Everything You Need to Know about IT Consulting and How It Can Help Your Business

What do you know about IT outsourcing? You have probably already heard that hiring an outsourcing software development team is a win-win strategy for many modern businesses. However, what if you can outsource not only the software development but the management as well? The way to do so - is to choose IT consulting services.

IT consulting has already become a must-have option for many small and even medium businesses from numerous industries. To cut a long story short, the modern market drives businesses to adopt new and emerging technologies and software solutions. Still, even some tech giants struggle with adapting to such rapidly changing terms and environments, commonly hiring IT consultants for advice and expertise.

So, what is IT consulting, what benefits do IT consulting services offer, and how can it improve and simplify business challenges? Let’s start with the very beginning.

What is IT Consulting?

So, what is IT consulting?

IT consulting is similar to team extension services. This is a process of hiring a consultant, a niche-experienced IT specialist, familiar with the technologies, industry specifics, and various software development processes, that happen under the hood.

Yet, unlike a regular software developer for hire, IT consultants are also familiar with business logic and know how to combine both technologies and your business goals to achieve the best possible results.

So, the main difference between hiring a dedicated software development team and choosing an IT consultant is their tasks. For instance, software developers are responsible for product development and technology implementation. At the same time, IT consultants decide what technology solution will be the most suited and beneficial for your product. To do so, they have to examine your business logic and strategy, learn various undergoing processes, define main pitfalls, and decide what can be improved or automated.

Plainly speaking, IT consulting services are more like hiring a dedicated IT specialist, familiar with not only technologies but also the business side of the project. You may ask: “How can IT consulting improve your business, and what exact benefits can it bring?”

Benefits of IT Consulting for Businesses

Frankly, IT consulting companies offer countless solutions for their clients. Starting with tech expertise and industry insights, and ending with proposals on improving certain processes and what can be done in the future. Also, hiring IT consultants is a very cost-effective way to improve different parts of the business. Just imagine: you can hire a single professional, who has experience in multiple fields like software development and business strategy creation.

The main task of IT consultants is to consult, not to code, i.e. all they can do - is offer solutions for improving your business by integrating the best practices from the IT industry. Still, you are the one, who makes the final decision.

Expertise and Specialized Knowledge

Most IT consulting companies are outsourcing vendors. To make it simple, these are companies, whose main job is to help other businesses in developing various software-based products.

Thus, it makes them much more compatible and experienced in software development consulting. A standard IT outsourcing agreement lasts from a few months to a few years and involves software development services with different technology solutions. At the same time, a product-oriented business requires full-time developers to work on the same project with the same technologies for much longer.

As a result, outsourced developers have much wider experience working with different technologies, and are learning new software development technologies and approaches. The difference in knowledge is obvious when you compare a dedicated development team to in-house employees, who worked on a single project for a long time.

So, almost any IT consulting firm can propose a new and unique technology consulting solution. Their offers are based on a broad experience working with numerous technologies, software, and industries.

Cost Efficiency

IT consulting for business is a much cheaper and faster way to improve your business: instead of doing your research, possibly making mistakes, and learning new technologies, you can simply find an IT consulting firm, and their employees will do the rest. Yet, this is not the only reason why IT consultants are cheaper and cost-efficient.

Any IT consultant will examine all software-related aspects of your business. They can bring a lot to the table:

• Identifying pitfalls and bottlenecks
• Offering technology solution to improve efficiency
• Finding ways to deal with business challenges
• Proposing software automation solutions to cut expenses
• Helping with new technology integration

All the above is just a short list of possible information technology consulting solutions. To be honest, each IT advisory is unique and highly depends on a particular case. This is why, it is hard to tell how exactly IT consulting companies can help you cut the expenses.

The only undeniable statement is that they will find a way to improve the cost efficiency of your business.

Focus on Core Business Functions

Another benefit of IT consulting for business is the possibility to define the core business functions and ways to improve them.

For instance, a very efficient technology strategy in the IT industry - minimum viable product development. It is a software development approach, used at the very beginning, which aims at limiting the number of software features to only the most essential ones. As a result, businesses can cut development time and expenses by developing a lighter working app to test user response and feedback. However, MVP software development is possible only during the discovery phase of a software project, i.e. before you start the development.

