We now have an international Centre for Excellence. We did that by initially partnering with Pearson, which is the largest training company in the world. We comply with and meet the exacting standards in the creation of our on course content as well as training that Pearson expects. We are BTEC, ISO 9/14/18000 and CILT accredited and our trainers have to deliver training that is of international standards and every accredited course that our learners complete can be Pearson Assured. It is mandatory for every employee of Maharat, whether an in house trainer or an associate, to undergo the Train the Trainer program.
There are over 150 training service providers in Oman but there are only 30 that are grade 1 and can provide a consistently high level of service. It is quite difficult to acquire the grade 1 status from the Ministry of Manpower in Oman and it does separate the quality from the rest. We have worked hard to get to that. We also want to be nationally Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) approved and we are in the process of acquiring the HSE approval for PDO, scheduled from 1 January 2016.
We are achieving good partnerships with some of the big companies in Oman as they can recognise that they get good return on investment. We ensure we acquire detailed feedback from the trainees, the trainers as well as the CEOs and training directors of our clients. These are measures put in place to ensure we receive continuous business from existing clients and I think that around 60 per cent of our business in the next few years will be from our existing clients. Everything is designed around international standards of customer service.
Which are the sectors that Maharat is focussing on currently?
Well, considering the sway over the GDP of Oman, Oil and Gas is a major segment and in addition there are others including manufacturing, aviation, SMEs and rail. Our Centre for Excellence is set up in such a fashion so as to cater to any of the major sectors in Oman. Some of our clients include Oman Rail, Orpic, PWC, Muscat Finance and Sodexo and we hope to begin working with PDO by the end of the year.
We are totally agnostic and are committed to providing services as per the requirements of our clients. We focus on designing, developing and delivering courses as per the customisation standards required by our clients. We also do some standard online courses like Health and Safety, English, IT and administrative course for the Public sector.
Currently we do not have workshops for training in welding, carpentry, mechanics and others. We are looking to incorporating these towards the end of 2016 if the companies ask for them. These are areas that have to be tackled with vigour to foster Omanisation in these skill development areas.
I would like to emphasise that we are not looking at the academic side at all. We are focussed on the practical education in the various fields as per the requirements of our clients.
How many people on an average has Maharat trained so far?
We acquired two training companies initially who have merged with us and that expedited the birth of Maharat and gave us some of their trainers, clients as well as around eight years of track record. So quite a lot have been actually trained by Maharat in the government and private sectors.
We are not keen on merely being training suppliers. We are keen on forming partnerships and I would rather have 20 partnerships all giving me long-term business than multiple small master-servant kind of engagements that are low cost and low benefit.
Do you have anything for the SMEs?
I am an SME specialist having run them in various countries. 90 per cent of the companies in Oman are SMEs but they contribute a mere 14 per cent to the GDP. I think the imbalance here is because the definition of the word SME here is too small. There are a lot of Omanis out there who are aspiring to convert their ideas into commercially viable enterprises. There are few people who can actually do that and there are very few organisations that can train people to do that. We have two clients, one in the oil and gas industry and the other from the professional industry who want to sponsor SMEs. They are giving us a certain amount of money and stating a certain number of SMEs whose employees they want to train. We have designed a SME training course where from day one we give them a business plan template and we will train them to create and complete their own business plans on the template. It covers all areas of developing a business plan including creating their Vision and values, analysing their markets and competition to establishing their own goals and strategies to achieve those goals. This will give them a much better opportunity and a tangible boost to setting up their SMEs though we cannot guarantee that they will succeed.
