Employing an internal IT team is impossible for most small businesses. Hiring an IT consultant may seem like a significant investment, but as we will see below, it has the potential to transform your business.
IT expertise is now a necessary aspect of healthy business growth, and IT expect can help you keep up in today’s ultra-competitive market. Read on to find out the benefits of hiring an IT consultant.
1. Continuous Availability
In today’s high-tech world, there can be no time for breaks. Bugs, crashes, hacks, and DDoS attacks can happen 24/7. While an internal IT team adheres to office hours, your IT consultant will guarantee 24/7 coverage and continuous availability.
This continuous availability extends to periodic updates and bug fixes. You will have the latest patches when they launch, and not when your tech guy has time to apply them.
Moreover, IT consultancy services provide on-demand expert advice, which can help you make informed business decisions on the fly.
For example, you can just call your IT consultant and ask their opinion when discussing with your managers whether or not to invest in a social media marketing campaign.
2. IT Consultants are Cost Efficient
As we’ve seen above, having your own IT team can be prohibitively expensive. You don’t need to hire a dedicated team just to service a dozen computers and manage a handful of online assets. In simple terms, in-house IT employees are not scalable for small businesses.
On the other hand, partnering with an IT consultant can lend you their expertise without all the usual overhead, including taxes and benefits. IT consultants also come fully qualified, so there is no lost productivity due to training.
While you have to hire in-house talent, your IT expert may agree to work on a per-project basis. This is the most cost-efficient payment scheme you can hope for.
3. Your IT Consultant will Protect Your Digital Assets
As we have seen above, an IT expert can protect you from external security threats. By keeping an eye on trends in cyber security and ensuring your systems are up to date, your IT consultant will offer you top-tier security regardless of the size and scope of your company.
Moreover, your IT consultant will train your staff in expecting and dealing with security threats, lending their expertise across your company. This training will improve your workforce efficiency and help you avoid numerous human errors.
4. Web Design Viability
Your website is your face in the online world. While you can buy a pre-made website cheap today, having it run smoothly is another matter. An IT expert will help you pick the right themes and plugins for your website, and make sure it fulfills its intended business purpose.
Your site has to have some essential features while standing out from competing sites. It is hard to strike this fine balance without the aid of an expert. These features include specific plugins, content management systems, and e-commerce functionality if you are operating an online store.
5. Allows You to Focus on Growth
Perhaps one of the least obvious benefits of hiring an IT consultant is how it empowers your business growth. The correlation is obvious, but many business owners never realize the value of their time.
By entrusting part or all of your IT to an IT expert, you are freeing up time for you and your managers to focus on business growth.
A technical problem that would take hours for you to solve might be trivial for an IT expert. Taking your worries off technical problems and allowing you to focus on your business is something you can’t enjoy if you hire and manage your own IT team.
6. Improve Workplace Satisfaction
An IT consultant will also improve workplace satisfaction.
There is nothing more frustrating than malfunctioning computers at a desk job. Your employees are not IT professionals and will often struggle to deal with software updates, hardware crashes, and other technical problems.
Having an IT consultant available will help you deal with these nuances effectively and without hassle.
Properly maintained computers will improve the productivity of your employees, as well as their satisfaction. With faster loading speeds and no software bugs to worry about, your employees will be able to do more.
7. You Need an IT Consultant to Leverage Big Data
Today’s marketing and branding rely on the power of big data. Big data analytics allows you to make sense of diverse information to identify market patterns. Without big data, you are effectively blind in online markets, so you can’t just ignore it.
However, leveraging big data requires a specific skill set that no layperson can be expected to possess. Here is where your IT consultant can really help your business strategy in the long term.
With the power of big data, you will be able to reach your targeted demographics easier than ever before, identify underperforming products, and find the best timeframe to launch new offerings.
8. An IT Consultant Boosts Productivity
Today, there are thousands of business applications that can improve productivity and allow for more efficient collaboration across your company. An IT expert will be able to identify your business needs and suggest the right applications to boost your productivity.
IT technology services can enhance your production speed, your communication, and the efficiency of your branding with simple software applications. There are applications to help you monitor your workforce, optimize your production line, track shipments, improve communications, and many more.
9. IT Consulting Offers High ROI on Tech Investments
If you are setting aside an IT budget, you should consider investing it on an IT consultant. No other tech investment will yield such a high ROI as partnering with an IT expert.
Getting help from an IT consultant should be the first item in your IT to-do list if you are just starting out. There are numerous costly mistakes you can avoid with just a bit of guidance.
For example, you may be tempted to funnel your IT budget into a new website, but without knowing what type of website will make the biggest impact in your market, you risk of wasting your money on something that just doesn’t work.
Similarly, you may consider investing the majority of your IT funds into online marketing campaigns.
However, a poorly targeted campaign can do more harm than good and actually damage your brand image. All these problems, and many more become irrelevant with the help of an IT consultant.
10. Streamlines Staff Management
An IT consultant can help coordinate and educate your in-house IT staff. IT is a world of its own, and if you don’t have an IT manager to oversee your in-house IT employees, you might be wasting their potential.
Your IT consultant can act as a coordinator across all IT functions in your company. This will increase employee satisfaction, as well as efficiency.
Moreover, by coordinating your IT operations, an expert consultant may be able to aid you in managing your non-IT staff as well. You can achieve this with a combination of specialized software and best practices you can monitor through software applications.
11. Expertise on Demand
Finally, partnering with an IT consultant means that you have a trusted IT expert on demand. IT consultancy services offer come with decades of collective technical experience.
However, you have to be careful when choosing the right IT partner for you. Check out BestStructured for top-tier IT Consulting in LA. Working with an IT consultant is tantamount to teaming up with a proven IT company with broad expertise across multiple IT verticals.
Online marketing, SEO, and web design best practices change on a monthly basis.
In order to stay ahead of the competition and make sure you are not losing any revenue streams, you need the reliable experience of an insider. Your IT consultant will help you take advantage of new breakthroughs before they become big and keep up with your competitors.
Join the #1 Resource for Web Developers
Now that you know the value of a trusted IT consultant, come on in and check out more resources on web development at Codegeekz.
We aim to be the premier resource for web developers looking for information, including design trends, business tips, actionable information, and industry news.
Looking to be featured on Codegeekz? Contact us today!
