eWorks Story

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This is eWorks story. It all started in 1998, when a salesman decided to move to Dubai with his family from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

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He joined as Sales & Marketing manager of an IT startup company. When he joined, the company had total of 6 people, one Accountant, one Driver, one Receptionist, one Office boy, one sales & marketing Manager and one Managing Director. The company acquired dealership of selling Apple products. He resigned the company as Director Sales & Marketing after 4 years due to differences of opinion with the MD, when the company grown to more than 40 employees, two showrooms and a warehouse.

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In Saudi Arabia, he started his career as Waiter to be in the Baskin Robins Ice-cream parlor. In the first week of his landing in Riyadh, Saudi and while getting the training, how to sell ice-creams, he was called, then the GM of Galadari Ice-creams, the franchise holder of Baskin Robins in Saudi Arabia.

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While in the GM’s office, the GM asked him a few questions, such as are you BE Electronics? are you a programmer in COBOL, BASIC, FORTRAN? Answer was Yes. Then the GM asked a few more questions related to IT. A few hours & perspirations later, the GM said we have acquired exclusive franchise for Baskin Robins and we plan to computerize our 8 branches and we don’t have an IT Manager and I am giving you one week to come up with a proposal to computerize our branches in 8 cities and from today onwards you will not be attending the training and my car, driver and office will be at your disposal to do market research and to prepare the proposal. Which he did. The proposal was submitted to the board, got approved and he became the IT Manager instead of waiter of Galadari Ice-creams.

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A year later the GM called him again and told him, he should leave the company and join something better and bigger. The GM recommended him to Jeraisy Group and prepared all necessary release and documentations for a smooth transition.

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Jeraisy Group is the largest office automation and IT company in Saudi Arabia and their office automation arm is RHE (Riyadh House Establishment). He joined RHE as Sales Executive in a city that was almost unknown at that time – Yanbu Al Behar. In a year of his joining, Yanbu Al Bahar became the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu and a mega Yanbu Industrial City was formed. The IT arm of Jeraisy Group i.e., JCCS (Jeraisy Computer & Communication Services) decided to open a dedicated branch to sell IT products including newly acquired agency of Apple. He was appointed as the Branch Manager. In a year of him becoming the Branch Manager, he was transferred to the JCCS Western HQ based in Jeddah to handle large enterprise accounts. In the Western region he sold the first Apple II, first LAN and became the best sales person for consecutively 4 years generating 46% revenue of the Western Region of JCCS when he decided to relocate to Dubai.

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Coming back to Dubai, the next day of his becoming the Sales and Marketing Manager, he was scratching his head where to start? What to do? Back in Jeddah he had a dedicated department to make quotes, make deliveries, to do the installation, provide the support and to do his financial aspects of his clients and his commissions which used to be in 5 figures.

In Dubai, he was just a sales person, no driving license, no car and had to struggle to reach from point A to B. In a few days the works started to overload and he started trying bringing some order and efficiency. He tried using MS Excel, tried using MS Access and finally contacted Apple’s subsidiary, then known as FileMaker.

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He became developer of FileMaker when it was version 5.0. Allied technologies were evolving but limited and far too short to achieve what he had in his mind. He kept on creating plug-ins to organize customers, suppliers, prospects, inventory, stocks, internal communications, pre and post sales activities, human and other resources, assets and vehicles. Managing finance was a challenge, started learning what is corporate finance and started building plugins to integrate. This became his passion while becoming a business person in 1996 and started his own company. His business in interiors was booming when in 1998 just after attending Cityscape, where twin towers of 1.2 km largest in the World was announced by Nakheel, a global financial meltdown took place and interior business came down to a standstill. A nightmare nobody dreamt. This took a few years and his passion to refine and improve eWorks initiative continued.

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During these years he continued to interact with managers of industry leaders in general trading, interiors, events production, advertising and branding, real-estate, home automation, digital signage, project management and asset management. All of them shared valuable experiences of their respective challenges in their own respective fields. eWorks continued to evolve.

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He also continued to study and understand his competitors such as Salesforce, ZOHO, SAP, Microsoft and many others.

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He continued to develop his eWorks on the following principles;

1. Make it easy to use. Simplicity is Power.

2. Give choices but not more than two. Yes or No, Right or Left, Forward or Backward. Too many choices lead to confusion.

3. Establish a single Navigation Bar across eWorks, across all eWorks Plugins.

4. Develop entire eWorks in a SINGLE FILE, not matter how many plugins, no matter how many databases, no matter how many records, no matter how many relationships and no matter how many scripting and formulae.

5. eWorks should be the SOLUTION of Business. Should Never be a half or partial Solution.

6. Collaborate and Share eWorks with Users and with Developers. Be open to LEARN and INNOVATE.

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Based on the above principles, he knew it’s a Mission Impossible, yet he knew it is worth a try and never to give up. Being the developer of FileMaker (now known as CLARIS), he joined the Claris community of more than 1400 developers around the World and few developers from US, Spain and India, became his contributors and friends.

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Time and time again, his friends and business colleagues used to ask him what are you waiting for? Why are you not making eWorks commercial and available to public? His answer all along was “There is Time for Everything”

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Today eWorks is launched. Available for industries such as General Trading, Events Production & Management, Branding & Marketing, Interiors, Building Maintenance, Real-Estate, Vehicle Maintenance & Service. Same eWorks speaking the language of these industries.

He is Mansur Mahmud, current CEO of eWorks Global, Chief Developer and owner of eWorks Initiative and currently lives in Dubai, pursuing his business and passion.