Ways to manage IT Resource Requirements beyond Outsourcing

You will find that there are several reasons which require that you top up your IT resources – a couple of common reasons are seasonal trends and projects. In general, larger companies have built-in additional resources to deal with the highs and lows of demand. However, this is not the most efficient or cost effective model. For organisations which are small and medium sized, it is often a case of “just coping” leading to higher costs and lower efficiencies.

A common challenge that many companies face is dealing with difficult and often unforeseen requirements. A suitable partner however could have innovative solutions to help you in such a state of affairs:

1) Interim & Ad hoc IT resources
This is the perfect solution if you do not have the capability, or you will lose basic IT support for your business, when you need to manage additional or short term projects. In such situations the partner either provides the additional resource for the project, or a resource to back fill your own staff from their talent pool, allowing your team to devote time to the project, without risking any lack of service to the business.

2) Short Term & Interim IT resources
This is the best solution when you need interim and fixed short term back up. You would have noticed that companies often undergo change which maybe planned or unplanned resulting in emergency support requirements during work overloads, specialist skill requirements, or resource requirements to deal with continuity management, change management and skills transfer.
Employing contractors directly will be both expensive and complicated. Here, the partner delivers the specialist skills as and when required in all these situations.

3) Flexible IT resources
We recommend that you take a pro-active approach when you plan for IT resource requirements and focus on preparing yourself for the unexpected staff shortages that spring up during holidays, sickness and urgent projects. A solution that will counter unpredictability by being flexible will be ideal such as a system where you can be provided with credits similar to pay as you go mobile phone tariffs, which you can pre-purchase in advance and use as when your require with no fuss and no hassle. That is, you will purchase resource credits from your partner and over the course of a year, you can exchange them for a wide range of skills that can be deployed anywhere at any time. This will relieve the pressure of staff shortages, IT projects or major roll-outs across a number of countries.

When you use these services you will benefit in the following ways:

1. Reduce the need for maintaining bench and underutilised staff
2. Ensure work continues and backlog does not mount providing a unique intermediate solution when faced with a decision between permanent or contracted staff
3. No inflated salaries and resentment or competition between existing staff
4. Improve flexibility and eliminate employee liability
5. Projects, SLA’s or backfill requirements will not be put on hold, minimising any downtime
6. Reduce employer liability and the costs associated by the employee being accountable to your partner
7. Ensure that you adhere to the complex European laws
8. Get fiscal reimbursements should the candidate leave or not work out
9. Eliminate any contractor or employment liabilities including IR35
10. Gain talented staff who match your organisation requirements without any of the HR/Payroll or recruitment costs
11. Decrease downtime and risk management with the purchasing of resource credits to provide maintenance when you don’t know you’ll need it!

You will see that Allied Worldwide's IT Resources Recruitment solutions helped their client to efficiently manage technical resource requirements at their locations across Europe, resulting in a reduction in their overall expenditure by approximately £250,000 per annum. You can read more about how a leading manufacturing firm reduced overall costs using flexible resources.

These bespoke solutions offer the transfer of employee’s, taking them on permanently and allowing you to only pay for the time you require whilst maintaining the same long-term employee carrying limited liability. We understand that longer serving employee’s (eg. 10+ years) carry a large cost with increased salary increments over the duration of employment, a very common dilemma in the West. This solution provides a happy interim when firms want to retain costly long-serving employees but also want to capitalise on the cost-savings which come with a new employee.