Yet, IT advisory offers similar possibilities for undergoing projects. You won’t be able to undo the progress of the existing project. Instead, IT consultants can define the core business functions and software functionality, as well as suggest what should be prioritized and the best ways how to do it.

Such IT consulting solution creates a possibility to reshape and reorganize your IT infrastructure and its development to achieve the best results and make it more efficient.

Scalability and Flexibility

Additionally, IT consultants are very flexible and experienced in various aspects of software development.

Therefore, they can help you improve, optimize, and scale any type of software most efficiently and flexibly. Once again, thanks to their expertise in the field, and task prioritization, they can help you to develop the best possible software development or integration plan.

As a result, you will get a chance to scale your business and do it as convenient for you and your team, as possible.

Access to the Latest Technology

As we said before, most IT consulting companies have experience developing various projects.

Almost all outsourcing companies commonly work with the latest Information technology, and have a team of experts in certain software development services on board. Therefore, apart from consulting in IT specifics, their experts can explain all the pros and cons of preferred toolsets and technologies.

Judging from their experience, they can either recommend transferring to the latest technologies or stick with your current software version. Don’t be fooled: not everything new is always the best! It is important to know the difference between each software version and the potential threats or benefits each of them can have.

Risk Management and Compliance

Finally, among the most crucial benefits of information technology consulting services are risk management and compliance.

Apart from software consulting, such services offer several extra options, included in the package. Once again, technology consultants have to learn your business case and its IT infrastructure before advising. The main reason is to understand the undergoing processes and choose the most suited solutions.

The flip side of learning your business context - is defining the potential risks and troubles both present and possible in the future. So, an IT consulting solution helps you to resolve all of them, or, at least, warns about future business challenges and risks.

In either case, hiring consultant improves your risk management and compliance, and offers ways to deal with them.

IT Consulting Process

So, what does an IT consulting solution look like? To rephrase, how much time does it take and what steps should be taken during such cooperation?

Initial Assessment

First of all, your technology consultants must gain access to certain business aspects and processes.

Before doing anything else, they must evaluate and assess the current case. Each software consulting requires an individual and unique approach. Thus, your IT consultants have to know what they are dealing with.

All you can do at this stage - is to help and provide them with all the requested information.

Planning and Strategy

After your IT consulting firm understands the core aspects of your business, its software specifics, main goals, expectations, etc., - they can start planning and designing technology strategy.

In a nutshell, at this stage, your consultants are designing and creating a long-term improvement plan. It can include countless variations, depending on your case:

• CI/CD pipeline adoption
• DevOps services
• Business logic reshaping
• IT infrastructure redesign
• Processes automation
• Security improvements
• Technology integration

All the above is just the list of the most common recommendations, aligned with the IT consulting firm's responsibilities.

Development and Implementation

After the IT consulting strategy is shaped and created, it is time for its implementation.

During this phase, your IT advisory vendor will provide you with the main aspects to change or implement. Clearly, technology consultants will also monitor and oversee the progress and check if everything is done as planned.

Ongoing Support and Optimization

Even when every advice is taken care of, your technology consultants will keep track of the progress.

To make it simple, just like with software development, IT consulting requires testing and maintenance of the project. So, your consultants will stay for a while to check the updates and their status, look for extra improvements and optimization options, etc.

It is commonly the final phase of IT consulting. After everything is checked and optimized, you can say, that IT consulting services were a success.

When to Consider IT Consulting?

But when do you even need to consider IT consulting? Is it a must-have service for any business, or just an option for just a few cases?

Frankly, every business, which uses software or other technology solutions is recommended to choose IT consulting at a certain moment. It is impossible to tell when exactly you need consulting services or can deal without them. Yet, among the most common reasons to consider contacting an IT consulting firm are:

• Adapting new technologies
• IT processes optimization
• Getting rid of unnecessary aspects of IT systems
• Looking for better software solutions
• Business software scaling
• Identifying the software pitfalls and bottlenecks

Why Choose Incora as Your IT Consultant?

At Incora, we understand the business needs for software improvements and new-era technology integrations. Apart from boosting business efficiency and performance, it helps compete with rivals in any services market.

Therefore, we decided to offer IT consulting as a service to provide all types of businesses with unique and personalized solutions, which can help to gain the maximum out of your activity and achieve any goal, regardless of how ambitious it is.

For more details, you can check our latest case studies or ask us directly by signing the contact form.