Lend them your watch and they’ll charge to tell you the time. So goes the old and rather unkind joke about consultants. But whether its earned or not, the consulting profession has developed a bit of reputation for hiding behind fluent management-speak. How can you guarantee, or even measure, your return on investment when you are dealing with nebulous concepts like cross-brand marketing opportunities or potential business upsides?
When all hell breaks loose, systems fail and your vendor relationships go legal, there may be only one solution: an IT troubleshooter.
A competitive environment for talent makes now an ideal time for experienced IT professionals to consider a move to consulting. Whether it’s viewed as a bridge to eventual retirement or as an open-ended career change, consulting is breathing fresh air into many successful IT careers.
Perhaps that consultant your company hired to implement a VoIP rollout has you wondering: could you break out of the safety of your corporate IT job and succeed as a consultant too?
A computer consultant who billed the city of Philadelphia more than US$1.4 million (NZ$2.2 million) for her work on a troubled municipal water billing system has come under public scrutiny amid concerns that she overbilled the city and exaggerated her background on her resume.