Consulting is a large industry. From accounting, finance, technology, cloud computing, enterprise resource management and more, there’s a lot of competition in the industry. When running a business, sometimes you may be too close to the problem to see the bigger picture and make decisions that matter.

This can be improving your company’s performance or keeping tabs on how audit management is done, or whether you just need someone to guide you to make sound decisions.

Consultants don’t just give advice, they’re versed in their field of expertise and know the pipeline of the industry inside and out. But choosing the right consultant is where it can get tricky. You don’t just hire them for advice. You hire them to be game changers of current and future scenarios. They analyse the problem, recommend solutions and even help you implement them to see gains and improve efficiency.

How To Choose Your Consultant
Hiring a consultant can be a huge decision depending on your needs. In most cases, bad consulting experiences occur with people who don’t know what they need. There are four kinds of consultants:
1. Specialist – These consultants are world class specialists in their fields. They’re great if you lack the right people to tackle the problem you have. They can also be pretty expensive for the services that they provide.
2. Vendor – These consultants are responsible for adequate and consistent performance. They’re not as expensive as specialists, with some even charging very nominal fees.
3. Game-changers – If you’re looking for a solution to a problem that you can’t tackle and need some unique help, that’s what the game-changers are for. A game-changer consultant might just have what you need.
4. Total solution provider – All in one. Mostly big companies like IBM and Accenture use this kind of consulting service.

We’ve talked about the types of consultants but we still haven’t gotten to the root of the problem . How do you choose your consultant?

Before hiring a consultant, start with the principal choice, whether or not you actually need one.
Is your company running fine? Which area needs work? Is it finance, technology, IT security, HR or something else? Can you fix the problem with your current management and resources? Does that solution work?

The second part of the decision making process – what sort of decisions can you and your team make? Do you have enough time to manage your own work along with the problem at hand?

If you’ve answered yes to these, you don’t need one. If no, you need to hire a consultant.

Remember, consultants don’t just advise and implement your plans, they’re also responsible for changing the efficiency of your workflow and might even do a total overhaul of the system or workflow model to better suit efficiency.