Logo
  • Services
    • Dedicated Development Team
    • Offshore Developers
    • Staff Augmentation
  • Hire developer
    • All Technologies
    • Python Programmer
    • Magento Developer
    • Full Stack Developer
    • Unity 3D Developer
    • Ruby on Rails Developer
  • Industry
    • eLearning
    • EdTech
    • eCommerce
    • FinTech
    • Healthcare
  • Expertise
    • Mobile Development
    • Web Development
    • Big Data
    • AR/VR
    • Desktop Development
    • AI/ML
  • Talents
  • Blog
Contact us
  • Services
    • Dedicated Development Team
    • Offshore Developers
    • Staff Augmentation
  • Hire developer
    • All Technologies
    • Python Programmer
    • Magento Developer
    • Full Stack Developer
    • Unity 3D Developer
    • Ruby on Rails Developer
  • Industry
    • eLearning
    • EdTech
    • eCommerce
    • FinTech
    • Healthcare
  • Expertise
    • Mobile Development
    • Web Development
    • Big Data
    • AR/VR
    • Desktop Development
    • AI/ML
  • Talents
  • Blog

Home | Blog | Offshore team | How Much Does It Cost to Hire an IT Consultant

  • Offshore team

How Much Does It Cost to Hire an IT Consultant

George Fironov
Calendar icon 14.07.2021
  • twitter
  • linkedin
  • facebook

    So you need to hire an IT consultant. What skills should you look for, how much should you pay, and what results can you expect?

    Working with IT consultants can be tricky. It’s kind of a grey area where, if you’re not careful, you might encounter a cunning consultant who will drain your budget dry without blinking an eye. Of course, we don’t want to assume that most IT consulting services are like that. Most of them are great people, but like in any industry, there are bad apples.

    I think nobody wants to be the butt-end of a joke like the business managers who paid one developer $18,000 for a static HTML website.

    In order to avoid it, let’s consider the best way to work with IT consultants, and the real IT consultant cost (which doesn’t have much to do with how much money consultants charge).

     

    The curious case of technical debt

    If you don’t know what the term “technical debt” means, let me explain. It’s when you invest in maintaining an outdated infrastructure, system, or other piece of software. In other words, you keep using old tech because “it works”.

    But it can stop working anytime, and fixing it becomes more expensive every day. It’s hard to avoid technical debt, but it’s important to have awareness that it’s a serious problem. Perhaps not in case of a small business, but for anything bigger than medium-sized it can cause a lot of headaches.

    One thing that can help you avoid technical debt is working with skilled, experienced IT specialists. That’s where a great consult can come very much in handy.

    But you don’t want to build something and then go to a consultant. You want to work with a consultant from the very beginning. Or hire a good CTO, that’s your call. But even in that case, a good consultant will bring in a valuable outside perspective.

     

    Understanding the IT consultant job

    While we’re on that matter, what does an IT consultant actually do?

    They can do a whole lot of things depending on their specialization. Most often, IT consultants are involved in:

     

    • Defining product requirements — what the product needs to be functional
    • Defining project scope — how much work will the project require
    • Answering business requirements with technological solutions
    • Analyzing existing technology used in IT department, providing perspective
    • Training people on best practices
    • Helping to lower costs and time-to-market

    Pretty much anyone with vast knowledge of a certain technology can become a consultant, however, they need to be able to translate that knowledge into “business speak”. Otherwise, they won’t be of much help to managers who don’t have a deep understanding of tech.

    Being able to translate tech into “human” is not the only characteristic of a great IT consultant.

    They also need to have vast business knowledge. Compared to computer science, business isn’t really complicated, and it can be trivial to programmers. But there are several concepts that are worth learning, and they can help IT consultants understand why business people want certain things, and how to provide them with what they want.

    Consultants work on complex issues, and they should be problem-solvers with the ability of laser-focus to locate where your biggest tech problems are, the knowledge and foresight to future-proof your tech stack, and the experience to do it with low costs and without re-doing your whole infrastructure.

    And in IT, this can be particularly hard to do. For an inexperienced consultant, it will often look much easier to change the whole system (for example, the content management system of a medium-traffic size blog), than to locate and fix a bug without messing everything up.

    But a great consultant will know exactly how to troubleshoot without damaging the system, how to do it securely, and ultimately how to fix the seemingly “little thing” that’s causing all the problems.

    Consulting fees usually have a higher profit margin than software developers hired, for example, to build a specific feature. They also operate on an hourly rate or a daily rate more often than not, but some prefer fixed fees or project fees.

