Hire IT Consultants: Roles, Responsibilities and Benefits
Business consultants are no less important than lawyers or doctors. Everything is quite simple and obvious with law and health, but what about business experts? Well, IT consultant company will save your business from a lot of problems and even help to make it better and more profitable. In the opposite case, if you decide to rely solely on your own expertise, sooner or later you will reach the peak of your knowledge and your business, at best, will stop developing, which in our time is equal to a rapid fall into the abyss of oblivion. Therefore, we will talk about the narrowly focused specialization of advisers and the reasons why you need to hire an IT consultant company.
What Is an IT Consultant and Where to Find Them
IT consulting or computing consultancy is a huge and rapidly developing layer of consulting services. The IT consultant definition tells us that this is an advisory service that helps clients to access different technology strategies and use information technologies to achieve their business objectives.
If a company wants to use modern technologies and keep up with the times, then it needs to obtain such expertise. It will help any business to be competitive in the market, monitor trends, and add value to the company. In the field of IT consulting, there are four main branches.
- Professional IT consultant services that you can buy whenever your business needs expertise.
- Staffing firms (IT technical consulting firms) which can help your business with the absence of needed professionals, tech skills or if you want to start some tech project or to power up the ongoing one.
- Independent consultants – self-employed or employees of staffing companies.
- IT security consultants. The role of IT consultant company of the last kind is becoming more important with the development of internet technology, hacking and black markets. As you can see, depending on what are your goals the definition of what is an IT consultant can be quite different.
Depending on the resources you can spend and the quality of expertise that you want to achieve, there are several options for getting the information support you need. First of all, you can hire an IT consultant as your local in-office expert or even create a whole department of IT consulting. Or you can use the services of a separate IT consultant company to get a timely professional workforce. The prices are pretty high but it is still cheaper than making your own team. Also, you can get help from a freelance IT consultant but pay attention to the reviews and the list of completed works.
Brief Overview of the Global IT Consultants Market
To intimate that the IT consultancy market has boomed is an understatement. A recent report released by Consultancy UK has shown that the market has grown to reach $44 billion. This means that the market has doubled in size since 2017 as it stood at a mere $23 billion. One of the key factors that have led to this explosive boom is the clamor to digitize by businesses looking to keep overcome challenges posed by their digitally savvy competitors. This compounded with many other factors means that the market will continue on this exponential growth trajectory in the years to come.
IT Consulting Industry Trends in 2019
The growth in the IT consultancy industry has spawned notable opportunities both for the small and top IT consultant firms. However, only the companies with a multidisciplinary working model, a large pool of skilled talents, and compartmental teams that can oversee an entire digitalization process from start to finish will enjoy a disproportionate advantage over their smaller counterparts.
With that said, there are multiple mega-trends happening within the overall tech consultancy industry that any skilled digital transformation consultant should keep an eye on.
For starters, technological innovations surrounding cloud computing are providing numerous new opportunities for professionals within the IT consulting industry. Companies are looking to reap the benefits of cloud services like cost-effectiveness and are pumping more of their investments in this sector.
Another growing trend within the IT consulting industry is the increasing adoption of virtualization. Both the developing and established markets are rapidly embracing virtualization as it helps in streamlining the integration of different processes, and it’s forecasted to record a rising demand in the subsequent years.
Companies with limited time or expertise to design integrated software, write custom software, conduct testing, actualize technical projects, manage computer systems, as well as communications infrastructure, are also looking for the services of IT consulting outfits. Additionally, the growing demand within the realm of business information processes has compelled IT audit consultant to venture into business information processes designing and management.
Duties and Responsibilities of the IT Consultant Company or Expert
Okay, let’s say we figured out why do you need IT consultant company or at least the appropriate specialist. You have also seen the trends within the industry. But what exactly does an IT consultant do?? What are their responsibilities?
Below is a list of some of the responsibilities of an IT consultant:
According to TechnoJobs list of key IT consultant skills should contain strong time management, multitasking ability, communication, and analytical skills, understanding of potential issues and solutions. A good expert should fully understand the sphere of business of his client at the level of the company owner and know its needs. Both common and related to a specific time period and problems. The person must understand exactly how the company works, how exactly it receives income, its strengths and weaknesses, its target audience and the product or service it provides. In addition, based on the recognized weaknesses, the consultant should be able to build a detailed plan for their solution, including time and resources needed. That is what does an IT consultant do among other things.
