Maryam Al Beshri, General Manager of biz-events Qatar and co-founder of Creative Careers Consultancy is a Qatari National with a background in marketing. She was introduced to the biz-events team at a ‘Women in Business Conference’ and immediately recognised the market opportunity to bring a dedicated corporate team building business to Qatar.
“Becoming a biz-events franchisee means we will be able to quickly tap an under-serviced market niche for corporate team building among Qatari businesses. This is a completely new proposition for the market. While some companies run team days or retreats, there are no locally-based firms that can organise professional team events specifically designed to improve relationships, cross departmental communication and alignment or whatever the HR requirement may be,” said Al Beshri.
biz-events is the Middle East’s first and largest professional team building company and the exclusive representative of world leader Catalyst Global. Under the franchise agreement biz-events Qatar will have exclusive access to the company’s portfolio of more than 50 experiential events which can be purpose-built for 30 to 3,000 people to enjoy. The franchisee will also form part of the global network of Catalyst partners.
Hazel Jackson, co-founder and CEO of the biz-group, the holding company for biz-events, adds that the resilience of Qatar’s economy is leading to growing recognition among HR professionals of the importance of saying thank you to their staff, getting them energized, motivated, engaged and aligned to business plans.
“According to the IMF, the Middle East and North Africa region is recovering strongly from the financial downturn. Country-by-country, it predicts Qatar will have the highest growth with expansion of 16% in 2010. Progressive modernisation under the astute leadership of His Highness the Emir of Qatar is contributing to a vibrant labour market. Against this backdrop of economic growth, business leaders are beginning to understand the importance of people alignment. Team building can be one of the most effective tools for reinforcing a corporate message and engaging employees in initiatives,” she said.
Over the last six years biz-group has experienced significant growth from regional contracts with a growing number of its bookings coming from outside of the UAE. To ensure optimum service for its regional clients, biz-group has embarked on a franchising strategy which will see it sub license its corporate team building, training or strategy services to selected partners under separate franchise agreements. The company is now in active discussions with potential franchisees in another three cities across the Middle East.
“Our franchise agreement with Creative Careers Consultancy marks an exciting chapter in biz-group’s regional expansion story and we are confident that with their existing client network, infrastructure and expertise, biz-events Qatar will become a very successful operation. But we didn’t award the contract on credentials alone. In addition to Maryam’s professional background she met our strict quality standards for delivery - young, dynamic and full of biz-energy. Maryam is hungry to make it work, wants to be very hands-on and make biz-events her own. This underlines our franchising approach – we will only target those businesses that align to our biz-group divisions from both an operational and ideological perspective,” added Jackson.
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