The Vocabulary of Strategy - a Case Study of Zain

The vocabulary of strategy-a case study of zain

Introduction

Zain is the pioneer of mobile telecommunications in the Middle East and now a major player on the African continent. We began life in 1983 in Kuwait as the region's first mobile operator, and since the initiation of our "3x3x3" expansion strategy in 2003, we have expanded rapidly. Today, we are a leading mobile and data services operator with a commercial footprint in 23 Middle Eastern and African countries with a workforce of over 13,000 providing a comprehensive range of mobile voice and data services to over 72.5 million** active individual and business customers (December 31, 2009).

Mission: to cement Zain as a leading global mobile operator that provides professional, world-class mobile and data services to all our customers, wherever they are, worldwide.

Vision: Our vision is to define what it means to be ‘world classs'.

Strategy: Zain's corporate strategy can simply be summarized as "3x3x3", an ambitious, sustainable expansion strategy that will see Zain become a leading mobile services provider on the global stage by the end of the year 2011. Initiated in year 2003, it is this strategy that will make Zain a global player in three stages: regional, international and global, with each stage completed in three years. In essence, through acquisitions, partnerships and green-field opportunities, Zain aims to achieve in nine years what other companies have taken more than 27 years to achieve. At the beginning of 2007, Zain launched ACE -an implementation strategy to realize the target of the 3x3x3 vision. ACE seeks to extract superior value from existing assets through three main thrusts: Accelerating the growth in Africa; consolidating the existing assets; and Expanding into adjacent market.

Goal: exceeding our customers' expectations, rewarding our employees, and providing returns beyond reasonable expectations for our shareholders

Objective: Zain's new goals by the year 2011 are to attain:

• a US$ 6 Billion EBITDA

• exceed 150 million customers

• to become one of the top ten leading mobile telecom companies