Mahmoud Amer, CEO & Founder, Ideal Solutions
Being an entrepreneur doesn’t come easy. It takes a fierce commitment, immense courage, unwavering passion, and perseverance to build a company from scratch and lead it towards success. This story is going to unfurl the inspiring journey of one such avid entrepreneur, Mahmoud Amer, who started his venture as a one-man show, grew it over time, and turned it into a huge success.
Leveraging his years of experience and extensive knowledge in management, business, and technology, Mahmoud laid the foundation of Ideal Solutions in April 1998. As the name conveys, the vision behind building the company was to attain perfection and supremacy in doing the business while focusing on inventing and implementing unique solutions and services that will contribute to making communities better. Driven by this vision, Mahmoud worked his fingers to the bones and wore multiple hats to keep the company running.
“I started my company as a one-man show business where I played all the necessary company roles. I managed to switch business hats according to the needs, which helped the company in generating enough income to sustain, invest and grow,” says Mahmoud.
As a result of his strong determination, hard work, and commitment to deliver a strong value proposition, Ideal Solutions has grown into a leading IT business with a complete setup of 5 professional departments with over 75 experienced professionals. Staying true to its vision of “DTQ” which means “Deliver on Time with the Quality,” today, it offers its reputed solutions and services in 12 areas including software development and IT professional services.
“Today, after 22 years of its existence, I’m proud that Ideal Solutions became a known beacon in the sky of specialized pioneering IT business in the Gulf Region, as we have succeeded in implementing so many unique and wonderful projects,” elucidates Mahmoud.
Turning the Stumbling Blocks into Stepping Stones
While several attributes played a critical role in Mahmoud’s success story, one key trait which truly distinguishes this ardent entrepreneur from the rest is his positive outlook. Many see the challenges as problems but this avid business leader considers challenges as an opportunity to develop an optimistic and rational business strategy, growing the accumulative know-how and enhancing the quality standards, procedures, and tools.
Initially, Mahmoud had to face many challenges while looking for the resources and required skills that fit in with Ideal Solutions’ specialized demanding business. Also, amid the rapid advances in IT technology, evolving market and business dynamics, growing constraints of customer demands, and increasing competition from global off-shore markets, keeping the company ahead of the game was no easy feat.
But the visionary entrepreneur wisely and proactively managed all the challenges by having 360 degrees vision of business risks and dynamics. He followed a ground-rooted scientific approach to logically identify, analyze, and plan for the mitigation of future opportunities and manage future risks, ahead of the market expectations.
“Challenges pushed us demonstrating our best exceptional results. We could introduce multiple innovative pioneering solutions when the market was still focusing on the traditional IT business by selling hardware boxes and software licenses. We helped the market to grow and mature and to expect more,” states Mahmoud.
By turning challenges into opportunities, Mahmoud was able to fuel the growth of Ideal Solutions by increasing its staff and the investment in staff training, staff appraisal, office space, latest technologies, and R&D. This helped the company to stand tall in the industry with a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) in flexibility, capacity, and readiness to deliver the different scopes on time with excellence and quality.
Lessons Learnt Over the Years
Before starting and leading Ideal Solutions, Mahmoud spent 17 years acquiring the necessary skills. Those years taught him valuable lessons on how to differentiate the good from excellent, understand people’s minds and their decision-making behaviors, and manage his mindset proactively towards achieving the dreams and ultimate goals. Another important lesson that he learned throughout his entrepreneurial journey is that leaders need to be patient and prepared to sacrifice a lot of time, efforts, and comfort for a well-planned long-term mission. They must plan and prepare well for every task, small or big.
This journey also taught him that acquiring the right skill-set in many business-related niches such as management & communication, sales & marketing, finance, project management along with other technical skills in hardware, software development and integration are plusses that can make an entrepreneur ahead of the game.
Weaving a Unique Winning Company Culture
Mahmoud firmly believes that having a strong company culture is crucial for a business to survive and thrive in the aggressive and dynamic market. Thus, he pays special attention to cultivate and sustain a unique winning company culture at Ideal Solutions. He fosters teamwork to create opportunities for employees to collaborate and use all available resources and skills to reach the business objective. This inclusive, transparent, and empowering work-culture influences employee engagement and evokes a strong emotion that motivates employees to perform beyond seeking revenue.
“We work for each other’s success and take personal responsibility for all of our relationships, be it with customers, partners, or employees,” says Mahmoud.
He further adds, “Our winning company culture is the heart of our business that energizes our internal and external passion to treat every issue with enthusiasm and personal commitment for achieving and exceeding ultimate success.”
Aspires to Enhance People’s Lives and Community
Success is often measured in quantitative terms such as Return of Investment (ROI) and Return of Value (ROV). But for Mahmoud, success is about is truly contributing to the world to make it a better place. Thus, he always strives to help people around him in overcoming difficulty or negative situations and enjoy life, family, and success. Meanwhile, he also aims to reshape the industry through the value-driven services of Ideal Solutions and make a positive impact on people’s lives and communities.
Moving forward, as a business leader, he envisions expanding the global footprint of Ideal Solutions while upgrading its business model from a privately owned company to a publicly-traded company. “My vision is to continue our sustained growth and expansion and take our accumulative business success and strong brand name to a global dimension,” concludes Mahmoud.