IT Consulting — 360 View, IT Outsourcing & IT Consultants — How Does it Help Your Business?
Outsourcing work to an IT consultant can help reduce costs, boost productivity, and improve efficiency.
Articles published February 19, 2020 by Holly Veeder
Never underestimate the impact that one hire can have on your business. And in today’s labor market, making even one hire can be more difficult than it sounds. When you’re looking to augment your workforce in a low-unemployment environment, qualified candidates can disappear as quickly as they apply. Identifying, recruiting, and retaining top talent is critical to any business, but holds particularly true in the information technology space.
Hiring professionals well-versed in technology has become increasingly important. Working with an IT consultant can help fulfill that need and allow you to bypass some of the current labor market challenges.
IT consultants are frequently brought in to help augment existing teams and make processes more efficient, helping shepherd various projects. But there are myriad ways partnering with a consultant can benefit your business.
Agile IT consulting services can help increase productivity and improve efficiency
According to the Project Management Institute, 71% of organizations in 2017 reported using an agile approach sometimes, often, or always. Is your company one of them? Perhaps you have attempted to implement agile project management methodologies, but have encountered a number of roadblocks ranging from team members overloaded with projects to project scopes that are unclear from the beginning before ballooning to unwieldy proportions.
The explicit goals of an IT consultant in Agile are to increase productivity and improve efficiency. That work starts at the early planning stage of your projects and continues on through the management phase to ensure that your business sees a higher success rate. Work loads are broken down into shorter segments and frequently assessed based on end user feedback, allowing your team to adapt, pivot, and work more effectively.
IT consultants are a simple and effective labor market solution
Mike Rice, president of Aureon Consulting, recently participated in a panel discussion for Business Record’s Newsroom 515. The topic was the current labor market, and one of the points Rice made, based on his years of experience in the information technology space, was that your typical long and arduous interview process is at odds with today’s low-unemployment environment. By the time you are bringing candidates back for a third or even fourth round of interviews, those candidates may not be available anymore.
One solution is not only to expedite the hiring process, but also consider alternatives such as contract-to-hire consultants. In this scenario, a consulting partner will pair your business with a qualified professional that possesses the skills you seek. This option is becoming commonplace in the area of IT services as it helps fill a necessary role in the short-term with the potential for long-term employment down the road.
A skilled IT consultant brings a lot of knowledge to the table and can quickly and effectively address any areas of need in your organization. Consultants are especially well-suited to work on projects with quick turnarounds, in large part because of their experience and knowledge of industry best practices. You need proven expertise that you can trust, and contract-to-hire consultants offer exactly that.
Consulting partners are an ideal solution for businesses looking to improve processes and create efficiencies while decreasing costs. Focus on finding a consulting partner that can assist your organization with the overall augmentation, support, and training of IT roles while helping keep overall IT spend within scope.
Ready to make your processes more efficient? Connect with Aureon and work with an IT consultant to help make your team more effective.