CHANNEL CHIEF
Building networking
teams across the Gulf
At R&M, Nabil Khalil is committed to increasing the vendor’s
presence across public and private sector projects through
capable and motivated teams. By Arun Shankar.
Nabil Khalil is Executive
Vice President for R&M
Middle East, Turkey
and Africa.
N
abil Khalil has been working in
the Gulf for close to 20 years,
mostly in the UAE, and has held
several senior management positions in
the IT industry. As the Executive Vice
President for R&M Middle East, Turkey
and Africa, Khalil is responsible for
increasing R&M’s market penetration.
This is mostly through targeting the public
sector by participating in the Fibre-to-X
deployment projects. Khalil also looks
at the transformation and expansion of
datacentres as an opportunity to drive
R&M’s LAN cabling solutions business.
“My goal is to position us as the vendor of
choice for both public and private sector
organisations,” Khalil explains.
Since he joined R&M in the last
quarter of 2015, what gives Khalil a lot
of job satisfaction has been his ability to
maintain and further strengthen the R&M
brand after the management changes.
“Our customers and partners continue
to enjoy extremely high levels of service
excellence that has become a hallmark of
our business,” he adds.
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So, what made Khalil consider a
career in technology? “I have always
been technically inclined and fascinated
by technology. It is evident that IT is
the enabler of business today, driving
innovation for organisations of all sizes
and across all industry verticals,” he
explains. In addition, Khalil feels the rapid
pace of change and innovation as well as
availability of a dynamic market, does
create opportunities to explore new ways
of addressing customer pain points, but
necessitates constant learning.
Khalil’s management style begins by
attracting and recruiting the right set
of people to make up the team, who are
committed and hardworking. While technical
competency is a key skill attribute, Khalil
considers emotional quotient to be equally
Khalil’s
management
style begins
by attracting
and recruiting
the right set of
people to make
up the team, who
are committed
and hardworking.
important in his team building initiatives.
Once such a capable and motivated team is in
place, Khalil believes it is important to place
trust, rather than micromanage them. “So
long as people are honest and transparent,
I am happy to enable them rather than
constantly monitor their day to day work,”
he says.
Khalil’s forecasting into 2018 leads him
to remark that digital transformation and
artificial intelligence will continue to be
the talking points. Digital transformation
represents different things for different
businesses, and the digital transformation
journey for an online retailer will look
very different from that for a telecom
provider. “As the market matures we will
see organisations approach digitisation in
a more strategic manner,” he reflects about
the adoption of digital transformation. And
for artificial intelligence Khalil indicates
that, “The actual application and uptake of
AI in business is still a while away.”
With regard to work related stress,
Khalil feels it is part of any job and hence
unavoidable. “But it can definitely be
controlled with a positive attitude. I
believe effective time management and
the support of a good team go a long way
in mitigating stress. Also, if you manage
to maintain a healthy professional and
personal life balance you will no doubt be
less stressed.”
Off-work Khalil is an avid history buff
and likes reading books on the subject. He
is extremely family oriented and prefers
to spend time with his family while away
from the office.
Issue 13
INTELLIGENT TECH CHANNELS