When running a business in Dubai, outsourcing your requirements can seem an efficient route to accomplishing required functions. However, many businesses prefer to employ their own staff to fulfil their IT requirements.
In this blog we will look at the top 5 benefits of choosing the best IT support provider versus employing your own.
Cost
Whether you are a small, growing or large business cost is always a factor that has to be seriously considered. Sometimes the appeal of a small salary can outweigh even the thought of looking elsewhere.
However, the cost of hiring is not that simple. Firstly, there are the ancillary charges of employment (visa, labour card, medical etc). Secondly, what is the cost of retaining this employee? He/she will, after all, know and have access (as admin) to all of your IT systems and will grow in knowledge with your business. You will have to decide whether to keep up with their increasing demands or whether to replace on a regular basis.
With an outsourced model the cost grows with your business. It will be based on business size or per PC/server. The company will have the structure to ensure that not one person is in control of your systems, but a number. Even if a business grows fast, options can be tailored to suit the company, even having onsite employees to help you.
Systems
The concern with hiring inhouse is the ability of that one person (or few people). Most of the time, the systems that they employ are the ones that they know, rather than the ones that will most benefit your business.
An outsourced IT services company in Dubai has the benefit of having a large range of systems knowledge and will most likely have the best solution for your needs. They will also have the ability to employ large, more sophisticated systems, as they can use these across a number of companies and spread the cost. The preferred systems of choice offer ‘managed services’. This is a system than can monitor and analyse your IT systems continuously. They can also predict and prevent outages, rather than fixing things that have become broken.
Personnel
Much like the Systems section, the personnel section deals with the competence of a single person (or few). One has to be able to test the individual to firstly assess they can do what their CV says and to understand whether this skillset is actually what your business wants.
One of the main concerns with hiring your own IT staff is the fact that you surrender your admin rights to one person. What happens if this person is not there, or worse, you have a disagreement with them?
Most IT outsourced companies get employed because of such disputes, with the first task being to rescue access to the systems and to retain data.
IT solutions providers, not only have more people to be able to ‘pull on’ to help with your systems but will have a system in place to ensure that even if your main account manager isn’t available, you have a number of other employees available to be able to assist.
Knowledge base
As a business, you will have requirements that will be individual to your company, or so you may think. The truth is that most businesses will have similar requirements, but a few intricacies that are specific to your speciality.
An IT company will have, and have had, access to numerous companies and their solutions. With this information they can efficiently build the most robust answer to your needs.
The strength here is with knowledge and size. An IT support company in Dubai has numerous staff that have dealt with many problems. It is likely that if you suffer a problem, they will have had such a problem in the past and will know the best way to fix it. If you hire an employee you are relying on the one person’s ability and a trial and error approach, should they not know the solution.
Service level
When hiring an IT employee, of course, you have the ability to use that resource immediately. They are, after all, onsite and available. But what happens when the requirement is more complicated. Firstly, you are hoping that they know how to solve the problem, then you are relying on them to give you an accurate time for completion. What is the punishment if it not finished or not built satisfactorily?
When you employ an IT services company, you signed a contract and part of that contract is their Service Level Agreement (SLA). They commit to what the problem is, how long it will take and what will be the outcome. More so, they can offer financial recourse, should something not go to plan. They are willing to give this because of their experience in the market. They have, most of the time, encountered the problem and know exactly how to fix it.
Conclusion
The choice between outsourcing and hiring is a simple one. So long that you can qualify the ability of the provider (How to choose an it service provider for corporates), you have many benefits. With hiring an IT employee you are simply putting all of your eggs into one basket and hoping for the best.
