As a team leader, you should be able to make decisions regardless of your organization’s analytics journey. A decision about new behaviors, expectations, or the requirement for new skill sets beyond basic data science. As your data team grows, you’ll be less concerned with “what happened?” and more concerned with “why did it happen?”.
Analytics is no longer just about collecting data and ensuring it is clean. It’s about using existing data more effectively and finding out more about why the events occurred.
With this shift in data usage, organizations will encounter unprecedented demand for analytics as they seek to better understand their business through more formal and organized performance management.
A consulting firm that specializes in analytics can help you find talented team members and develop your strategy. Consultants assist with educating, training, and growing your internal team.
Your team can benefit from this at any stage of the project, from the start of the project to later growth. Your team’s skills, tools, knowledge, and delivery can be enhanced through partnerships.
Analytical Consulting Options
Which options are available to your organization when it comes to handling analytics demand? Hiring more people and augmenting the team are two of the most popular options. One of the million-dollar questions for analytics leaders is which path to choose.
Below is a summary of each option:
- Employ full-time employees
- Pros: Employees are invested in their teammates. They are involved in internal processes.
- Cons: It can be costly. You will grow impatient if you say, “Wait a year while I build my internal team.”.
- Engage consultants to assist the team, either as individual consultants or as a team
- Individual subcontractors:
- Pros: Each subcontractor performs work for your team. In the short term, this is an excellent option for teams that require a little extra manpower, but it can be costly in the long run.
- Cons: Subcontractors rarely contribute to long-term strategy or the overall vision.
- Consulting teams:
- Consultancy teams help you develop your internal analytics skills while sharing best practices that will lead to faster goals accomplishment. The consulting teams consist of a full team behind each consultant, so skills and experience are not lacking. Many different skills are incorporated into the team itself. For example, consultants can train and coach on design patterns and tools.
- Individual subcontractors:
Reasons to hire an external analytics consultant
An organization can benefit from both internal and external consulting. The organization receives the most appropriate resources with the right focus at the right time.
For projects where internal resources are working part-time or to acquire specialized data expertise for a limited time period (span of the project), consultants offer flexible terms.
The following are some of the top reasons to hire external consultants:
- Performing the project requires extra manpower (people).
- Outsiders with experience in technology that they do not possess are needed. In the case of cloud computing, this is frequently the case.
- Resources from outside with different perspectives are needed. Consulting companies challenge the status quo by asking why.
- They need specialized skills for a limited period of time (duration of the project).
- Projects can be completed more quickly than with internal resources working part-time.
- Not having a full-time development team reduces salary costs. Click for more information.