Besides that, a really good consultant knows the best practices from the client’s business and understands that they are not always can be applied everywhere because they are not universal. He/she must be able to constantly keep in touch with software engineers and the IT support team in order to speed up finding and solving problems and be aware of all changes and decisions. It is also important for the consultant to be ready to travel around the country or even to other countries. Because a client’s business can be located in different places and specialist cannot always understand what the problem is from a distance, so it is better to always look at the situation from the inside. This is the reason why IT consultant rates per hour can be really high. So now if someone asks you what is an IT consultant and what are the tasks you will definitely know the answer.
What Benefits Will I Get for My Business If I Hire IT Consultant?
Suppose you hired a consultant to your company or decided to use the services provided by a third-party company. What will come of it and how can your business transform? According to Entrepreneur the role of a consultant in a company can go far beyond just an expert on issues in your business. Its role can be much deeper and more important than simply distributing useful advice and finding problems previously invisible.
Consultants from Outside
It’s worth starting with the fact that any consultant from outside can save a company a lot of money and energy while doing completely different company business. For example, advertising, accounting, career, insurance, headhunting, education, public relations, and management. This is not the final list of all possibilities of outsourcing experts you can find. And the most important thing is that such a consultant can be a catalyst for change that many companies need so much. He/she can do the dirty work that cannot be done by an internal employee. When a company has been operating for many years, it begins to stiffen, along with its canvas of work and corporate culture. Even if the top management and ordinary employees see this and are eager for change, there is not always someone who will say what and how to do it without feeling embarrassed to hurt someone’s feelings or not to break the long-tuned working mechanism. And here is where the expert appears. He/she can take a smart look at business and say that where the company needs to be changed, who should be fired, and which processes can be optimized. No one likes drastic changes, especially large companies, but they are often necessary to survive on the market. And salvation can only come in the form of a third-party IT software consultant who is not constrained by relationships with employees, internal culture, and who do not know the fear and regret the aging mechanisms that are pulling your business to the bottom.
IT Experts
If we talk specifically about IT consultants, they are extremely useful for almost any business. And the farther into the future, the more important they are. They will help protect your business if at least some part of it is in a digital environment. Dangerous viruses that can stop a company’s work for a long time, leak of important or confidential information, damage to physical data stores. All these things can’t be ignored. In addition, many processes can be optimized using IT technologies. If you will hire IT consultant on your side, your company will always be at the forefront of technological development and your employees will find it easier to focus on core work.
Factors to Consider Before Hiring an IT Support Consultant
The rapid growth of the IT consulting industry has also seen the emergence of imposters and unqualified IT consultants and companies proclaiming expertise, yet they have little or no experience.
To eliminate the stress of screening qualifying an education IT consultant, here are the 3 major factors to consider:
Experience
One of the best parameters of sieving impostors is by looking at the previously completed projects to gauge their experience. You need to check whether their previous clients are in the same industry as you, as well as how the consultant’s services helped solve their problems.
To do this, you can read the client’s testimonials or relative case studies within the company’s website. Additionally, when screening the individual or the company, ensure you ask in-depth questions concerning their prior experiences and specifically how they helped solve it.
And since many IT companies provide a wide array of services ranging from IT security, staffing, and full IT department management, you can date the prospect by starting out small before you jump into the bed with a bigger project.
Location
The technology infrastructure of a company is constantly changing and an issue requiring a dedicated team to solve it may arise. And since you are paying the consultant for their service, it only makes sense to get the best service possible. For this reason, if the potential IT consulting company isn’t located near your business, it should be conveniently located within or close to your timezone to avoid time overlaps.
Grossly overlapping time zones may bring your business operations to a grinding halt in case an emergency requiring immediate attention occurs, especially if the provider is not available to sort out the problem.
Communication
Before hiring an IT consultant, it’s super-important to ensure that they have effective communication skills. They must be able to listen to your business needs, recognize your challenges and business goals, and articulately convey all the technical details to you, detailing how they will help you solve the problems and achieve your goals.
IT Consultant Average Salary and Statistics
Let’s finally talk about money. What is IT consultant average salary and how much it will cost for your company to hire such an employee?
As the website Glassdoor tells us, the average salary of an IT consultant can vary from $41,000 to $91,000 per year. But this figure depends on many factors. For example, country, company, competence and work experience. It is clear that the senior IT consultant salary will get a lot more than junior. The average salary is kept at $62,000 a year and grows by about 5% per year. But let’s see how things are in specific countries. Because IT consultant companies in USA can pay less than others not because the lack of expertise or experience but because of great number of workers in that field.
