Are third-party solutions providers the right answer to widening IT skills gap? 

• Failing to develop an effective plan could result in growing backlogs of stakeholder requests, innovation being sacrificed for just keeping the lights on, and productivity and efficiency losses.
• Organisations and government authorities need to invest further in ensuring the national youth population of the GCC countries has enough resources in schools, colleges and universities offering STEM subjects leading to technology jobs.

One of the industry terms synonymous with the skills topic is the ‘Great Resignation’ and yes; the pandemic reminded us that the non-negotiables for happiness are our health and time with family and friends prompting many to re-think their work-life balance.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries are unique regions with different dynamics. While it has not been impacted by the Big Quit, as other commentators are calling it, the Gulf States have seen its fair share of movement. 

The ‘migrant’ population which outnumbers the local population is not here permanently and hence the skilled white-collar IT executive is always looking for greener pastures.

Given the region relies heavily on importing skilled expats, the lack of inherent capacity and the reduced flow back into the region as we emerge from Covid-19, the skills gap has widened and left many businesses suffering. 

Add to that the political and economic challenges of neighbouring countries; it appears a rocky road lies ahead for companies that cannot accelerate their digital transformation. 

In December 2021, we released a GCC CIO/CTO IT sentiment report in which it was revealed that 96 per cent of respondents said accessing the right talents to keep up with the demand for digital transformation was challenging, with 39 per cent citing it was ‘very’ and 57 per cent ‘somewhat’. 

The percentage was higher in Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman where nearly half of the respondents found it ‘very’ challenging.

We are helping these customers with resource augmentation and recruitment of those much-needed skills. 

Another way of tackling these challenges is for businesses to create a comprehensive succession plan to ensure they are not caught out by skills gaps. 

Failing to develop an effective plan could result in growing backlogs of stakeholder requests, innovation being sacrificed for just keeping the lights on, and productivity and efficiency losses.

Create a comprehensive succession plan

The good news is that despite the talent competition there are different options to meet demand. By identifying the key roles and requirements in the IT team, you can qualify how best to fill those positions.  

Above all, you must decide what IT roles are critical to competitive advantage and decide how best to source them. 

For example, let’s say you’re a manufacturing business and your supply chain systems are crucial to just-in-time delivery. You could look to hire; you could reskill or upskill existing staff. 

The easy solution is to bring in temporary staff or a partner, but then you must be certain that the individual or partner is invested in your business success, has the right expertise, and understands the role they play in the transformation of your IT systems. If you don’t get that buy-in it could become an expensive option. 

However, organisations and the government authorities need to invest further in ensuring the national youth population of the GCC countries has enough resources in schools, colleges and universities offering STEM subjects leading to technology jobs. 

Find the right partner

As an industry what is important for us to consider as the best way to deal with any skills shortages in your organisation is that you do not look at it in crude terms of either hire or outsource. 

As you map out which applications are of strategic importance you should always ask the question: who are the experts in this field? Is it us or is a partner better placed?

And the secondary question is: what is the best way to continue developing the right skills?

If you want to have a modern, future-proof business application environment, the harsh reality is that resources and complexity mean you must prioritise what you will deliver. 

The same is true of where you focus your efforts in terms of finding and maintaining the right skills. If you are not best placed to deliver the right expertise and have a large pool of skilled engineers to support your applications, then you need to find the right partner.

This does not mean that bringing in a partner to run those applications should simply be about outsourcing systems just to keep the lights on. 

On the contrary, if you get the right partner with the right skills who is invested in your business goals, you will not only solve some of your skills headaches but will have a partner able to help optimise and modernise those applications in parallel to your focus on other areas of the business.

A more unified approach

For example, we have helped our clients to develop specific application functionality in diverse fields such as core banking and smart metering for utilities, because we have the industry and business application knowledge.

The right partner can help its clients manage the complex footprint of in-house applications, and private and public cloud implementations. The partner should also be able to scale up and down based on the client’s needs.  

For example, if you are a retailer, the partner should be able to increase the team during peak retailing season to ensure the business operations always run smoothly. 

Creating a more unified support strategy can be a solution to these requirements. Firms only need to work with a single support partner to manage their hybrid IT environment, rather than dealing with multiple vendors. 

Whilst we too have not been immune to the challenges of Covid-19, we have recognised the need for agility to remain competitive. 

The unified support services offered to our clients allow us to nimbly respond to changing technology and business needs.  

We have thousands of engineers with deep capability waiting to plug the skills gap. This model has helped us improve our clients’ business outcomes while improving technology service quality, scalability, and delivery speed. 

The pandemic has shown the importance of being agile and flexible to survive and thrive changing with the demands of the market with a much more flexible approach.

• Taher Haj-Yousef is the Regional Managing Director at Rimini Street FZ LLC.