People365 Human Capital Management Solution made it successfully through 2020 – Article by Lebanon Opportunities

People365’s success story was listed in the latest issue of the “Lebanon Opportunities” Magazine among the organizations that were able to sustain business growth during the 2020 crisis.

With a pandemic hitting the world, a complete lockdown, and a non-precedent economic crisis in Lebanon, People365 succeeded in staying a leader in the HCM field.

People365’s CEO, Maher Chahlawi, explains through this article how the organization was booming in terms of sales and growth despite the tough circumstances everybody had to go through in 2020.

People365
Exporting software and brainware

 

Software company People365, an offshoot of SETS, develops human capital management solutions. It saw its sales in real dollars jump 32 percent in 2020 compared with the previous year. “The increase was mainly recorded in overseas sales as we focus more on exports especially that our price competitiveness has improved following the decline of the exchange rate,” said CEO Maher Chahlawi. The company’s customer base has reached nearly 1,000 organizations and 240,000 users. It increased its workforce by 18 percent last year to 80 employees in order to be able to cope with the growth in its activity. “We aim to triple sales over the next three years and to open new offices mainly in sub-Saharan African countries such as Nigeria and Ghana,” Chahlawi said. Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, People365 was among the first companies in the world to create a contactless solution for employees, allowing them to use smartphones and tablets to check-in and out. “We sold it to companies, organizations, and hospitals locally and abroad. Nearly 50,000 employees are already using it,” Chahlawi said. The buyers include the Rafik Hariri University Hospital and the Saudi Ministry of Finance. New solutions also include the COVID-19 Employees Data Collection Survey that allows organizations to check on their employees’ physical and mental health. People365 delivers its solutions on-site and on the Cloud. It is currently in the process of launching a new Cloud-hosted solution targeting SMEs. Despite the improvement in its price competitiveness, People365 is still facing competition from Indian companies. “Our customers favor us over other foreign companies. Indian competitors cannot beat Lebanese companies in the Arab world in terms of quality, after-sales service, and our firsthand knowledge of the laws and the language,” Chahlawi said. “In IT services, human resources and talent are the greatest asset and we are gradually adjusting salaries in order to cope with the rise in the real exchange rate and retain our workforce and prevent the brain drain,” he said.