According to the same site, the average salary of an IT consultant in the US is $64,000. The minimum starts at $44,000 and can go as high as $94,000 a year. Using the example of the Deloitte company, we can say that similar specialists in Canada receive from $44,000 to $116,000 per year, so it’s around $80,000 a year.. In England, the difference is much more striking. In London, senior IT consultant salaries start from $27,000 to $148,000 per year. As for Germany, the IT consultant can get an average salary of about $67,000 a year based on the salaries of Microsoft and Deloitte. Talking about Switzerland, the average salary of an IT consultant there is around $82,000. In any of these countries average IT consulting hourly rate, as you understand, can vary greatly depending on the company. Everything will also depend on a number of specialist parameters, such as work experience, completed projects, and so on. You can get more info if you’ll google “IT consultant resume sample” or “IT consultant resume example” and check everything about IT consultant cost.
For a small company, such salaries may seem unrealistically large. Not to mention the creation of your own team of consultants or a department within the company. That is why there are companies that provide services much cheaper for each case. For example, recruiting or process optimization.
As you can see, the variation in salaries is quite large depending on the country and even within the same country in different companies. If you google this question, then on Quora you can find quite a lot of information that the work of such a consultant can be very different from specialist to specialist. They can work on completely different tasks in the same field, solve a different number of problems and carry out tasks from monitoring specific problem areas of the company to the management of a group of specialists. So it’s not surprising that IT consultant average salary can be assessed differently depending on the workload, responsibility, experience and the type of tasks.
Why Ukraine Is the Best Place to Hire IT Consultants?
According to Business Ukraine and BBC, there are a lot of reasons to pick Ukraine, as a place to hire IT experts. For example, Ukraine emerged as the offshoring destination of the year according to the Global Sourcing Association in 2017. Moreover, 13 companies with R&D centers in Ukraine made it into the Global Outsourcing 100 list by IAOP. Also, the Global Innovation Index included Ukraine into its top 50 list on 33rd position.
Three main positive points about Ukraine’s bright tech future:
- Strong technical education
- Low running costs
- Growing startup sphere
Every year in Ukraine more than 400 educational institutions graduate than 36,000 tech experts. In addition, there are a lot of so-called “switchers” in the country, who change the scope of their expertise in the IT sector through self-study, online courses, schools, and obtaining additional higher technical education. Such people are attracted by the stability of the sphere, the universality of the application of their knowledge and high salaries. In accordance with the largest community of developers in Ukraine, DOU.ua, the IT staff pool grew by 27% in 2017 alone. Now the total number of tech workers in the country has exceeded 130,000. And yes, they have where to get experience, as there are more than 1,000 IT companies in the country, more than 2000 startups and more than a hundred international R&D centers. And there will be no problems with communication either because 80% of Ukrainian IT experts speak English.
As for prices, ten years ago they were the main factor that attracted Western companies to buy outsourcing services in Ukraine. Now the situation has changed and local experts have risen in price but still remain much more accessible than their counterparts from Western and Central Europe or the US. Another positive fact about money is the rather simple tax system of Ukraine. Flat income tax – 15%, corporate income – 18%, and single social contribution – 22% of each employee’s salary.
About 19% of all developers have more than 7 years of experience and the country ranks 5th in the top 25 countries of exporters of its services in the field of IT. Amazon bought Ring, Snapchat bought Looksery, and Google bought Viewdle. Ukraine, as you see, supplies world giants with cool companies. In addition, companies such as PetCube, Grammarly, DepositPhotos, Jooble, CleanMyMac have all started in Ukraine.
Ready to Get Some IT Consultants Expertise with Mobilunity?
Now you know exactly what is IT consultants, what is the role of IT consultant, how much they are paid, and why they are so important for any company. Especially if it is related to technology. You even know where the best of them are and why the whole world knows about Ukraine IT sphere.
So if you are ready to improve your business, review your working mechanisms, protect important information, or simply optimize the performance of your company, you can always contact us. You will not need to follow many processes that our experts can handle. Namely recruiting, introduction to work and support of work processes. We will help you to create a super-team of talented developers.
We work with almost all the technologies that are on the market and will definitely be able to find you the right property management website developers, engineer or manager. Even if you need employees with knowledge of foreign languages. Our recruiters do not just review resumes and find the right people. They evaluate workers according to a number of parameters and assess their key values so that it suits the company as best as possible and can be an effective mechanism for a well-coordinated team. We will do our best to find you the number of IT experts that you need and staff your company with the most talented of them.
Let us help you to hire IT consultants for your business. Contact us right now!
All salaries and prices mentioned within the article are approximate NET numbers based on the research done by our in-house Recruitment Team. Please use these numbers as a guide for comparison purposes only and feel free to use the contact form to inquire on the specific cost of the talent according to your vacancy requirements and chosen model of engagement.
