ServiceNow appoints country managers for UAE, Saudi

ServiceNow, the digital workflow company, has announced the appointment of new executives to spearhead its expansion in the Middle East and Africa region.

Ali Kaddoura will be the country manager for the UAE, and Feras Bilto will be the country manager for Saudi Arabia. The appointments follow the opening of ServiceNow’s offices in Dubai last year.

Kaddoura will build and drive ServiceNow’s go-to-market strategy, working with customers and partners on solving business issues. Key industries for him will be energy and utilities, financial services, government, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, hospitality, telecoms, media, and technology.

Prior to joining ServiceNow, Kaddoura was the regional director, of Emerging Markets, for EEC Services, a rising cloud services and virtualisation startup. He successfully designed and executed the company’s regional GTM strategy, built a sales team, and led expansions into the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. He was also previously the country manager for Citrix in the UAE, where he specialised in digital-workspace initiatives in the oil and gas, banking, and telecommunication sectors. Kaddoura also held multiple sales and leadership roles with Symantec, CA Technologies, and other major systems integrators in the UAE.

“Our goal will be to accelerate enterprises’ digital transformation journeys towards a new era of enhancement of experiences for their employees and customers,” Kaddoura said. “ServiceNow’s Now Platform is the platform of platforms for the digital workflow revolution. Fortune magazine named us one of the world’s most admired companies for 2021, and I am proud to join a diverse, creative, fast-growing team that is changing how the world works.”

Meanwhile, Bilto will build the brand across Saudi Arabia’s business community by creating awareness among CXO decision-makers. In addition, he will work closely with the company’s Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) team, as well as local and international partners, to expand the company’s footprint in the country.

Bilto comes from global technology solutions company Crayon, where he helped build the company’s Saudi Arabia presence and delivered 100 per cent year-on-year growth two years in a row. He led on strategy and accelerated partnerships while growing the national team by 40 per cent. Before Crayon, he led the growth story at VMWare, increasing channel focus and expanding the team from six to 45 during his five-year tenure.

“When you consider the challenges our customers face in their digital transformation journeys, you can see that their KPIs are under threat without a unified platform that allows them to have all their metrics in a single pane,” said Bilto. “ServiceNow’s platform of platforms enables the right decisions to be made at the right time for optimal business impact. This is our unique value proposition, and this is what has positioned us for significant regional growth. It is how we will empower our customers to turn today’s challenges into yesterday’s stories.”

“ServiceNow’s commitment to the digital transformation of the MEA region is absolute,” Ackerman added. “But we know that leaders are the ones who make things happen. The right leaders bring true change, which is why I am very excited about Ali and Feras joining the ServiceNow MEA team. Their proven ability to grow brands, inspire workforces and craft strategy will propel ServiceNow’s platform of platforms into the regional consciousness and allow us to bring our unique value proposition to more companies and industries,” said Mark Ackerman, area vice president for the Middle East and Africa at ServiceNow.