For many enterprises, it makes sense to outsource to an IT Consulting firm. You can bring in IT support only when you need it, (which is usually more cost-effective than employing permanent IT staff), and you can be confident that the IT consultants assigned to your business are highly professional, abreast of changes in the industry related to the latest products, advances in technology and cybersecurity, and have all those essential skills needed to help your business go through a process of change.
If you’re considering whether or not working with an IT consulting company is the right direction to take in terms of moving your business forward, the following is an outline of the benefits of working with an external IT consultancy, and of what kind of work they usually perform. We hope it helps.
Consider your business needs
It’s a universal position for enterprises to be in—you need to set yourselves up for the future, and having the right IT structures in place is key to ensuring your business can operate successfully, both now and down the track.
Though the following list is not exhaustive, your business or organisation will likely fit into one of the following categories:
- Your business needs to move forward when it comes to IT services.
IT services in your business are functioning, but you’re not confident they’re future-proof. You have limited awareness of what advantages could be gained if you went through an IT overhaul, and you aren’t sure what IT solutions are available. You need help selecting which products and services will be the best fit. Help from an outside group to understand how to progress is the logical step to move your business ahead.
- You have well-qualified IT staff, but implementing change in your business has proven a challenge.
You need support to assess the current state, develop a strategy to move forward, set up well-functioning systems, and roll out changes.
- Your business is in its infancy and needs help to get IT Services up and running.
You know it doesn’t make financial sense to hire permanent staff to look after your IT needs. You need outside support. You have a great internal IT team, but there’s a particular project you need extra support with. Your existing team is too busy with BAU work to be across this particular project, and/or they don’t have the full range of skills required to implement the changes effectively.
- You don’t know where to start.
You know you need well-functioning IT systems, but you don’t have the capacity to be across all the details. You’d much prefer to leave the ‘IT stuff’ to a team of IT consultants with the right expertise to handle the job.
What does an IT Consulting firm offer?
An IT consulting package will offer a range of services that include the following.
IT Project Management
An IT consulting firm can assist with the running of your Project Management Office (PMO). They can help you deliver projects that will improve functions and services in your business. This may involve optimising an existing PMO, or deploying a completely new one.
Whichever the case, an IT consulting firm will send in consultants with expert knowledge and experience to match the project in question. In addition, they’ll have the relevant project management skills to work seamlessly with your staff.
Technetics IT Consulting in Melbourne offers project management support in the following forms:
- Recover troubled projects. Our experts can diagnose problems and develop strategies to quickly correct a project’s course.
- Provide interim leadership. When you need an expert to take charge of a project, our consultants can step in. This could be when a leader is on leave, or is overstretched, and can be for a short or long duration.
- Supplement resources. When you have staff shortages, we can provide expert Project Managers and Business Analysts (and more) to keep you topped up.
- Fill skill gaps. In situations where your project staff need assistance in areas they’re unfamiliar with, or don’t have capacity to handle project tasks in addition to their existing responsibilities, our IT consultants can step in and help.
IT Strategy
An IT consulting company can help develop your business’s IT strategy in the short, mid and long term. At Technetics IT consulting Melbourne, we help you:
- identify your business goals
- determine timeframes for achieving goals
- work out how best to resource tasks
- determine whether or not third party companies are required to help you achieve success.
There are a myriad of benefits to having an impactful IT strategy. These include an increase in IT efficiency, a better idea of where your business can head, an increase in competitive advantage, more effective forecasting of IT resource utilisation, and more efficient spending on IT resources.
IT Resourcing
An IT consulting firm can supply a range of IT staff to your organisation on a temporary or long-term basis, so you don’t need to worry about the costs involved with recruiting and managing permanent staff. You also don’t have to choose and stick with one specialist alone, but can mix and match as needed.
In the case of Technetics IT resourcing, we supply expert staff with skills and experience in a range of IT specialties, including Security, Infrastructure, Analysis across Business, Process, Systems and Data, Change Management Consultancy, and more.
Advantages of working with external IT consultants
There are numerous pros to outsourcing your IT needs to an IT Services group. Here’s a list.
IT consulting firms have the experts at hand
As they say, it takes a village to raise a child. It also takes a wide range of IT experts to resolve certain IT challenges within a business, and set up a business for future success.
While you may have highly-experienced IT staff within your organisation, their experience may not be a match for the knowledge and experience of a broad team of IT consultants who specialise in different IT areas.
An IT consultancy can offer the optimal mix of services for your business.
IT consulting firms have the experience
An IT consultancy can offer staff with experience working across a range of sectors. They will have a wealth of experience helping businesses like yours. With this repeat experience of rolling out new technologies, they know the challenges and the pitfalls, and how to avoid them.
IT consultants will know how to make an effective business case to sell change to your leadership groups. They can also recommend the best methods for implementing and communicating changes to your entire organisation.
IT consulting firms have many industry partners
The task of procuring hardware and software for your organisation can be challenging. A DIY approach is fine, but it may take longer than it would if you used the procurement services of an IT consultancy. (A lot of research is required to hone in on reliable vendors, wait times may be longer than you’d like, and you may not obtain the optimal price.)
An IT Consultancy will have connections to reputable industry vendors (Technetics IT Consulting in Melbourne have an IT Procurement Team handling such requests). They make the job easy by determining best pricing and stock availability, and can help you get your software and hardware integrated into your environment as quickly as possible.
IT consulting firms know cybersecurity
Cybercriminals are perpetually inventive and will always try new and unexpected ways to infiltrate business IT systems. If their efforts are successful, it can have a hugely detrimental impact.
IT Consulting firms have up-to-the-minute expertise in IT security. They’re constantly on guard for new cybersecurity threats, and can perform penetration testing, risk management, security awareness training and dark-web monitoring (amongst other measures) to prevent cybercriminals interrupting your business.
IT consulting firms know cloud services
Introducing cloud infrastructure and applications is a logical step forward for many businesses, due to the reliability, scalability, and comparatively reasonable cost of working in the cloud. Rolling out cloud services can have its challenges, however, especially when information security factors are considered.
An IT consulting company will take such factors into account and help you implement and manage Microsoft 365 cloud applications and the Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure without fuss.
Technetics Consulting
Technetics offers all the IT expertise your business needs to progress your IT needs. We operate in Melbourne and beyond. Contact us today to discuss your IT support needs.