An IT consultant can provide advice and expertise on implementing and managing IT technologies to help businesses achieve their objectives. Key trends in IT consulting include advising clients on cloud computing, analyzing big data, and determining whether to outsource or offshore certain IT functions. When choosing an IT consultant, businesses should write a request for proposal, conduct interviews of potential consultants, and firmly establish pricing and deliverables.

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Business.com Guide
to IT Consulting

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3. Contents
What Is IT Consulting? 4
Trends in IT Consulting 6
Benefits and Drawbacks of Offshoring IT 10
Business.com Checklist for IT Consulting 12
Three Steps to Choosing an IT Consultant 14
Writing an RFP for an IT Consultant 16
RFP Checklist for IT Consulting Bids 18
Glossary of IT Consulting Terms 19

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What Is IT Consulting?
I
T is Information Technology, and IT consulting
is an umbrella term for a variety of interrelated
activities, including:
¾¾ Providing advice and expertise on the use of computers,
telecommunications equipment, and distribution networks that store,
retrieve, transmit, and manipulate data to effectively achieve business
objectives, and assessing operational efficiency and capacity of your IT
environment
¾¾ Planning, designing, testing, implementing, and managing IT
technologies on behalf of a business
¾¾ Developing and supporting change management activities to transition
users to new technologies and procedures
¾¾ Writing technical and user documentation
¾¾ Purchasing hardware and software systems on behalf of a business
¾¾ Providing and monitoring network security

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¾¾ Training and supporting employees and customers in the use of IT
technologies
¾¾ Staffing technical job functions on a temporary contract basis
An IT consultant can be an individual (either a self-employed independent
contractor or a professional employed through a staffing firm), a small,
specialized firm, or a large national or multinational company. Generally, smaller
companies offer specific competencies and/or serve smaller enterprises; they
could also subcontract their unique skill sets to other IT consultancies that serve
larger corporate clients.
Your IT consultant helps your business implement new technology and support
the technology you have. The role of the IT consultant is to help you make
informed decisions about how technology can better help you achieve your
business objectives.
The role of the IT consultant is to help you make
informed decisions about how technology can better
help you achieve your business objectives.

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Trends in IT Consulting
Cloud Computing. The big attraction of cloud computing -- where your
software and data are housed off-premises and accessed via a Web portal -- is
that it’s generally less expensive.
Moreover, software updates are usually relatively painless, eliminating costly
and time-consuming installations, reducing the need for IT consultants. But, as
more companies move their data to the cloud, more IT consultants are needed
to get them there. It’s not just the need to migrate to new technology in the
cloud, it’s also the need to ensure legacy systems work in the cloud.
The big attraction of cloud computing -- where your
software and data are housed off-premises and accessed
via a Web portal -- is that it’s generally less expensive.

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Thoran Rodrigues, writing in Tech Republic about the new role of IT in a cloud-
based world, says:
In our new world, IT must shift its perspective from owner to
custodian. While it is still very important for IT departments to
take a proactive approach in learning about and presenting
new technologies and solutions to users, the most important
side of the updated IT department will be its ability to act as
a custodian of multiple technologies and systems. Instead of
worrying about purchasing the technology and building out
the infrastructure where it will run, it will have to work to ensure
that all contracted SLAs are being respected, that the systems
are interoperable and can work together, and that the service
providers have long-term visions that are compatible with the
direction that the company is heading.”
Big Data. Organizations have increased the amount of data they gather by
orders of magnitude in recent years. To make use of all this data, companies
needs to sift it. IT consultants can help parse this data into useful and
manageable reports.

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In a story on big data in InformationWeek, writer Jeff Bertolucci quotes David
McJannet, vice president of marketing for Hortonworks. “Big data isn’t this
nebulous thing,” he said “Very pragmatically, it’s about building net-new
analytic applications based on new types of data that (an organization) wasn’t
previously tracking.”
It could make sense for your business to hire outside consultants for this
specialized IT task.
Outsourcing. It is generally easier and less expensive to to have your IT needs
handled by outside consultants, rather than developing the expertise in-house,
particularly given the ever-changing dynamic of IT technologies and requisite
competencies to manage them.
One of the advantages of outsourcing IT, according to an article by Colette
L. Meehan in the Houston Chronicle online, is that “outsourcing allows
management to defer the details to a specialized company. Removing
the details permits management to focus on the larger issues within the
organization.”

