The Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and Industry was looking for an online portal that integrated islands of data sources and automated manual processes. The actual challenge was to thereby transform time consuming processes, reduce the administrative work-load and change the static website data into a dynamic, user friendly e-business solution. By deploying the Microsoft suite of solutions namely Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Windows 2000 COM+ services, Microsoft SQL Server 2000, Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 and Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition, ADCCI has overcome these challenges.

ADCCI was created in 1969 with a mission to "provide distinctive services in realisation of a more invigorated national economy". Currently, it has 30,000 members. The website, when it was launched in 1996 received 200 hits a day. It now receives 10,000 to 15,000 hits a day and has won the 1999 and 2000 awards for the best government sector website in the Middle East. The ADCCI website and systems were already in place as part of an in-house technology drive that started four years ago. But the website, which hitherto held static information, needed to be transformed into a dynamic e-business solution.

ADCCI was looking for a complete e-commerce solution with the primary objective of providing its members with a range of online services. The creation of this e-commerce portal represents the latest phase in four years of high IT investment to date. Principal achievements include the transformation of several member services to online capacity, the Abu Dhabi government's first payment gateway and the virtual mall. The other milestone was to integrate the Chamber's membership lists with a constantly growing trade and economic database so that members from across the globe can access the unified database.

Building on the existing system

The Chamber is also responsible for generating and reserving trade names in Abu Dhabi and Al-Ain, and offers its members related services. Due to the importance of the diverse services that ADCCI provides, growing number of members and the advancement in Internet technology, the Chamber decided to expand its services by offering online access to the membership system. ADCCI has also introduced a new email list services system to keep in touch with customers and to market its services. This includes a new virtual mall that sells items and selects Chamber services.

The implementations of these services typically represent a significant challenge for any business that wants to operate online. Mohamed Ahmed Al Neaimi, Assistant Director General for Information Technology & Members Relations, said, "The Chamber wanted to create a web-based, real-time, e-business solution that would primarily allow for the registration and administration of its members."

The Chamber's vision is to provide better and faster services to customers and to reduce the administrative load on employees by enabling easy retrieval of information. This can be achieved by providing online services to customers including registration, membership and by allowing online payment of membership fees through secure credit card transactions made through the Internet.

With 30,000 members, processes such as 'Certificates of Origin' were particularly time-consuming for both Chamber members and Chamber employees. Three targets were cited: to make ADCCI as close to a paperless environment as possible, install a payment gateway and ensure that the intranet for the employees remained isolated and secure.

Streamlining operations

The development of the portal revolved around two key tasks: simplifying the members' business procedures and allowing them to gain access to the database on the existing system. For the first task, the portal offers members a simplified way of applying for and renewing memberships, changing addresses and updating other business information.

They can also apply for new trade names, request business letters and documents and have easy access to tenders. Now that the system is online, these operations can be conducted from outside the UAE in some cases, and by the end of this year, the Chamber will be able to provide services outside working hours. "Ideally," said Neaimi, "both the customer and the ADCCI employee will be unaffected by location or the timings of the traditional working week. There is no reason why our approval systems can't be followed through at any time, just by logging on."

Education process

The creation of the payment gateway with Comtrust and the National Bank of Abu Dhabi has enabled swifter operations. Neaimi said, "We are in the process of educating people to move away from the culture of cheque payments, although we do understand that of our 30,000 members, many have no Internet connection. We see the new portal as a big opportunity and are concentrating many of our resources on company visits and seminars, as well as providing free Internet access in our libraries."

The solution

One of the principal challenges faced during the project implementation was to integrate ADCCI's backend systems with newly introduced web-delivery channel. The functional specification contained the conceptual design, logical design - which includes user services, business services, and data services - and the physical design, which includes system integration methods, the data model, and so on.

Khaled Hazem, Senior Consultant, Microsoft Consultancy Services, said, "The proposal contained infrastructure guidelines, overall application architecture, web pages workflow and design, data modelling, and the integration architecture with other external systems".

The solution includes Microsoft Site Server 3.0 Commerce Edition and Microsoft SQL Server 2000, running on the Windows 2000 Operating System. The solution has been developed using Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0 and Windows 2000 COM+ services.

Abdul Rahman Qasim, Project Manager, ITQAN, said, "The main purpose of the new system was to fully integrate with the existing server, so that the databases could be published on the Internet. But the existing system was designed for client-server technology, and was not web-enabled. Microsoft's SQL Server 2000 was therefore chosen as the intermediate database while ensuring that the online database remained secure. He further stated, "The system is very flexible and the team has already started building new functionality internally."

The effectiveness of the system can be best gauged by tracing one key operation the 'Certificate of Origin'. Previously, the process took almost two days with a company's operations administrator performing the complete formalities manually. It can now be done in 30 minutes online.

Having fulfilled part of the long-term plan by integrating internal systems, ADCCI can now concentrate on integrating their system completely with the outside world.