Why use a consultant?

by Arnie Oas

First, let’s establish that “consultant” is not a four-letter word. Although the very mention of the word can spark fear in the hearts of some otherwise stalwart business leaders, these people are most often laboring under misapprehensions of exorbitant costs or falling prey to the urban myth of “the consultant who ran amok at X Co.” (name your favorite luckless firm here).

The simple truth is that consultants exist and thrive for a very sound reason; they offer cost-efficient expertise and experience in highly knowledge intensive disciplines which might take companies years or even decades to develop on their own, if they are successful at all.

So, why do organizations need consultants?  When faced with implementing a CMMS, you have many alternatives for upgrading or methods of implementing it. The normal answers are to assign a current employee or hire someone new for the task. However, these approaches have their own sets of problems and may not be the most cost-effective or best solution.

Additionally, when faced with hiring a new employee, you may not be able to find many candidates with experience in your industry and a high level of expertise on the CMMS application.

The alternative solution is touse a consultant. Using a consultant is a cost-effective alternative for organizations that need to solve a problem quickly and efficiently. The following are some of the reasons why organizations use consultants:

Experience
Although you may already have an employee in your organization that is capable to perform the work, none can do the job as quickly and efficiently as an expert. Consultants live and breathe the issues that need to be addressed every day, they know the traps and land mines of the application.

Independence
A consultant is an independent contractor, not an employee. Consultants work closely with their clients, but consultants do not require the kind of direct supervision that employees need performing similar tasks.

Dedicated time
Time is a precious element for your existing staff. A person or group assigned to a project usually still has all his or her other work to perform and can be taken off the project because of conflicting priorities. An outside consultant, on the other hand, is able to focus on the project until the work is completed.

Better control
You control the consultant’s payment. If a consultant doesn’t perform in accordance with the contract, you can withhold payment or stop using that consultant. This is an especially popular point for firms that use a significant number of consultants.

Availability
Most consultants are flexible. They make themselves available to their clients on a moment’s notice. If you had to hire someone new to take on an assignment, you could spend months to place ads, perform interviews and reference checks, make a final selection, and bring a new employee on board. For a consultant, all someone needs to do is pick up the phone.

No long-term commitment
Most implementations or upgrades of a CMMS are finite; they have a clear start and finish. When the project is complete, the consultant simply goes away. There is no scrambling to place an employee in another position within the organization. The two-week notice, termination, layoff, severance pay, and other human resources issues are not there.

Consultants can and do develop long-term relationships with organizations, but only when those clients desire long-term relationships.

The price is right
When you tally up the real cost of hiring an employee to take on a task versus bringing in a consultant to perform it, a consultant may be more cost advantageous. You don’t have to pay for health insurance, vacation time, taxes, 401(k) plans, or other benefits when hiring a consultant.

Arne Oas is the senior consultant for Computerized Facility Integration. He can be reached at 215-918-2165 or by e-mailing aoas@gocfi.com.

This article appeared in the February/March 2005 issue of MRO Today magazine. Copyright 2005.

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