If you are looking to hire an IT Support Company to assist you in your business, it is a good idea to first assess the overall quality of the technical consultants they have at their disposal.
The quality between companies can differ drastically, and how much that is going to matter really depends on the kinds of uses that you are going to put them too.
In the same way that it is easy to talk about “IT Experts” with that term becoming virtually meaningless, the same is true of Technical Consultants, because it doesn’t really impart any additional knowledge as to how long a consultant has worked in a particular area, or how wide there level of experience really is.
In many respects, technical consulting is a little like seeking out a hired gun to be on your team. Normally, when they are called in, it is because a higher level of technical expertise is called for than can be offered from within the business itself.
They are typically used on “special” projects, or areas where they may need to jump in quickly to solve a specific and difficult problem, before leaving.
They are needed when the overall skill level that is being asked for is greater, but the firm that is hiring them needs to be absolutely certain that the job will get done, and to an acceptable standard.
Common areas where technical consultants are employed would include engineering firms, science projects and IT Solutions that were of a higher order of complexity.
It is typical for good technical consultants to have Masters Degrees and quite common for them to have Doctorate degrees. So the impact they can have on a project is great, because not only do they tend to have a great deal of practical experience, but also a large theoretical body of knowledge that they can apply to any particular situation.
The most important aspect of being a “hired gun” is that you have to be better than everyone else! The typical reason why someone would hire a technical consultant in the context of IT Solutions would be to:
1. Achieve the full potential of their current IT setup.
2. Get ideas as to how they could do things better or differently.
3. Solve a particularly tough or seemingly intractable problem.
4. Gain knowledge in a particularly arcane piece of computer technology (for example to operate an aging Mainframe Computer setup in a bank)
5. Gain knowledge in a very new piece of IT Software or technology where very few people currently have enough skill to do the required job.
All of these are good reasons why a client may wish to call in a technical consultant.
In IT Support particularly, it is important to realize how quickly software and technology can become outdated, and so it may not be economic for a company to have a full time member of staff to cover for that technology.
However, it may still need maintenance, and may even be mission critical in the business, so it is important that it is supported.
This is exactly where a technical consultant can come in useful, because they can become available when needed, but are not paid for by the client when not.