A few dos and don’ts of working with a consultant

Assistance of a good consultant can help a firm grow in many ways. A consultant with unique abilities and a good hand-on experience may deliver innovative ideas, alternatives and a different approach for serving many purposes. He can suggest you new plans and novel tools to implement those plans. Such plans can avoid certain mistakes and wastage of time and resources. There are many chances when a lack of time and human resource may result in lost revenue, degrading of the market position and loss of many good opportunities. In such situations, a knowledgeable consultant can save the firm from these disasters.

Many firm owners fail to realize the importance of an IT consultant. As every person working with an IT firm nowadays is well conscious about the basic IT concepts and can volunteer to work as a networking consultant, his lesser experience and exposure to such kind of work may result in some disastrous situations which are impossible to be undone. It is better to assign only that kind of work to a person which he can do best to make the most of the resources of the firm.

Before hiring a consultant, you should yourself be aware of the functions that you expect to be performed by him. Ask him what he thinks of the roles and responsibilities he will have in your firm. If he is able to express at least a few of those which you expected, you can take the chance of hiring him. For the rest of the tasks expected from him, let him know and ask his comfort level with that. Once he starts working on a project, make sure he knows all ifs and buts concerned to that particular project. At least the owner of the firm who has hired the consultant should not think that a consultant has less work assigned for more time. If after listening to the proposal, you think that you won’t be deploying it, don’t waste his time listening to further explanation just to examine his thought process.

You should be open to small changes or modifications in your plans if required. Certainly as an owner of the company, you will seek a perfect plan to fulfill all the goals at a time. It is a bit tough to have such a plan. Thus you need to have a little flexibility in your expectations so that you can achieve a few more important goals at the cost of some less important ones. Deadlines can become a limiting factor for the performance of the consultant. In the haste of meeting the deadlines of the task assigned, the IT consultant may not be able to deliver his 100% to you. Rather maintaining a regular communication during the project can be more helpful to determine his ability and rate of progress.

Lastly be realistic about your expectations from your consultant. Assigning him work with impractical requirements and deadlines will do nothing but become a hindrance in his way towards working out a successful plan. Conversely, for achieving goals which are practical, he will go one step ahead to make you satisfied with his work.