If you look up the title “consultant” across the three major salary tracking companies, Glassdoor, Payscale, and Indeed, you’ll find out that the average consulting salary is around $75,000 per year. Not bad. But what do those guys exactly do to get high salaries, and why are IT consulting services in such great demand? 

What is IT consulting?

It’s a set of services that help IT companies stay updated and competitive in the marketplace as per the latest technology trends.  IT consulting companies take a high-level view of an organization’s problems and find the best possible ways to optimize existing infrastructures.

How do IT consulting companies work?

There are several ways businesses use the services provided by  IT consulting firms. Consultants can be hired specifically for advice. They study the business flow and find areas that need upgrading. For example, an IT consultant can recommend relevant types of software and systems to use. 

A lot of software companies offer IT consulting alongside software products or software development services. This allows clients to get already customized software or to customize newly-purchased out-of-the-box software for their needs. 

IT consultants can also specialize in the maintenance of a company’s systems. This way, they provide IT consulting and managed IT services on a daily basis. Companies can hire them to support their in-house IT team or replace it.

What are the benefits of using IT consulting services?

An IT consultant has the necessary expertise that will help your company to become more efficient and increase your return on investment (ROI). Take a look at some of the major benefits.

Focus on core business functions. By delegating IT issues to a professional, you let your employees dedicate their time and efforts on their primary jobs. 

Cost savings. Hiring a full-time employee will lead to considerable expenditures on salary and workspace. Consultants are often hired to tackle a particular problem within a specific timeframe.

Security increase.  Cybersecurity consultant conducts an assessment of your network to identify possible vulnerabilities and patch them before an actual security breach happens.

Employee retention. Employees want to do what they were hired to do. Within a particular time frame, IT consultants can solve your efficiency problems and help you retain employees from going to another company that offers the responsibilities that are within their field of interest.

Hiring an IT consultant

You need to understand what problem you want to solve and hire an IT consultant with expertise specifically in this area:

Technology Consulting. It can be IT performance enhancement, IT infrastructure design and architecture, or backup and disaster recovery.

Strategic IT Planning and Consulting. For example, monitoring the returns on your IT investments and analyzing outsourcing costs.

Cloud Consulting. Performance, day-to-day management, and migration, etc. 

IT Security Consulting. SIEM consulting, penetration testing, compliance review, etc. 

VoIP Services Consulting. VoIP troubleshooting, 24×7 support, design, and configuration.

How to find the right IT consultant?

Hiring an independent IT consultant is obviously beneficial. Yet, finding the one who’s qualified isn’t easy. What really matters is the ability to follow business goals and build up rapport. Can the consultant really understand your business goals? The knowledge of technology is brilliant but it is even more important to know how your specific business can benefit from this technology. The best IT consultants are those who are equally good at communicating with your internal IT staff and business executives. It takes a great deal of professionalism to have all key stakeholders on the same page about what the company needs.

To make a good choice, analyze the skills and competencies of candidates carefully; look at how well they understand your business and how they interact with your team—all these factors matter.