Fatemah Fakhr Aldeen

Established by the Government of Ras Al Khaimah, RAKEZ is one of the largest economic zones in the region supporting startups, entrepreneurs, SMEs and industrialists with their business setup processes and requirements. We provide a wide range of business licences in the UAE, residence visa services, customisable facilities, as well as value-added support services.

Since July 2023, Fatemah Fakhr Aldeen, Licensing & Registration Operations Manager at Ras Al Khaimah Economic Zone (RAKEZ), has redefined what operations leadership looks like in a highly regulated, government-linked environment.

When she took over post-license services (amendments, renewals, deregistrations and immigration), the operation was fragmented and reactive. Journeys jumped between portal, email and manual forms. Each service had its own undocumented process and fee. Legal steps such as manual signatures and newspaper publications added 20-30 days to some services. There was no central knowledge base; answers lived in inboxes and individual staff. Customers and channel partners relied on "who they knew" inside RAKEZ, creating high "Where is my request?" demand. Back-office teams were processing cases and simultaneously acting as an informal mini contact centre, with no clear boundaries, KPIs or ownership.

Fatemah responded by conceiving and leading Smart Licensing - a new operating model for post-license services that combines journey redesign, technology, pricing, automation and organisational change.

From an operations perspective, she:

• Introduced digital approval-first journeys, where shareholders authenticate and consent through the portal, capturing structured data and eliminating most manual signature chasing.
• Designed a RAKEZ-wide service catalogue and public service cards, defining for each service the steps, SLAs, documents, outcomes, channels and fees, and making this the single source of truth for customers, front office, channel partners and internal teams.
• Embedded milestone SR email notifications and service-request tracking so customers and partners see exactly where their request stands and what happens next, reducing avoidable contacts.
• Led the shift from manual newspaper adverts to an online publication portal, integrating legal notices into the digital workflow and removing weeks of waiting time and cost.
• Simplified a complex fee landscape into a unified amendment model - AED 1,999 per corporate amendment with a 30% discount on clubbed changes - enabling faster quoting, fewer disputes and easier benchmarking.

Critically, Fatemah also restructured the human side of operations. She separated Backend Operations (processing and compliance) from a new Application Support team dedicated to complex legal and structural queries. Application Support contacts customers proactively when service requests are returned, helping them correct issues before the file re-enters the system. This clear split turned an overburdened back office into two focused units with distinct KPIs and service standards.

In parallel, she identified high-volume, rules-based immigration steps and partnered with technology teams to deploy RPA bots. Today, 93% of immigration service requests are handled by robots, releasing human capacity to focus on exceptions, judgement and customer care.

The operational impact is substantial:

• Around 60% faster turnaround times across key licensing services (e.g. new registrations 73 days, amendments 167 days, new visas 15under 5 days).
• Customer satisfaction at 92%, the highest ever recorded for these journeys.
• Post-license assisted contacts per client reduced from 1.1 to 0.6, a ~45% drop, even as RAKEZ's customer base and transaction volume grew.
• 93% of immigration SRs automated, freeing the equivalent of around 10 full-time employees.
• Approximately AED 8 million in annual operational savings from automation, online publication and process/pricing simplification.

Fatemah did not simply improve existing procedures; she re-architected the operating model for RAKEZ Licensing - from structure and workflows to technology and pricing. Smart Licensing now serves as a repeatable blueprint for how operations can be innovative, data-driven and deeply customer-centric.

These achievements demonstrate why she deserves recognition as Most Innovative Operations Manager of the Year.