7 Reasons to Consult IT Professional Services Firms
In the film Ghostbusters, terrified New Yorkers must figure out how to eradicate ghosts from their homes and businesses. As these paranormal activities increase, both in number and complexity, they ultimately realize that they must call on expert “ghostbusters” who, in turn, must re-jigger their technologies to finally achieve full containment.
When you need to keep up with IT complexity and emerging technologies while meeting your organization’s goals in a timely and cost-effective way, who do you call?
Internal IT team…or external IT consultant?
Internal IT teams excel at keeping your organization’s systems up and running. They’re highly skilled at supporting and innovating for your core business, whether that’s manufacturing widgets, caring for patients, or educating future leaders. And they know how to find help when they need it.
But internal IT teams lack time and their tight budgets mean that they have to make the most of their resources. They have little time to stay ahead of trends or to specialize in a particular area, like cloud or security, or even to scope out the latest technologies. Taking on a major implementation, in between their normally heavy workloads, might mean stretching staff and delaying project completion.
Experienced and certified IT professional services firms, on the other hand, are in the trenches every day and thoroughly understand digital transformation. They employ specialists and engineers who are on top of fast-changing trends, increasingly complex technologies, and industry best practices. They bring skilled and certified project managers to the table to ensure a successful implementation.
And, as business models continue to change, IT consultants have become increasingly important in guiding organizations to become more efficient and increase their return on investment (ROI).
IT professional services defined
What are IT professional services? According to Gartner:
IT consulting services are advisory services that help clients assess different technology strategies and, in doing so, align their technology strategies with their business or process strategies. These services support customers’ IT initiatives by providing strategic, architectural, operational and implementation planning.
- Strategic planning includes advisory services that help clients assess their IT needs and formulate system implementation plans.
- Architecture planning includes advisory services that combine strategic plans and knowledge of emerging technologies to create the logical design of the system and the supporting infrastructure to meet customer requirements.
- Operational assessment/benchmarking include services that assess the operating efficiency and capacity of a client’s IT environment.
- Implementation planning includes services aimed at advising customers on the rollout and testing of new solution deployments.
7 reasons to call an IT professional services consultant
To retain and grow their market share in an increasingly competitive global economy, today’s organizations must make the transformation to a digital business. But they can’t do it alone. External IT consultants provide specialized expertise, while internal IT teams continue to focus on the core business. Consider an IT professional services firm when you need to:
- Align technology with your business strategy – Technology and IT no longer stand as a separate department; they underpin the business and must support the business strategy. An external IT consultant can help you build a technology strategy that mirrors and supports your business strategy and enables you to become a digital business.
- Take advantage of specialized expertise – Unless your organization has an unlimited budget and ample time, it’s difficult to gain specialized expertise internally. For example, the threat landscape changes by the second, as more sophisticated threats and advanced technologies and strategies emerge. IT consultants have specialized security experts who can help design a comprehensive security strategy that protects your business. Even if you have a CSO in place, IT consultants can help you refine and/or execute on that strategy.
- Extend your internal IT team – Whether your IT teams lacks the time or expertise, an IT professional services consultant can act as an extension of your team to assess your environment, then architect and implement a solution to fit your requirements.
- Provide technology transfer – Once a solution has been implemented, external professional services teams provide the necessary documentation and knowledge transfer to ensure that your team can successfully manage and maintain the technology solution. They can also help with end-user solution adoption to ensure that you get the most from your investment.
- Consider an unbiased perspective – Sometimes internal IT teams are too close to their operation to see where improvements can be made, or they lack the weight of an outside specialist. An IT consultant can see things that internal teams may miss and can carry the heft of an expert opinion.
- Optimize processes and operations – Internal IT teams may be so busy reacting to fires that they lack the time to make process improvements that can make them more efficient. IT consultants not only have the time to optimize operations to improve efficiency and productivity, they bring extensive experience and industry best practices to the table.
- Control costs – Finally, IT consultants—through their ability to implement and optimize the right technology solutions in a timely way—can help your organization gain efficiency benefits that translate into better cost control.
Logicalis: Your IT professional services consultant
Logicalis’ highly trained, certified, and experienced technical consultants and engineers provide a wide range of professional services that focus on your organization’s IT needs, including:
- Planning and assessment
- Design
- Acquisition
- Configuration and integration
- Deployment and migration
- Management and operation
- Knowledge transfer
- Asset disposal
Our professional service teams help reduce business risk by bringing years of experience and industry best practices to your implementation. Instead of re-inventing the wheel every time a new IT solution is implemented, we bring proven, repeatable processes so your team can focus on what it does best: support and innovate for your organization.
Visit to learn more. Or call 866-456-4422 to speak with us directly.
Steve McMullen is a Business Solutions Consultant for Logicalis, supporting the Western Region of the US and helping customers to drive better business outcomes.