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Articles
Syria’s New Economic Liberalization and Business Intelligence: Theory and Praxis
By:
Muhammad A. Agha
Managing Partner for Business Intelligence
Strategic Axis Advisors, LLC
Damascus, Syria |
Dr. Antony T. Sullivan
Founder and President
Near East Support Services
Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA |
As Syria progressively moves towards a liberalized economy, international and domestic businesses are actively searching for lucrative opportunities in newly reformed Syrian economy. With Syria’s new business environment empowering new players, innovative corporate concepts are emerging as possible solutions to existing challenges that face all businesses entering this new unique market.
Currently, one prime example of such a challenge is the lack of comprehensive and reliable data needed by investors to clearly understand and enter the Syrian market. The unavailability of such data hinders investors from pinpointing economic opportunities, and from developing business strategies that are both profitable, and contribute to the economic development of Syria. The lack or the substandard quality of economic data is a major impediment to Syrian economic progress.
Recently, relevant departments in the Syrian bureaucracy have begun to address this problem. Currently, efforts are underway to collect all necessary data and statistics accessible through reliable and easy-to-find sources. For example, the Syrian Bureau of Statistics is currently issuing an annual Statistical Abstract in both hard and soft copy versions. The Ministry of Tourism has been hosting investment forums and transcribing their offerings in digital media versions. The Ministry of Economy and Foreign Trade also is following suit. Moreover, foreign entities such as the Oxford Business Group, Bank Audi, Ernst & Young, The World Bank, the United Nations Development Program, the International Monetary Fund, the Economist Intelligence Unit, and others monitor the Syrian market and issue reports as well as publications that are useful to investors. However, users of such reports can easily detect discrepancies between those reports and statistics provided by the Syrian government and the above foreign entities. Such discrepancies are due either to the insufficient time limit given to analysts to screen the market and collect and analyze the data, or result from the simple unavailability of relevant statistics and, most importantly, the lack of historical data that is the key to any understanding of market trends. Today as perhaps never before, all players should understand one fundamental truth: “Accurate Information Is Power!”
To these challenges, one particularly effective solution does exist: Business Intelligence (BI). Today, BI offers a cutting-edge service that has proven useful to investors around the world. The new industry of BI provides the following products: 1. Monitoring specific markets, 2. Collecting and standardizing business data, 3. Analyzing the data, and 4. Producing reliable reports that educate company executives, specifically, about what information is required in relation to a specific market or opportunity of interest.
The beauty of BI does not lie only in the elements specified above. There is a fifth and all-important factor: forecasting. Forecasting empowers investors to predict future conditions-economic, political, and geostrategic-of the countries and industries that they propose to enter. Forecasting complements the feasibility studies, valuations, and due diligence reports that investors need, to decide whether to embrace or drop an investment opportunity.
Forecasting, perhaps the most vital of all of the services that BI offers, cannot be restricted only to the economic domain. Rather, BI must include geopolitics, domestic and international, otherwise probably is best categorized under the rubric of geostrategy. Only objective, analytical geostrategic analyses, incorporating a variety of economic data but going well beyond the economic realm, can provide potential investors with the facts and probabilities that are critical to making responsible business decisions. Geostrategy, or what otherwise might be capaciously described as “Political Economy,” is what the new industry of Business Intelligence forecasting is fundamentally about.
Few investors, especially foreign businessmen, will place significant funds in “problematic” regions where political instability, war, or “terrorism” threaten. In addition to strictly economic factors, potential investors must also be concerned with such geostrategic matters as well as with the infrastructure, literacy rate, quality of higher education, delivery of healthcare, and security of the food supply of countries and/or sectors that they contemplate entering. Geostrategic “Risk Assessment,” basic to identifying lucrative investment opportunities in countries worldwide, is perhaps the most important of all the services that BI can offer. In the case of Syria, BI will potentially provide an enormous stimulus to rational economic development. Therefore, encouragement of the new industry of Business Intelligence is indeed in the Syrian national interest.
One final point is relevant here. Since politics is inextricable from economics, Business Intelligence, economic development, and international geostrategic influence should all be understood to constitute part of a single package. Without free trade, an increasingly open society, and a rule of law, Syria will neither be able to compete effectively on the world stage nor will it be able to develop rapidly at home. Business Intelligence, permitted to operate in an untrammeled environment without fear or favor, will provide the hard and predictive data that all entrepreneurs require to make critical investment decisions. BI forecasting is perhaps the most important new industry of our time. In the cases of Syria and many prominent foreign countries, BI will surely be one of the critical elements in shaping a new international environment, and thereby enhancing the opportunities for creating a more peaceful world.
