Impact On The Non-IT Globally-Competing Firm

For a non-IT globally-competing firm, the Saudi market offers some attractiveness of IT. Setting up small-scale operations is fairly easy, the current IT infrastructure and prudent planning and can give the firm a competitive advantage. Such advantage will enable these operations to expand, but on the long run and as demands increase costs can run higher than expected. Local manufacturing is also attainable based on the current IT. With the country in the process of upgrading its infrastructure, this means greater flexibility, capacity and lower cost in the future. In addition, skilled labor and experts are also available in abundance. On the other hand several issues have to be taken into consideration, the first is Availability. In Saudi Arabia, availability is a big issue, demand is always ahead of supply in the area of IT, which in some cases can be disastrous for a business. The second issue is cost; the current costs involved are able to give a firm an advantage through IT locally. Once the firm tries to compete on the regional or global level, these advantages start to diminish. Finally, there is the issue of quality, depending on the location and services needed the level of quality differs. The quality level is not so high, but based on the nature of business a solution can be reached. Finally, when it comes to the issues of supporting IS, such as HR, training, cost and quality it seems that there is nothing to be concerned about at the time.