When you need an IT consultant
It’s predominant in the general business that IT consultants are these geeks you invite when you have a virus, or your printer doesn’t work - or when you need to move your offices and need to configure your network.
This is of course most of us are capable of doing anyway, but this doesn’t define our speciality, it’s merely a support role.
What I believe is - it really pays to put more trust in IT consultants.
Most of us are geeks who like gadgets and new technologies.
We like everything that is cool.
But surprise, surprise! These cool things are not cool because they give weird sounds or change colours - they allow people to do some stuff quicker or more efficiently.
We all know about Mail Merge feature in Word, but I don’t know many clerks who actually use that feature on a daily basis, and most of them would hugely benefit from it, since a large chunk of their jobs is sending the same (or similar) letters/documents to different people.
You can always send these people to trainings and tell them to “get on” with their duties. And they will - eventually, after spending days in trainings and only learning one or two things, they will gain new skills, but if they lack the motivation to keep brushing their skills, this gain will eventually deteroriate.
Everyone of us knows the feeling, that there’s simply too much to do, the Inbox is always full and the day is too short.
But, when we pause to organise our work little better - we free up more time!
This is where IT consultants come to the rescue - they don’t know anything about your daily duties, so you need to explain everything to them as you go. When doing that you will both start to see repetition and common sources of problems you encounter every day.
And in most cases the consultant will offer you a solution to your headaches.
It is really easy to get bogged down in the Todo list for Today and not think about your efficiency, but trust me, optimising your work not only makes you less stressed, it also improves the quality of your work and saves you money!
Of course, with IT consultants you need to be vigilant, they will sometimes try to sell you what they specialise in, not what you need, so always do a Return On Investment forecast before you actually commision any work to them.