Today, Syria, as well as corporate and individual investors, are in need of Business Intelligence as never before. The emergence of BI comes as a natural response to the new era that Syria is entering.
Some may argue that there have been success stories in the past for corporations that did not use BI. Others may claim that the Syrian market is not mature enough for such a sophisticated service. The short answer to both arguments is that any past or present success story in business and investment surely did utilize the BI concept in one way or another. Indeed, successful entrepreneurs may not have called it BI, or even realized that what they were doing was in fact BI. The point is that most prior successful ventures have not relied on a high-quality, professional source to collect and assess the information that they have required. Today, BI firms tune the services they provide to the specific needs of the corporations which they contract, and offer them continuous, on-call market monitoring services.
Major (foreign) investors usually have their own research and business development departments that are run by highly qualified personnel. These departments do provide many pieces of the target market puzzle to investors. Yet, if one checks BI providers’ websites, one will find commentaries and reviews by their clients who happen to be major corporations, and are extremely satisfied with their decision to use BI services. These endorsements demonstrate the fact that in highly competitive markets, whether a statistical infrastructure is available or not, company executives do need the Business Intelligence edge to stay ahead of the game.
In Syria, the good news is that the growing need for business intelligence recently gave birth to the Strategic Axis Advisors, LLC (Strategic Axis) which includes a specific Business Intelligence unit. This new company is located in the heart of Damascus and possesses state-of–the-art equipment. Strategic Axis, especially through its BI outreach, consolidates massive amounts of reports produced by top BI providers (such as the Economist, Middle East Economic Digest, Janes.com, Stratfor.com, Oxford Business Group, the PRS Group, Transparency International, as well as the local Syrian Bureau of Statistics), to generate special and tailored reports, country briefings, industry briefings, and opportunity trackers tuned to clients’ specific needs. In addition, the new company offers breaking intelligence information to clients advising them of new legislation, laws, market competition shifts, and emerging opportunities immediately as they unfold.
Contextual and actionable business intelligence in critical areas of investment – Real Estate, Finance, Banking, Insurance, Tourism, Oil & Gas, Trade, Media, Healthcare, and Institutional Development–is a key to acquiring targeted data and professional assessment of the investors’ areas of interest.. Thus, the BI Unit of Strategic Axis is a primary example of a major new business that is one initial result of the immense efforts now being made by the Syrian public and private sectors to provide a welcoming and transparent environment for investors interested in entering the Syrian market.
The BI Unit of Strategic Axis prides itself on the objectivity of its analyses. The mission of the Strategic Axis BI unit is to assist clients to understand local, regional and international markets as clearly as possible, and to provide reliable forecasts to guide investor decision-making. The Strategic Axis and its BI unit do not advocate policy, at either the corporate or governmental level. For example, the BI Unit has been predicting the decline of the Chinese economy -- but that is not the same as saying that Strategic Axis hopes to see the Chinese economy fall.
The BI Unit of Strategic Axis believes that customers are the experts in their own businesses and interests; the goal of Strategic Axis’ BI unit is merely to provide sound forecasting and analysis that will equip clients with the knowledge and insights that will mitigate their risks in an uncertain world. The BI Unit is global in reach, with excellent international as well as domestic contacts, and takes great pains to understand how and why decisions are made in various countries. To be successful, the newly established BI Unit must understand the mechanisms at work in specific locales: e.g., who makes key decisions, who influences the decision-makers, on what basis decisions are made, and how decisions are made regarding contracts, mergers and tax rates. The intention in all of this is to help clients understand the world in which they are doing business.
Strategic Axis is also active in the field of corporate advisory and intelligence services. This includes market assessments, procurement management, growth strategy, and business building. There is no doubt that Strategic Axis’ expertise in the field of private intelligence is leveraged to bring additional value to the corporate services offered. All that is complemented by Strategic Axis’ conference services, a platform for top executives and senior decision makers to convene and exchange ideas.
This is only the beginning of a promising future for Syria. As the Syrian leadership continues to push for reform, Strategic Axis will play a major role in opening new and more effective communication channels within Syria and abroad. The importance of Strategic Axis’ services for both domestic and international investors will grow. Strategic Axis and its BI Unit are proud to play a role in the creation of a new Syria.
In The Media
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Our Contributions
For SyriaToday’s November 2006 Issue: (Licensed to Thrill)
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