Opportunities Of The Virtual World
Introduction Thank you Aalia for allowing me this opportunity to discuss how we used technology to adopted to current challenges in the halal food sector.
Halal Certification Services
The Islamic Camber Halal Certification Services (ICHCS) is a private company established by the ICCIA to ensure Halal food is available and trusted The Global food market is estimated at 7.8 Trillion Dollars with annual growth rate of 3.8%, part of that market is the Halal food amounting to around 1.8 Trillion Dollars BUT Halal is growing at almost double the market at 6.7%.
This create huge opportunity for the whole supply chain. Covid 19 has affected the whole world, and obviously the Food supply chain is no exception to this effect.
But to every situation there are adverse effects AND there are also opportunities. On the down side, The Covid 19 has hit the whole supply chain (From Farm to Fork) For example, the Agriculture and Food production is facing problems with Labor commuting to work due to lock down.
Labor fearing of infection. just one week ago, Germany announced a limited lockdown covering 360,000 people following coronavirus outbreak in a slaughterhouse” Same issues affect the Harvesting process resulting in crops going bad in the field.
Transportation , Logistics and retailing was also affected for the same reasons which is coupled by Consumer income badly hit due to Unplanned health spendings Job and salary cuts Lower remittance from family members working abroad Yet, picture is not all dark and to every story there is another side, For example Egypt food exports has grown throughout the epidemic both vertical and horizontal For example, Egypt opened new markets for dates in Australia, for oranges in New Zealand, for citrus in Brazil and for potatoes in Mauritius.
Egypt also Increased exports during the epidemic for example Potatoes exports reached 550,000 tons till end of May 2020 (that is 80% of the whole 2019) On the Digital and startup investments side Fintech’s used to draw huge investments but that dropped dramatically in 2020, BUT as expected the Healthtech witnessed increased investments on many fronts especially for telemedicine.
The Agtech same as Healthtech witnessed increased investments for various startups from drones watching the crops, to indoor agriculture technologies.
So opportunities are there, it just need some searching. Now focusing on the Islamic Chamber Halal Certification services which I proudly leads, allow me to very briefly introduce what we do. ICHCS audit food producers and food production to ensure that it is halal.
Of course needless to explain the importance of consuming Halal Food to Muslims and the trouble Muslims sometimes face to locate & identify halal food.
For audited producers and certified products we provide Halal Certificates & Halal logo attached to products so consumers in non-Muslim countries can be assured.
To adopt to Covid 19 challenges we embarked on a Digital Transformation initiative in our Halal Certification. The transformation was not a jump in the pond approach, rather a solution to faced problems. So from Processes perspective, We needed to re-engineer the processes around technology to streamline and increase efficiency not automate the process as it is.
For example, after the audit, the Certification decision is typically made by a committee of at least 3 members that meet to review documents, share opinions and make a decision of Halal or Not.
I am sure you can appreciate the tough task to coordinate the time of 3 busy people to meet considering the Covid 19 restrictions on movements.
With technology, once an audit is complete, a notification is sent by email to each member. He can review the documents from anywhere at his convenience and post his comments / concerns.
Now it is easier for auditors (as there is no need to commute), faster (as finding a common available slot is not needed) and safer (as the committee does not need to physically meet) From Data perspective It is very important to understand the types and volumes of data we are dealing with.
There are multiple Halal standards in the world, having information about the various requirements of various standards we were able to develop an Artificial intelligence algorithm to combine standards into a single checklist allowing us to Avoid repeating questions due to Common requirements in different standards.
Pick the toughest requirements among various standards, hence we comply to all of them. Ignore checklist clauses that relate to other standards such as ISO 9001 if the client is properly certified to it. Now this algorithm can reduce our field auditing time by up to 40%.
That will save money for producers and reduce infection risk for our auditors. We are further working on using block chain to guarantee authentic Halal data.
From a Technology perspective The Technology nowadays is so advanced that fulfilling business requirements is actually a matter of defining the business requirements rather than implementing it.
We have developed a Halal Certification platform that is available online through web or Mobile apps to all stake holders including our own operations department, Auditors, Clients, Certification committees, Consumers and government authorities that checks the papers of Halal shipments.
To reduce physical interaction we introduced Online Video meetings to replace some of the physical meetings And Document sharing so that the need for physical interaction is further reduced.
Documents include (clients’ halal documents, standards & Checklists, audit reports & findings, corrective actions and for Certification Decision) The user interface was intuitively designed to make it easy to go through loads of documents and pictures.
To enhance Authenticity of audits & trust in Halal logo For the Consumer, we introduced QR code on the Halal Certificates and next to the Halal Mark stamped on the products.
The QR code can be scanned by consumer mobile phone to check halal authenticity of product. For the auditor we introduced Time & geo tagging of audit so that audit authenticity is enhanced and worksheets are created automatically.
From a Change management perspective Any change needs to be properly managed from preparing users, align them with benefits, train them and be there for support. So we trained our customer support team to be able to help all users all through the usage journey.
