In the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, many companies have comprehended the potential and need for digital technology adoption to survive. In a world where customers have choices, and competitors are agile, innovation through technology is a must-have, for survival and for growth.
However, in a competitive market, nothing comes easy. Digital technologies are evolving at a rapid pace. What is current today is dated tomorrow. The technologies a company sets out to incorporate could be a thing of the past by the time it is implemented.
Should a company set out to master emerging technologies inhouse? After all, they have a core business to manage, which exists in the same competitive world. Besides, there is often a limit to the skills each IT resource can master. In such an environment, professional staffing in the form of engaging IT consultants and IT contractors creates a viable option for many.
Who is an IT consultant or IT contractor?
IT consultants and IT contractors are skilled professionals whose technical skills can be harnessed by a company on a contractual basis as a human resource consulting solution through a staffing firm. Usually available on a time-based fee, they often plug gaps in technology and skills for a company.
The individual providing the service could be operating as an independent contactor or could be the employee of a company that is in the business of IT consulting. What this means is that a company that is in need of IT consultants in certain areas, rather than hiring contractors individually, may choose to engage with the IT consulting company who, in turn, has people with multiple types of skills required by the client. Through this staff augmentation, the client need not enter into multiple individual contracts.
There are myriad skills through which an IT consultant can add value, with SCRUM, Cyber Security, SQL Server Development, Cloud Migration, Business Analysts, Data Science and Azure being just a few indicative ones. A staffing firm can help you tap into this world of professional staffing.
Why an IT contractor or IT consultant makes sense
The usual benefit about not having to manage the ‘human resources’ aspect of the worker, with salary payment, tracking of hours, statutory deductions, that a company offering human resource solutions is better placed to handle, has long been put forward, and all of that is true.
From the business and technology standpoint, there are a few additional advantages of engaging IT contractors:
- The consultant has a wider perspective, having plied his trade in other companies and encountered and solved other problems and challenges. Internal resources will only have experience of solving their own internal problems, which could be limited.
- The consultant may also be able to tap into other resources with whom he may have built a relationship through his trade, to bounce ideas around with and identify a more robust solution.
- An independent IT consultant can often present the true picture to a company that an internal resource may be reluctant to. For example, an internal IT resource, having grown with a certain technology, may find it difficult to recommend its burial.
- The goal of cost optimization, always a noble goal for a business, is also well served by using this strategy. Since the IT infrastructure of a company does not change every other day, the need for different skills currently not in the skillset of employees, may only be for a short period of time.
- IT consultants, with their skills as the calling card, have been found to be responsible professionals eager to do a good job, as that is the only way they will get their next assignment and the next. They can also push the internal resources to up their game.
Conclusion
IT is not just IT; it is everything. It is the bloodstream that courses through all functions of an organization.
IT contractors and IT consultants bring in much needed expertise, capacity and perspective that internal resources may lack. Engaging one, or more, through a provider of human capital consulting, should be a part of your IT strategy to meet ambitious goals.