What Your Consultant Really Wants You to Know
Pssst! We’re going to let you in on a little secret. At Arraya, our top goal isn’t to sell you any thing. We know what you’re thinking: “Right, I’ve heard that one before. Now tell me more about that swampland in Florida.” But hear us out.
See, we’re not in the business of selling one particular IT product or solution. We work with a diverse group of industry-leading partners. That gives us the flexibility to focus on your business and your desired business outcomes, as opposed to trying to push a particular technology.
What it comes down to is this: Our objective is for your company to find IT answers to help it realize three main business outcomes:
- Make money
- Save money
- Reduce risk
Get the best from your consultant
In order to accomplish those goals, you need to be sure you’re utilizing your relationship with an IT consultant to its fullest potential. With that in mind, here are three things your consultant wants you to know.
- We’re good at diagnosing.
There is absolutely no shortage of information out there on IT products, solutions, etc. That makes doing research extremely easy – and makes consultants sort of pointless – right? Not so much. While it may be easy to get info on products, it’s not always as easy to diagnose a situation and find the right solution needed to address it. Think of it this way: If you cut your finger, you know you need a Band-Aid and maybe some cream to fight an infection. You can look up the best Band-Aids or the most popular antibiotics. But say you’ve got a sharp pain in your side? You could go on WebMD or a message board and drive yourself crazy reading all of the worst case scenarios, or you could go to someone with experience diagnosing problems and get to work fixing it. That’s a role a consultant can excel in. - We want a relationship.
If we were using Facebook terms to describe the link between our company and yours, we’d like to say we’re “In a Relationship.” Sure, our team has the knowledge and ability to provide one-off consulting services or project support, but our hope is for a lasting partnership. The more familiar a consultant is with your IT environment, the better positioned it will be to catch opportunities to save you time, energy, or both. Another benefit of a long term bond? If it’s a managed services partnership, you’ll be able to lift some weight off of your own IT team’s collective shoulders and put it on someone else’s. Ours. This type of long-term partnership can free your IT team from lower-value tasks like routine maintenance, allowing them to focus on more important, high-level deliverables. - We can save you money – and headaches.
In this corner is your company and its IT needs. In the other corner is a vendor looking to sell you solutions. In the middle is your consultant, also known as the guy or gal in stripes making sure everything stays above the belt. Well, that’s exaggerating things, however, there are plenty of benefits to consider. Top of that list is it’s nice to have an arbitrator between vendors and your decision-makers. That gives you a fresh set of eyes to ensure everything stays on track in terms of what’s being offered and what’s needed. Besides, a consultant can take a look at your company’s big IT picture across all departments and craft an enterprise-wide solution, addressing the needs and concerns of multiple internal stakeholders. This can reduce the risk of implementing some new solution in one area and having it affect a solution already running in a different department. All in all, this ensures you come to the bargaining table knowing exactly what you need and what impact that will have when you roll it out.
Now that you and your current (or future) consultant are on the same page, there’s nothing keeping you from a long and mutually-beneficial partnership. And you won’t even have to relocate your company’s data center to swampland in Florida either.
To learn more about how a consultant like Arraya can make a difference at your organization, please visit www.ArrayaSolutions.com and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @ArrayaSolutions.
