistency of processes inside the company.

It is possible to state that the current stage of MAWAQIF digital and leadership capabilities derives from the state of its digital masters. The analysis of each feature of this stage should support the proposed statement.

Strong Digital Vision

The analysis of digital integration of three main elements of the company operations – clients, product, and processes – supports strong digital vision. For the clients, the company had developed a digital system of full support during the usage of MAWAQIF services. The customers can get full data about the available parking places, their prices, and parking time online or at the kerbstones. The company also provides a variety of payment methods for the comfort of a driver. Except classic method of coin payment at kerbstones, the clients can use rechargeable cards with adequate cash amount on them or SMS payment, which make the parking fees payment affordable for any type of clients. One can say that the company has done everything to meet the requirements of the customers.

Good Governance

As it was mentioned in the previous section of the paper, the management of MAWAQIF is oriented on getting the most relevant information about the internal and external situation in the company. The strong digital vision and the standardization of the majority of business processes in the company allow managers to receive the required data during a short period of time. In fact, the majority of processes in MAWAQIF are automated, and the employees’ participation in their implementation is often reduced to ensuring the continuity of the system. The only business process that is completely tied to the employees at the current level of the firm development is the provision of specialized services to the customers. Due to the high level of automation, the managers do not see any limitations in the improvement of the operating model.

The Generation of Business Value

The digital business processes are the basic source of revenues for the company. In fact, a customer interacts with the automatic parking system and pays money for the cooperation with the computerized environment. The contribution of employees in the value generation process includes the installation and maintenance of the kerbstones at the parking places and the provision of customer service. The digital products as well as available software and hardware resources make the main contribution to the realization of the parking management services.

Strong Digital Culture

The developed digital culture is the source of MAWAQIF success in Abu Dhabi. The company positions itself as the best solution to the parking problem in the city. The orientation on the search of the new ways to improve the existing processes is also an important component of advanced digital culture in the firm.

MAWAQIF Playbook

Since MAWAQIF is quite a successful digital solution to the issue of parking in Abu Dhabi, the main target of the management is to search for the ways of maintaining and improving the existing situation with parking. For reaching this aim, the development of the mobile app that will help the clients to orient in the city and find the parking places that perfectly fit their demands can be one of the best decisions. In this way, a client should also be able to reserve a parking place. This approach will require the development of personalization tools in MAWAQIF. On the other hand, it seems to be a reasonable tool of the attraction of drivers and reaching the increase in their loyalty. In addition, the proposed mobile app can be an additional source of profit for the company due to the opportunity of its commercial application to become an advertising platform and the framework of partner programs.

Conclusion

The discussion of the business and operating models of MAWAQIF allowed defining that it is a digital master company. The firm management had effectively applied the contemporary digital means to the resolution of the parking issue in Abu Dhabi. At the same time, there are certain proposals that can be implemented for further improvement of the quality of MAWAQIF services and increase in its attractiveness for the drivers.