Dubai Airports Goes Paperless with New Procurement Strategy

Dubai aims to be a smart city of the future. One that, among other things, eliminates the use of paper. After the year 2021, no employee or customer of Dubai Government will need to print any paper document eliminating more than 1 billion pieces of paper used for government transactions every year. That’s the bold objective of the Dubai Paperless Strategy, which was announced by Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Dubai Executive Council in February 2018.

Dubai International Airport

For Dubai Airports, operator of Dubai World Central and Dubai International the world’s busiest airport by international passenger numbers (89.1 million passengers per annum), Environment & Sustainability is one of the five pillars within their corporate social responsibility platform.

The organization is committed to running their business in an environmentally sound and sustainable manner ensuring their processes and products have minimal adverse environmental impact. Typical initiatives include the recycling of thousands of tons of paper, carton, plastic and aluminum cans across their airports, efficient lighting, inside the airport and on the airfield and the use of flow arrestors to control water use.

With the procurement of products and services being such a major part of running a large international airport, as well as it being an area of the business that in the past has generated masses of paper documentation, this became a key focus area within Dubai Airports’ digital transformation strategy. In alignment with their CSR values and the Dubai government paperless initiative, they implemented a new online procurement platform, with the support of spend management company JAGGAER. The platform was designed to fully automate their procurement processes with the objective of becoming paper-free by 2021.

“We are always looking at opportunities to enhance our processes and systems to increase efficiency and improve customer experience across our business,” says Najla Alghammai, Acting Vice President of Supply Management at Dubai Airports.

“This move to digitize our procurement activities through the JAGGAER platform will go a long way in improving the overall performance of our procurement system by streamlining the process and enabling virtual interaction with our suppliers. The initiative reflects our commitment to supporting Dubai Government’s drive to reduce the use of paper while upgrading manual systems into online services for greater speed, convenience and reliability. ”

Going paperless will provide additional benefits to Dubai Airports employees such as cycle-time reduction, greater spend visibility, cost savings, and improving supplier relationships. A growing number of Government entities have already adopted a paperless procurement approach with as many as 40 entities choosing to go online with JAGGAER.