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Whether you outsource or not, the key to any successful relationship with an
IT consultant is always the same: effective communication. You have to ensure
that you and the consultant are always on the same page.
And that job belongs to you. The one thing you can’t outsource is leadership.
You need to stay close to the consultant at the beginning to build a working
relationship and ensure that objectives are clear and measurement of progress
is well understood. Then you need to see how the new system is being received
and provide feedback to the consultant that others may not feel free to convey.
You need to stay close to the consultant at the
beginning to build a working relationship and ensure
that objectives are clear and measurement of progress
is well understood.

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Benefits and Drawbacks
of Offshoring IT
A
good deal of IT consulting is conducted offshore simply because
labor is cheaper. That might help your budget, but there are
disadvantages to working with offshore talent. It’s common, for
example, to outsource tech support, but accents and other language
differences can make this tricky. Some offshore companies deal with this
through better training of their consultants and screening for improved
language fluency.
Another issue is security. With offshoring comes the risk of political instability
in countries where the work is performed. For mission-critical IT projects, one
has to consider the risk of war, strikes, asset nationalization, and even terrorism.
When offshoring you IT functions, be sure to ask the consultant about disaster
recovery plans.
For mission-critical IT projects, one has
to consider the risk of war, strikes, asset
nationalization, and even terrorism.

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Keep in mind that even when you’re dealing with a domestic IT
consultancy, it may very well be outsourcing certain staffing and
data warehouse functions to offshore operations. There’s nothing
necessarily wrong with that, but you need to ask whether any of their
services are outsourced offshore and, if so, how they manage it, how
they ensure security, and how cultural and language differences
among workers are minimized.
Keep in mind that even when you’re dealing with
a domestic IT consultancy, it may very well be
outsourcing certain staffing and data warehouse
functions to offshore operations.

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My
Needs
Vendor
1
Vendor
2
Areas Needing IT
Upgrade:
• Sales/Marketing
• Customer Service
• HR/Payroll
• Data Warehousing
• Other
• Enterprise-Wide
Systems Needed to
Support IT:
• Hardware
• Software
• Integrated Systems
• Computers
• Tablets
• Smartphones
System Security
Considerations
User Documentation
My
Needs
Vendor
1
Vendor
2
Training and Support:
• Employees
• Customers
• Online Service
• Phone Service
• On-Site Service
• Video Tutorials
• Remote Training
Available
Temporary IT Staffing
Offshore Sourcing
Selection Criteria:
• Credentials
• Qualifications
• Certifications
• Experience
• References
• Hourly rate
• Flat Fee
Business.com Checklist for IT Consulting

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Three Steps to Choosing
an IT Consultant
H
ow can you be sure your IT expert has the expertise you need? No
matter the scale of the project, success depends upon having a clear
idea of what you want to accomplish, and then setting milestones on
how you expect to achieve it.
1. Write an RFP
Write a Request for Proposal (RFP) that defines the project scope and
consultant selection criteria. An effective RFP not only maps a plan of action but
also serves as a compass to select a consultant that can best follow the map.
It’s important that the people most likely to be the primary users, or who are
most likely to be affected by the implementation of the technology be involved
in writing the RFP.
2. Conduct a Personal Interview
Getting a response to the RFP is only the start of a conversation. Personal
interviews are critical to consultant selection. Just as if you were hiring an
employee, interviews are where you first gain a sense of whether you feel
comfortable with the candidate and that you have a mutual basis for a good
working relationship.

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3. Negotiate and Set Firm Pricing
In most situations, costs are negotiable. You should be aggressive in stating
exactly what you are willing to pay for, and what your budget allows. Most
consultants will want to work with a reasonable budget, but your budget must
be tied to specific deliverables and actions.
The only way to ensure you are getting exactly what you are paying for is to
specify upfront exactly what you are going to pay for. Don’t leave anything
open-ended, because anything you leave open is likely to be something
you’ll eventually pay for (especially if the consultant feels they’ve come down
considerably in price to fit your budget). It’s also a good idea to put a cap on all
expenses -- the phrase “shall not exceed without written authorization” should
be in all of your contractual pricing.

