Why Hire A Consultant: Benefits and Marks of a Good Consultant

This is the second of three posts on Why Hire A Consultant.

What Are The Benefits Of Hiring A Consultant?
There are four key benefits to hiring a consultant to help tackle a tough business problem.

• Bringing a consultant into the process of finding a solution to a business problem will be less costly in the long run than if one had not been brought in at all.
• Consultants generally evaluate situations more efficiently because they know what to look for based on their levels of experience with a wide range business problems.
• They can bring perspectives that those close to a project may not have considered. It is often difficult to be objective about your own work when you are closely tied to it.
• Consultants are trained in a wide range of research methods and specialized skills. The advantage comes with knowing which method is best for each individual project.

What Makes A Good Consultant?
Consulting is a multidisciplinary field. As such, a good consultant or consulting firm must be able to approach a subject from multiple perspectives. Having an understanding of a situation also comes from a multidisciplinary approach where other team members, usually drawn from the organization enlisting the help of the consultant, represent different perspectives and levels of experience from other projects.

Extensive experience with various consulting methods coupled with education will enable a good consultant to apply the appropriate method to a particular project or business problem, as not all methods are optimized for all projects or problems.