3 Misconceptions Of IT Consulting Firms

3 Misconceptions of IT Consulting Firms

The IT talent shortage is a leading, national news headline. The majority of the articles out there focus on how large companies are attracting IT talent with unprecedented salaries, perks, and benefits. However, the businesses struggling to hire IT employees the most are small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), defined as those with less than 1,000 employees.

Oftentimes SMBs lack the strong brand identity needed to compete for talent. Candidates don’t seek them out for employment like they do for larger, well-known companies, so SMBs need to spend much more time recruiting employees. The IT talent shortage makes this issue much worse. If SMBs are able to find candidates, they don’t have the budget to win them over, given many candidates receive multiple offers.

As the talent shortage continues to grow, and, in fact, is predicted to get much worse, the alternative is to outsource IT work to consultants. However, there are three main reasons why SMBs have been hesitant to outsource their IT needs to a consulting firm.

1. IT firms can be seen as a threat.

This misconception stems from the fact that many businesses bring in consulting firms when things aren’t going well. These firms analyze your operations and make recommendations for improvement, which often includes restructuring teams or even letting employees go.

IT consulting firms are different. You can engage them in many different ways and for many different reasons.

On-demand, project-based support. Experienced IT consulting firms can provide tactical support for planned IT implementations, upgrades, and migrations, or take on more strategic projects like advising on departmental IT budgets and information security projects. Consultants can be a great fit for short-term projects that are outside the scope of an internal team’s day-to-day work or their areas of expertise.

Ongoing maintenance. IT consultants can increase the bandwidth and productivity of your existing team by taking over the time-intensive work that keeps them from focusing on other initiatives. Clients often engage our team to monitor systems, reducing alert noise and false-positives/negatives.

Strategic support. Consultants can advise IT leaders on their overall technology strategy or provide recommendations for specific software or systems. As an example, our team is often brought in to conduct vulnerability assessments, outlining specific ways to help businesses reduce risk and make their systems more secure.

1. Businesses are afraid to lose control over their IT operations.

IT consulting is not an all-or-nothing engagement. IT leaders often assume that working with an outside firm means that the consultants take on the work of the entire department. This is true in that they absolutely can - but it’s not the only option.

How do IT leaders manage an external resource? How do they measure their productivity and performance? Any successful consultant engagement needs to give businesses the same control and visibility as they have with their own team.

Having the right process and measurement tactics in place is key. At AIS, we share access to our management tools with our clients, including real-time dashboards and reports. Transparency helps to keep both internal and external resources aligned on initiatives. It also gives IT managers the insight they need to stay on top of their departments.

1. They're perceived as too expensive for SMBs.

Consultants and outsourcing are often equated with high price tags. Yet, many business owners have learned that there are significant cost benefits to partnering with an IT consulting firm, in a few different ways.

First, there are fewer operating costs when deploying consultants vs. full-time employees. SMBs can save on all of the costs associated with hiring an employee, including payroll taxes, unemployment insurance, workers' compensation and disability, and benefits including paid time off, sick days, and health insurance.

There is also a cost benefit to working with consultants given how quickly technology needs change. It doesn’t make fiscal sense to hire an employee for a short-term need, whether that’s a tactical project like a solution implementation or upgrade or a strategic initiative like a vulnerability assessment or guidance on a software buying decision.

By accessing an external team of experts for a wide range of needs, SMBs can scale up as needed without headcount approval, or scale down after projects are complete.

Ready to learn how AIS can support your IT team? Contact us at info@aislabs.com to start the conversation.