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Writing an RFP for
an IT Consultant
Your RFP should:
¾¾ Define project objectives, key milestones, deliverables, timeline, and
(perhaps most importantly) budget
¾¾ Describe what your current system does and how people use it
¾¾ Describe what your current system does not do, and what you would
like it to do
¾¾ Specify the type of reports you want from the consultant and in what
formats you want them
¾¾ Specify the intervals at which you expect to receive reports
¾¾ Rank by the importance your schedule, cost, performance, ease of
implementation, lack of disruption, data integrity, and any other major
factors

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¾¾ List consultant selection criteria, e.g., credentials, qualifications,
certifications, experience, references, and fees
¾¾ Provide a sample contract, which essentially specifies or requests
details on:
ƒƒ scope of work
ƒƒ standard of conduct
ƒƒ deliverables
ƒƒ implementation schedule/action plan
ƒƒ list of project manager(s) and people consultant will work with
ƒƒ reporting requirements/milestones
ƒƒ compensation arrangement/payment schedule
ƒƒ ownership of final product (usually you)
ƒƒ provisions for non-performance/right to terminate
ƒƒ liability for inaccurate information or misrepresentation
of capabilities that results in impaired functionality
ƒƒ status as independent contractor (both the
consultancy as a firm and all of its employees/
subcontractors provided to work on the project)

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RFP Checklist for IT Consulting Bids
Criteria Description
Project objectives
Needs prioritization
Scope of work
Implementation schedule
Key milestones
Deliverables
Budget
New features, functionalities, capabilities desired
Reporting requirements
Additional contract terms:
• Product ownership
• Non-performance provisions
• Legal relationship

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Glossary of IT
Consulting Terms:
Access: Where entry is gained into a circuit or network.
Application Infrastructure: Software program(s) that deliver business
applications.
B2B Web Services: A combination of IT services deployed in some
combination of cloud and enterprise intranet platforms that appears to users as
a single integrated package.
Best Practices: Methods and means most likely to achieve a desired goal with
the most benefit.
Beta Testing: Trial run of a new system or application under actual usage
conditions; the assumption is this is not the final version, but close enough to
put to work. Usually a group of “beta testers” put the system through its paces
to detect and correct any problems or issues before releasing for general use.

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Big Data: High-volume, high-capacity, and high-variety data assemblage that
requires sorting and processing to yield meaningful information pertinent to
specific user questions and needs.
Content Management Systems: Provides for collaborative workflows
throughout an IT network.
Change Management: Activities that help transition individuals, teams and
organizations to follow new procedures and implement new technologies.
Data Warehouse: Collection of data or the location where data reside.
IT Service Management: Used by consultants as a catchword to mean they
manage networks from the customer’s perspective.
Key Performance Indicator (KPI): Quantifiable and measureable goals and
objectives agreed upon between the client and the IT consultant subsequently
used to assess both the success of the project and the performance of the
consultant.
Letter of Understanding (LOU): A formal, written document provided by the
IT consultant presenting its view of the scope of the project, key milestones,

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and what services will be provided and at what cost. This serves as a kind of
checkpoint to ensure there is a complete understanding on the part of both the
client and the consultant before signing a binding contract.
Platform: A system’s underlying hardware and/or; the platform defines a
standard around which software can be developed and hardware added.
For example, a Windows 7 Professional platform would require software and
devices capable of working with that operating system.
Scope Creep: Signing up for more than you thought. The client thinks the
IT consultant should write the documentation that goes with a new system
implementation, but the consultant hadn’t considered this part of the project.
Scope creep is often the result of an unclear RFP or an emphasis on the low-
cost bidder without understanding what is missing from the bid. Scope creep
is easily avoidable with an RFP that details exactly what is expected of the IT
consultant on a given project.
Storage Area Network: Employs multiple, networked servers to increase data
storage capacity.