Hiring IT Consultants – What Are The Benefits?

With economic pressures bearing down on both large and small firms, the pressure to change the way in which things are done is mounting. Times are changing and the way in which a modern business works is constantly evolving and moving forward, especially when it comes to technology. So why does it now make more sense to hire IT consultants for projects instead of using your in-house tech department?

IT Consultants

Expand Your Base

Some business owners may be sceptical about the idea of hiring consultants to come in from outside their company and essentially ‘tell them how to do things’. However, this view can sometimes be ego-driven and is often proved not to be the case. Consultants hold their positions because they know what they’re doing. Besides which, it can often be crucially beneficial to projects, especially creative work, marketing, or system planning/redesign, to have a fresh opinion from the outside. Consultants are there to help you and your business, not just to come in and get paid to tell you the time with your own watch.

Even if your internal staff have come up with amazing ideas and possess a vast understanding of your business and how it works, the consultant can bring proven, tried and tested methods to the table and re-work these into successful ways to help your particular project. They have used these methods before and have learnt what works and what doesn’t, as well as how and why these methods have proven to be successful. Working together, you could come up with something twice as good as you could on your own.

Cost Savings

Most importantly for many businesses, it costs a lot less to call in consultants as and when you need them instead of paying to maintain an entire department. This is especially true for SMEs who lack an IT team entirely, but is also true for those who wish to keep a small team in-house but expand capability for larger one-off projects. As well as saving on salaries, employers are able to avoid paying secondary and hidden costs such as pension contributions, payroll taxes, and sick pay.

Gain Skills As You Require Them

As we all know, IT is something that can be hard to keep up with. New technologies are released constantly, and with these come new methods of working. This leads us to another reason as to why IT consultants could be the best choice for your your business – managers need not worry about having to get too involved in the IT project and can utilise valuable time elsewhere in the company. You don’t need to train an external consultant as they already have the skills and knowledge that businesses need; some skills that may not currently exist in-house.

Another perk is that IT consultants only need to be hired and brought in when a big project is coming up, offering businesses more flexibility and giving them a little extra money to play around with. This extra revenue could mark the difference in being able to really push the limits of the company and can make that extra room needed for sustainable growth.

Katie Barnes writes for Penman, a specialist Cloud Computing IT consultancy based in London.