Exclusive interview with Helen Kerkentzes, Associate Dean, Executive Education and Managing Director of the LBS Riyadh Executive Education Office

How is executive education evolving to help leaders navigate rapid technological change, especially in the Middle East?

We are constantly updating the content and types of programmes London Business School (LBS) offers, to reflect rapid technological and broader, changes.

We help leaders navigate rapid change through our world-class faculty and their cutting-edge research which is shaping business and the wider world. LBS’ Data & AI Initiative – the destination of excellence for transformative insights on how data science and AI reshape firms, markets and society – equips business leaders, policymakers, regulators and educators with the knowledge and frameworks to adopt and integrate AI responsibly, strategically and sustainably. We translate this research into programmes such as our AI Master Class and Next Generation Digital Strategy, as well as embedding it into our custom programmes.

From your experience leading AI-focused programs, what core skills should today’s executives prioritize to stay competitive?

Through LBS’ AI-focused sessions and our faculty experts, we teach a grounded understanding of AI, the ability to redesign how organisations work, and a renewed emphasis on the human qualities technology cannot replace.

Leaders need a clear understanding of the technology and the ability to see beyond the buzzwords. It is then that they realise that real value doesn’t come from the technology alone, but from rethinking how work gets done, redesigning processes and workflows, in some cases, quite radically.

The more AI advances, the more our faculty also emphasise the importance of judgement, emotional intelligence, empathy, and ethics. These are the areas where machines still struggle and where leaders truly differentiate themselves.

Are there specific challenges unique to the Middle East that slow the adoption of modern leadership practices?

The pace and acceleration of change today challenges leaders the world over. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is embracing this with remarkable appetite.

The Kingdom has three distinct advantages when it comes to driving transformation. First, two thirds of the population in Saudi Arabia are younger than 30 years old. While these young leaders need to be equipped with the right skills, this is an enormous opportunity.

Second, the significant number of women now entering the workforce represent a unique and significant human capital potential for the Kingdom’s transformation and contribution to the economy.

Finally, the size and scale of the Kingdom’s bold and future-ready vision is itself a strength – the appetite to move at pace, meet challenges and invest for the future.

What role should universities and executive education providers play in addressing gaps in critical thinking, digital literacy, and strategic leadership?

At LBS our aim is to be a trusted partner to our clients and their people across the public and private sectors in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, developing leadership capability, strengthening talent pipelines, and supporting long-term institutional goals. 

We work closely with employers and government institutions to deeply understand their context and goals. We co-create tailored solutions that draw on LBS’s global expertise, customized to fit their unique contexts and challenges, whether through open enrolment programmes, customized learning journeys, degrees, or online courses. We also capture the transformation in the Kingdom in case studies that we use to teach our global community of leaders.

How is LBS’s Riyadh office contributing to talent development and supporting the region’s shift toward a knowledge-based economy?

Situated in the heart of Riyadh’s historic Diriyah city, the office reinforces LBS’s long-standing partnership of more than a decade with the Kingdom and the country’s growing focus on human capital development.

It allows us to support the people realising the Kingdom’s transformation and next phase of sustainable and knowledge-driven growth, on the ground, where we can be closer and more connected to our clients. Our aspiration is that together we can deliver long-term sustainable success, rooted in the Kingdom’s context and remarkable ambitions.

Exclusive interview with Debashish Guha Roy, Director, Covoro^TM

COVORO YouCloud marked its presence as Diamond Sponsor at the Tax Technology Summit 2025, held on 06 December in Dubai, where a joint venture between the companies formally showcased its FTA-aligned e-invoicing and tax compliance platform. The event served as a key platform to highlight YouCloud’s unified approach to tax digitisation, featuring seamless ERP integrations, real-time validation, and end-to-end compliance capabilities designed for enterprises preparing for the UAE’s national e-invoicing mandate. With a strong emphasis on local delivery, in-country data hosting, and enterprise-grade security, COVORO YouCloud demonstrated how organisations can transition from standalone invoicing tools to a fully integrated, future-ready compliance ecosystem.

You mentioned that YouCloud offers a one-stop solution covering invoicing, accounts payable, reconciliation, analytics, legislation management, and tax filing. After this event, what key takeaways were you hoping the audience would leave with?

Our primary objective was to formally announce the new joint venture in the UAE market and make it clear that there is now a new local player offering a complete, end-to-end platform.

Many competitors operate in this space, but most of them deliver from outside the country or rely on offshore support models. Our key differentiator is local delivery, local data hosting, and in-country support. We wanted the audience to understand that this is not just an invoicing solution. It is a comprehensive compliance and finance ecosystem.