    Create your own success story

    Best IT resourcing service to hire top-class developers

    Contact Us

    Verifying IT consultant qualifications when you’re not a tech person

    How do you know if a consultant is good if you yourself barely have any technical knowledge?

    You can’t rely on much more than opinions and reviews. Great consultants will make it easy for you to verify their skills by providing a reference contact that you can ask, having a great website with a valid portfolio, having a rich LinkedIn profile, basically ticking all the boxes of a great, professional online presence.

    If possible, try to find a consultant within your network. The farther you reach beyond your own network, the more work you’ll have to do to verify the consultant’s expertise. Avoid hiring an entry level consultant, and try a consulting firm or a consulting business if you don’t want to spend time verifying freelancer consultant skills.

     

    The real IT consultant costs (and benefits)

    We won’t cover the financial costs of hiring IT consultants. Just like with any specialization in the IT world, it depends on way too many factors to be able to give you one average estimate that would fit the whole globalised IT industry.

    But I’ll tell you what it can depend on:

     

    • Skills and years of experience of the consultant
    • Size of technical debt and complexity of infrastructure in the business
    • The amount of returns that are lost as long as the technical problem persists
    • The technology that you require the consultant to know (niche languages will most likely mean higher consulting rates, basic supply-demand economics)
    • etc.

     

    Many organisations prefer to keep all of their technology to themselves. This results in a culture of hiring people for the sake of having them in the office, and not working on other projects.

    Certain things can slip through the cracks, and a consultant who isn’t careful might just tell your competitors the secrets of your commercial success.

    But this doesn’t have to be an issue, and doesn’t ever need to turn into a cost. Just remember to sign a non-disclosure agreement!

    Working with an independent consultant from outside your team has the benefit of adding a valid outside perspective to your discussion. This can be priceless, especially if your team is stuck in a rut and there seems to be nothing that can be seriously improved.

    Ultimately the biggest cost can be that you overpay for the consultant’s services. Make sure that you prepare yourself by learning as much as you can about the topic, especially if you’re a business person without technical experts on your team.

    Hiring the right consultant can change your business

    …but hiring the wrong one can destroy your budget. Before you hire anyone, go around and ask your technologically skilled friends about what you should do, and what kind of person you should hire. Do some googling, ask different consultants for price / rate estimates, and don’t rush your decision.

    Read also

    More Arrow right
    • Talmatic
    agile coach
    George Fironov
    Calendar icon 11.02.2023

    Teamwork at Its Finest: A Deep Dive into Agile Coaching

    • Talmatic
    staff augmentation service
    George Fironov
    Calendar icon 29.01.2023

    What is Resource and Staff Augmentation?

    • Talmatic
    George Fironov
    Calendar icon 22.01.2023

    Best Browsers For Developers in 2023

    Photo manager
    George Fironov
    Co-founder & CEO
    • Skype
    • Linkedin
    Our mission

    Talmatic is a concierge type service for hiring dedicated developers. Great developers are in huge demand, but in-house hires are expensive and freelancers aren’t always suitable for long term work. We, at Talmatic, providing access to a unique vetted pool of tech talent available for contract hire.

    • Address Southknock, New Ross,
      Co. Wexford, Ireland
    • Phone +353 51 445 639

    Get in Touch

    This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

    Footer logo
    Quick links
    • Hire developers in Ukraine
    • Hire developers in Belarus
    • Cases
    • Talents
    Services
    • Offshore Developers
    • Dedicated Development Team
    • Staff Augmentation
    Top Technologies
    • Front-End developers
    • Back-end developers
    • Javascript developers
    • PHP developers
    • Python developers
    • Node.js developers
    • Angular developers
    • React developers
    • Java developers
    • .NET developers
    • Ruby developers
    • Android developers
    • iOS developers
    • Magento 1/2 developers

    © Copyright 2023 Talmatic

    • Linkedin
    • Clutch
    • Facebook
    • About Us
    • Contact Us
    • FAQ
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms Service
    • Linkedin
    • Clutch
    • Facebook
    Up

    Thank you for your application!

    Our managers will contact you shortly

    Looking to Hire
    Developers?

    Specify how many developers you need, their tech stack and seniority level. We would love to help!

    By messaging us, you agree to our terms & conditions

    This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

    Looking to Hire Developers?

    Specify how many developers you need, their tech stack and seniority level. We would love to help!

    By messaging us, you agree to our terms & conditions

    This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.