The outsourcing industry is on the rise in the UAE. Lindsey McDonald, an information and communication technologies consultant for the Middle East and North Africa at Frost & Sullivan, discusses how to get into the industry and what services companies should focus on.
How easy is it for companies to get into outsourcing here?
It's much easier than in other countries. The key things you need are office space and a very good communications structure. You also need to have good infrastructure in terms of transport and housing. You have all of that here. The fourth thing you need is the level of skills. You need to know that when you come into a market you have 50 Arabic speakers, 50 English speakers and then Hindi and the other languages. That's here.
Which industries would you recommend?
The lower hanging fruit in the UAE is the banking sector and the retail sector. Things such as loyalty cards are becoming important. It's quite nascent here but it's something that we're seeing a lot of growth in. The public sector is also very interesting, so being able to apply for your driving licence online, all of that sort of stuff. The same thing is happening here in the UAE. That needs call centre support in case something goes wrong. In the next five years we expect to see growth in health care, things like medical insurance claim-filing. Or telemedicine where for instance you have a health card and all of your information is on it, so you will get a call to remind you to go for your check-up.
Any others?
Travel and tourism are also becoming more important. Information technology is massive and that's never going to go away, but IT support in this country is not really as viable as perhaps India where it's just completely low cost. IT support in this country is becoming more high end, so for instance the specialisation of certain applications and also the ability to support the Arabic interface, that's where we see a real niche in the UAE. But right now I would say finance and the government sector are the easiest to get into as it's where the biggest number of clients is.
What sort of challenges could outsource start-ups face here?
The biggest challenge for now would probably be some of the communication costs, such as phone calls and internet. They're still relatively high. But they're coming down all the time so I don't think that's going to be a challenge for much longer. One element that's quite challenging here is the level of compliance because it's not necessarily industry-wide. There are definitely companies with fantastic international standards but you can't always be guaranteed that here so I think ensuring that finding the right partner is probably a challenge at times.
* Gillian Duncan