Another important takeaway was helping enterprises think beyond solving a single problem. Compliance is not static. What starts as invoicing quickly evolves into reconciliation, analytics, filing, litigation management, and financing enablement. That is what we have already built.

The audience at the event was extremely knowledgeable, which made communication easier. They understood the challenges ahead and could immediately see the value of a unified platform.

How do you see the broader GCC tax digitisation journey evolving in 2025 and 2026?

Globally, Europe set the precedent with the PEPPOL standard, which allows interoperability across countries. A similar journey is unfolding in the GCC.

Saudi Arabia follows its own model and is not PEPPOL-based. The UAE has adopted a PEPPOL-based framework, and Oman is expected to follow next. Over time, we will see the emergence of a GCC-wide tax interoperability framework.

This will enable smoother inter-country transactions, simplified VAT refunds, and unified compliance processes. Similar to how consumers today can claim VAT refunds easily when travelling, enterprises will experience a much simpler, more transparent system.

Because transaction records sit with tax authorities, validation becomes easier. This enables cross-border supplier financing, trade financing, and smoother compliance overall.

How do you see technology, especially AI, shaping the next phase of this journey?

Technology, particularly AI, will play a critical role in automating end-to-end compliance. It will significantly reduce errors, remove delays, and improve accuracy.

From a CFO’s perspective, AI-driven systems ensure real-time visibility, timely compliance, and reduced manual intervention. Processes that once required paperwork, reconciliation, and repetitive validation will become automated and real-time.

This directly improves compliance quality and decision-making while lowering risk.

How does YouCloud address security and privacy concerns for large enterprises?

Security and data privacy are foundational for us. YouCloud is ISO certified, GDPR-compliant, and fully aligned with the UAE’s National Information Assurance Framework (NIAF).

From day one, our approach has been sovereign by design. All data is hosted in-country. There is no external cloud hosting, no offshore disaster recovery, and no remote support from outside the UAE.

This has always been a core requirement for us, especially given our long-term presence in the region. Enterprises and government entities need assurance that their data remains within national boundaries and under strict regulatory control.

How does your solution help CFOs and senior decision-makers manage complexity?

• CFOs typically face three major challenges:
• Conducting accurate risk and gap assessments
• Implementing solutions efficiently
• Ensuring scalability for future requirements

By offering a single, end-to-end platform, we significantly reduce this burden. CFOs do not need to evaluate separate tools for invoicing, accounts receivable, analytics, or compliance reporting.

Everything operates within one framework, with one dashboard, one data model, and one compliance architecture. This simplifies decision-making and provides clear, real-time visibility across all financial and compliance functions.

Could you briefly explain how some of your core modules work, such as e-invoicing and accounts payable?

The e-invoicing module collects invoice data from various ERP and accounting systems and converts it into the format required by the Federal Tax Authority (FTA).

Each ERP or accounting system produces data in a different format, while the FTA expects a standardised structure. YouCloud acts as an intelligent adaptor, performing data homogenisation. If mandatory data is missing, the system flags it and sends it back for correction. Only validated, compliant data is submitted to the FTA.

For accounts payable, the focus is on managing input and output VAT accurately. Traditional processes require manual extraction, spreadsheet matching, and reconciliation. Our platform automates this process by validating transactional data in real time, removing the need for manual intervention and reducing reconciliation errors.

Where do you see YouCloud’s growth in the UAE and GCC over the coming years?

In the UAE alone, we are targeting at least a 20% market share, which represents a significant volume of invoices and transactions.

The initial phase focuses on B2B and B2G transactions above the AED 50 million threshold. The next phase will expand to all enterprises, followed by retail and B2C transactions.

Retail presents the most complex compliance challenge due to volume and diversity. To address this, we are developing a hardware-based solution for retailers. Many small retailers are not equipped to manage API integrations, so we provide a simple plug-and-play device that connects to their existing systems and links directly to our backend.

This approach removes complexity for small businesses while ensuring full compliance. The B2C phase will generate the highest invoice volumes and is the most challenging, but it is also where our combined hardware and software strategy will set us apart.

1. How is Red Hat aligning its technology strategy with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 and the country’s push toward large-scale digital transformation?

