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Greg Scileppi
Hiring and selecting a consultant can be a success when guidelines in place and followed. Considerations include aligning the consultant with the business plan and objective, identifying technical and nontechnical skills from programming to industry-specific knowledge that will be required, and senior managements expectations on the project. Preparing for a consultants arrival, including designating an in-house contact person and establishing a work space, also maximizes the time used to get the consultant up to speed in the organization.
As rapid technological advancements continue to reshape the corporate world, the use of on-site consultants has gone from an occasional tactic to a constant strategy. With the migration from legacy mainframe systems to client/server architecture in full swing, consultants are brought in to provide immediate expertise on a range of projects, including systems development and programming, building databases, and directing business process reengineering efforts.
Managers reap many benefits from this approach. Hiring consultants, either as individuals or as a work team, enables companies to maintain a core group of permanent staff members, thus streamlining personnel expenditures. Consultants help ensure smooth work flow through predictable and unpredictable busy periods. Even more importantly, consultants provide valuable expertise and guidance that may be lacking among existing staff. Exporting this knowledge throughout the company in turn enhances the value of the information technology (IT) department.
As managers develop their staffing plans, the first step is to determine what work is best performed by permanent staff and what tasks can be performed more effectively by outside consultants. Quite commonly, for example, many IT departments have a core group of permanent professionals on staff whose primary mission is two-fold:
Consultants can play a major role in both areas. To help determine the kind of consultants needed, managers should examine the project from the broadest possible view. Questions to ask include:
Answering these questions helps determine staffing needs. Managers may discover, for example, that the installation of a new client/server application requires two mid-level consultants, or that customizing a sales lead tracking program calls for a senior consultant with experience in marketing.
Of ultimate importance is clarifying how to best supervise the consultant. A senior-level consultant, for example, might well answer to both the higher ranks of the IT department and executives within the particular department that IT is serving. Midlevel consultants are often managed by others within the IT department, as are consultants who bring specialized expertise but lack supervisory skills.
No matter what experience level the department requires, managers can maximize productivity if they appoint one of their employees as the consultants day-to-day contact person. This does not mean, however, that others cannot communicate with the consultant. Establishing a single point of contact is primarily intended to simplify the organization of the consultants activities. This employee should also play a key role in helping to hire the consultant. All of this from the consultants level of expertise to the responsibilities of his or her supervisor should be clearly communicated to the IT staff to guarantee against confusion about the consultants objectives and scope of authority.
Managers should make sure as they clarify the project that they consider the full range of skills necessary to complete it. Though considering only technical knowledge is tempting, they should not stop at that point. As IT professionals continue to work more closely with line managers in various departments, the issue is to know more than the intricacies of a specific technology; this is vital. Interpersonal skills are extremely important if the consultant is to train end-users on how to use an application best. Written and verbal skills can also play a factor when a cogent explanation is necessary to explain the value of a new application or system to senior management.
Another major element in selecting a consultant is budget. Whereas answering the above questions should help in calculating the projects estimated length, determining how much to pay a consultant is not always easy. Before contacting any consultants, managers should investigate rates for the skills they need. Some consultants charge by the hour, some by the project. Each has its pros and cons. The key, though, is to determine which is most appropriate for a particular department or company given its budget parameters, policies, and most of all, what is needed to complete the project as effectively as possible.
In many ways, finding a consultant is similar to hiring a full-time employee: The organization is looking for someone who can do first-rate work. The critical difference is that a consultant should require an absolute minimum of training time that is, a brief, but comprehensive, explanation of the project and the authority to move ahead as quickly as possible.
Every IT department has probably already been approached by several consulting firms. Managers should start by reviewing perspective consultants background materials. Managers should then contact experts within their own companies and colleagues within their own industries. Everyone more than likely has several colleagues outside their companies whose opinions they respect. Of course, they will want to do this with discretion to avoid releasing proprietary projects to too many people.
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