What exactly is Consulting?
Hiring someone else to do something for you in business is called Professional Services, and generally known as the Consulting industry.
This is no different than a homeowner hiring someone to paint the house - it’s buying expertise that you don’t have, or don’t have the time to do the task.
This blog will discuss the basics of professional services in the modern technology services field. My goal is simple – explain the industry to new comers and educate others to improve the industry.
I will cover topics that are obvious to the experienced consultant but since the young generation of consultants are often not taught the basics of this business, this will reveal many nuances to the business. My hope is that the younger consultants find this useful for their careers.
David Maister wrote the bible on managing a professional services firm. His masterpiece is still amazing and very relevant because the economics of the industry are so simple. If you have not read this classic, click here to order on Amazon
The topics in this blog are specific to 2020 - 2025 and focus solely on technology professional services, not accounting, law or architecture firms.
College Grads entering Consulting
I recently spoke with recent hires, college grads and college students wondering where they should find their first professional job, or they were just getting started. Many thought that working in tech meant the big popular consumer brands: Amazon, Google, or Facebook. When I explained what I’ve done for a living at Hewitt, Acxiom, Salesforce and Slalom, they really didn’t understand the IT services industry, aka "consulting."
One was surprised there was a whole industry devoted to selling skilled people’s time as a sustainable business – “that’s a thing?”
I explained that technology professional services business is very simple.
- Supply and Demand: Learn a skill that’s rare, in-demand and you can sell your time, or get hired by someone to work on their behalf.
- Buy low, sell high: Hire people at a rate you can afford to pay them, add value by making them available at the right time with the right skills and customers will pay you more than what you are paying your consultants.
Some of my conversations went like this…
- Do you know Adobe Photoshop and Digital asset management from your yearbook and school newspaper projects?
- Go find an agency that needs digital photography editing, moving making and digital marketing. They will hire you do work your magic on their Commerce site.
- Do you know Epic or Cerner software from working in a hospital?
- These are the leading patient management systems for health care providers. You can get hired to train people or integrate data into Epic.
- Do you know Salesforce’s product from using it at a prior job?
- It’s the leading cloud CRM system. People will hire you to manage their implementation or run the system for them.
- Do you know Amazon’s AWS S3 and Lamba products from college hack-a-thons?
- IT shops will hire you to help migrate their data and applications.
- Do you know Excel, Word?
- Well, almost everyone does, so there’s not much demand so you won’t help you get hired.