Red Hat’s approach enables businesses to innovate freely, operate securely, and accelerate their digital transformation, all of which align with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030. Our emphasis on open-source technologies, hybrid cloud, and AI-driven automation directly advances the Kingdom’s goal of shaping a technologically driven, diversified, and knowledge-based economy. By working with partners in the public and private sectors, we help them modernize IT infrastructure, enhance digital skills, and develop sovereign cloud capabilities that meet local regulatory and data-residency requirements. Red Hat offers Saudi businesses an open, flexible, and scalable platform that enables them to drive innovation while maintaining control, transparency, and compliance, all of which are essential components of Vision 2030’s digital agenda. Our ultimate objective is to become a trusted technology partner that helps Saudi companies adopt sustainable innovation models, develop local capabilities, and compete confidently in the global digital economy. 

• In what ways does Red Hat’s open-source model help drive cross-industry collaboration and spark faster innovation across the region?

Red Hat’s open-source model is founded on the principle that innovation accelerates when individuals work together. Businesses, developers, and governments must work together to tackle common challenges through open technology development rather than working in isolation. This strategy dismantles conventional barriers to innovation, enabling organizations to jointly create, test, and refine solutions on open, secure platforms. Open source not only accelerates innovation but also promotes trust, flexibility, and interoperability, as the code remains transparent and accessible for everyone. At Red Hat, our mission is to transform community-driven innovations into enterprise-ready versions so that organizations can confidently deploy them at scale while benefiting from a global ecosystem of ideas, partners, and expertise. Our open-source model thereby turns innovation into a shared journey, allowing industries to advance jointly rather than separately.

• How are you helping enterprises achieve efficiency and modernization through automation and virtualization?

At Red Hat, we help enterprises maximize efficiency and drive modernization by simplifying how they deploy, automate, and manage IT across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. When it comes to efficiency, our latest innovations make operations faster and smarter, whether it’s RHEL 10, which introduces image mode, or RHEL Lightspeed AI assistant, which simplifies deployments and guides users through complex tasks. The Ansible Automation Platform, now integrated with Terraform and powered by Lightspeed, allows organizations to automate at scale by reducing manual work and improving consistency across environments. With Managed OpenShift available across all major cloud providers, businesses can simplify operations and scale seamlessly through OpenShift Lightspeed. For modernization, Red Hat offers a proven pathway for enterprise evolution through our four-phase virtualization strategy (validated by large-scale success stories like Emirates NBD’s 9,000+ VM migration) that helps organizations modernize without disrupting workflows. Tools like Event-Driven Ansible enable policy enforcement as code, ensuring standardized, secure, and compliant IT operations. Lastly, the Red Hat Advanced Developer Suite further enhances productivity by reducing complexity and accelerating deployments. Together, these solutions empower enterprises to modernize their cloud infrastructure, improve operational efficiency, and unlock resources for future AI-driven innovation, all while maintaining flexibility, security, and control.

• With data sovereignty becoming increasingly important in the Middle East, how is Red Hat helping organizations in Saudi Arabia maintain compliance and control over their data while adopting hybrid and AI-driven solutions?

In markets like Saudi Arabia, where technology and regulatory frameworks are constantly evolving, data sovereignty stands as a central pillar of national digital strategies. Organizations are required to maintain a balance between innovation and responsibility, enabling agile growth while safeguarding security, privacy, and compliance. In line with this, our Open Hybrid Cloud is designed to help enterprises ensure complete control over their data while leveraging the scalability of cloud technologies. Similarly, our solutions such as Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and OpenShift equip enterprises with secure, standardized infrastructure to manage workloads across private, public, and sovereign clouds, while ensuring sensitive data remains compliant with local regulations. With transparency and interoperability at its core, Red Hat’s technologies enhance trust and accountability. In the Saudi Arabian market, we closely collaborate with partners and customers to build localized cloud and AI ecosystems that meet national requirements. Our key goal is to enable enterprises to innovate confidently within regulated environments.

• How do you plan to expand Red Hat’s role in the Saudi and MENA markets in the coming years?

Red Hat is actively working towards expanding its presence and impact across Saudi Arabia and the broader MENA region. Over the next few years, we intend to strengthen local partnerships, invest in talent development, and extend collaboration with government and enterprise customers to accelerate digital transformation, in accordance with Vision 2030. We will continue to enable organizations to build AI-ready, hybrid cloud environments that are secure, scalable, and compliant with local data-sovereignty requirements. This requires expanding our network of local partners and system integrators to bring Red Hat’s technologies closer to our clients. Additionally, we are supporting certification and skills-enabling initiatives to equip the Kingdom’s emerging IT workforce with the resources and knowledge necessary to drive innovation using open-source technologies. As the region moves towards a diversified, knowledge-driven, and digitally sovereign economy, Red Hat hopes to remain a long-term technology partner in this progress.