Human Resources Headquarters: Dubai Knowledge Village

Dubai Knowledge Village is a development project of TECOM, an investment branch of Dubai Holdings. Knowledge Village houses 450 HR services providers that have helped this city grow exponentially by sourcing talent to staff their ever-increasing number of jobs.

With 80% of the population coming from another country for work, Knowledge Village has played a critical part in redefining Dubai's major strengths as service-focused professionals instead of oil.

Dubai KV is staffed with highly educated, professional people who offer free consulting to help develop human resources businesses. The staff also helps business owners and managers to navigate the governmental labor requirements, assisting with visa approvals and securing space for offices, etc.

We heard from several of the key personnel at Dubai KV, but I most identified with Naima Shaikh, the Executive Director of Applications/Group IT. Naima shared two of her team's key initiatives with us, which included the development of a localized CRM system and an intranet platform that was user-friendly and customizable.

Guess what? Dubai Knowledge Village uses Salesforce.com as their CRM solution! I was thrilled about this because I have been an expert administrator of the Salesforce platform for almost 10 years now, and I am a HUGE HUGE fan.

The main goal of the Dubai KV sales team is to help businesses find available space in their multiple office complexes, and Naima's team has customized their version of Salesforce to show property openings in real-time, as the listings are dynamically tied to the contract applications. And the best part is Salesforce.com gives the Dubai KV sales team visibility across the entire customer lifecycle.

I was so glad to learn that the IT team of 70 employees [who support more than 3000 users daily] had opted for a third-party SaaS solution instead of building their own CRM tool in-house.

Those days of "build your own" are long gone, and any IT team that insists on doing so is simply wasting your company's time and money.


The second project that Naima discussed was TECOMTalks, the intranet tool they have developed for employees to share internal information. TECOMTalks is based on a Sharepoint/Outlook platform, again, with the purpose of leveraging a third-party solution in lieu of creating their own from scratch.

I also met Brendan Vyner, Brand Manager for Dubai KV's Education Unit. Brendan hails from Australia and came to the Middle East nine years ago on a whim. Somehow it turned into a fantastic career for him, and he is thrilled to be part of Dubai Knowledge Village! Brendan was an all-around great guy, and he gave us the scoop on local hangouts for Western expats, including Bar 360 which is on an island that you can only access by golf cart across a bridge. If I ever come back to Dubai, I'm coming to find Brendan for a night out on the town!

Dubai Knowledge Village was full of all kinds of good stuff. And, it was fun to geek out with Naima and crew for the day before heading out to explore the town again that evening. We greatly appreciated all of their kindness and hospitality.

On a personal note, I'm hoping to connect with them again in reference to my other business, www.ShopMyResume.com. A whole new world of opportunities exists for SMR in Dubai!