IT negligence is seen as a major constraint on growth

Hisham Farouk, Managing Partner of Grant Thornton, discusses IT negligence and its impact on growth.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) business community has been identified as the third most confident business community in the world, according to the Grant Thornton International Business Report (IBR), a quarterly survey of more than 3,000 businesses in 44 countries.

88% of UAE based businesses highlighted that they have an optimistic outlook for the economy over the next 12 months, with figures showing greater optimism than the UK and USA. 48% of businesses expect to hire employees which indicated double rate growth than that of the global average (24%) and expectations for increasing profits are up from 60% to 72% over the past three months further highlighting positive results for the future economic outlook.

The area of concern which UAE businesses do need to address is the lack of Information Technology (IT). IT was identified by 58% of UAE businesses as being a major constraint on growth.

The IT infrastructure is one of the most imperative elements in an ever-changing environment and fast paced growth oriented business. IT is no longer just an enabler of information transmission but has become the central hub of many businesses, supporting their strategic growth, securing their commercial intelligence and interacting and managing clients far beyond the traditional methods which were once adopted.

A number of firms view IT as an overhead and therefore offer minimal investment and development which results in a basic platform being embedded into the business. In these cases IT is seen as a facilitator as opposed to a value added enabler.

At Grant Thornton we advise a number of regional dynamic clients who have an aspiration for growth; we offer IT advisory consultancy and implementation from our highly technical specialists who offer hands on support and actionable advice to support growth within dynamic businesses.