Consultants have become a big part of modern business culture. A consultant is someone who gives expert advice, and businesses have come to trust consultants in times when they need more niche expertise or an outside perspective on a project. This can allow your business to save time and money, as well as increase your competitiveness and professionalism.
In recent years, IT consultants have become even more important as Information Technology has changed the way that businesses operate. Keeping up with the trends and changing technology can be a full-time job on its own. Combine that with managing a full-time IT department can become very overwhelming and expensive. An IT consultant has the expertise you need, can guide your company to be more efficient, and help increase your return on investment.
Focus on core business functions
No matter what industry you are in, employees work best when able to focus on their core skills. Almost all employees are the most productive working on what they do best. The frustrating and distracting task of trying to work out technology projects and specialized task has a real cost. By making use of an IT consultant, your employees can focus their time on their actual job and increase your bottom line.
Enjoy help from a specialist
Having an IT department can be useful when you need the printer fixed quickly, but that same person probably will not have, for example, the experience in cloud solutions that will help reduce on-site infrastructure and operational expenses. An experienced IT consultant will have completed previous projects like yours. Knowing that your business is being helped by an expert can give you peace of mind and increase the chance of success.
Get an outside take on your operations
Technology can be a disrupting factor. Just because something has been done one way for many years, does not mean that it cannot be done in a more efficient and effective way. An outside consultant can offer a new perspective based on their knowledge and help your organization to increase growth and improve overall efficiency.
Cost-effective
The value of IT consultants covers a lot more than just the cost reduction of their efficiency strategies. Paying for a salary, benefits, workspace, and all the other expenses of a full-time IT employee can quickly add up. Consultants are usually hired to tackle a particular project on a deadline, which allows for more efficient and cost-effective use of time.
Increased security
Cybersecurity has never been more critical than it is now. Large corporations are not the only ones at risk; small businesses get targeted in the majority of cyber-attacks and many of those small businesses that fall victim to hacks end up going out of business not long after the cyber-attack. An IT consultant who specializes in cybersecurity can carry out an assessment of your network to find any possible vulnerabilities, set up data security protocols, and help you to put in place a disaster recovery plan and solution. They can also train your employees to identify viruses or other potentially dangerous malware.
Improve productivity and efficiency
IT consultants are experts on emerging technologies and their jobs depend on helping companies to find new ways to improve their productivity and efficiencies. Technologies that help companies to reach these goals range from file servers, central databases, mobile platforms and many others. To best make the use of the benefits of these technologies, they need to be planned, implemented, and managed properly.
Experience and expertise
Identifying what areas and steps of your business processes can be cut out for efficiency requires experience from prior, similar projects. A consultant can recommend a solution that will work best for your business and give you the knowledge of how to best implement the solution, what mistakes you need to avoid, and can train your team on how to use the new solutions. This is the best way to make sure that your project goes as smoothly as possible, is delivered on time and that your company gets the best ROI.
Access to wider breadth of knowledge
In business, economies of scale can give you an advantage, but the high barriers of entry often prevent small businesses from benefitting. This is also true in IT. IT consulting firms can afford to keep experts on staff as they can use them on multiple accounts. As a small business hiring a consultant, you get access to the expertise without having to pay for or commit to anything long term like hiring a full-time employee. Even small businesses can make use of economies of scale and gain the benefits of expert advice as the expert is shared between multiple clients. Even if you have the most competent network engineer on staff, he’s not likely to be an expert in cybersecurity, cloud migrations, mobile platforms, and everything else. A consultant means that your business can access experts outside of your usual areas, but you don’t have to pay for the consultants when you don’t need the help.
Attract and retain employees
Employees want to do what they were actually hired to do. Smaller companies that are rapidly growing often give their employees more jobs and responsibilities. This is rarely a sustainable model to keep using as your accountant who was hired to be in charge of your bookkeeping and not to work out issues with your network. This often leads to frustrated employees and poorly managed IT systems that can cause downtime and low efficiency. Hiring an IT consultant will solve those efficiency problems by putting in place the right solutions and it will also help you keep the employees you have, instead of moving on to another company.
Managing IT staff
Managing IT staff adds another burden to already busy managers of other departments as they are not aware or not interested in the metrics that can determine the success of an IT department. Much like adding new employees, there is the added cost for paid time off, benefits, bonuses, and so on that won’t be a problem with a consulting company.
