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There are three kinds of IT consultancy company: pure consultants, those that do the work and bodyshops. We do "pure consulting" jobs, but the team can actually deliver the goods and services to back up that work.

Pure Consulting

Business managers are often suspicious of IT suppliers, because there is a mismatch of both language and motive. Hiring a consultant can make sense for many reasons, for example:

• To help build a strategic vision for IT aligned with the business needs
• To arbitrate between client and suppliers to ensure solutions are delivered which meet the needs of the business and provide measurable business benefit
• To assess the current state of IT in a business and to recommend areas for improvement
• To support the recruitment process when hiring IT staff
• To bring in some fresh thinking or specific skills for a project or issue

The normal form of this work is that the consultant is hired on-site for a specific task over a short period. The output may be as simple as attendance on the selection panel for interviews, or a specific work item completed such as a performance tuning exercise or product selection. Often a report is compiled off-site which contains the material of real value and it is discussed at a final site visit. The business value of this report depends on how specific the assignment was, the quality of the work of the consultant and whether the business managers subsequently choose to adopt any of the recommendations, but when all of these come together the outcome can be positively transformational and highly beneficial.

Doing the work

There are many work types where we can go beyond the business analysis and recommendation phase to provision/delivery/fulfilment of goods and services, either directly or through a network of established business relationships. Examples include:

• Development consultancy - project definition, initiation, team staffing, management etc.
• Systems and process design and integration
• Microsoft SQL Server work - most aspects
• Data extract, transformation & load
• Custom software development
• Microsoft software licensing
• Website and webservice hosting
• Hardware procurement, installation, testing, configuration and management
• Virtualisation and SAN planning and implementation

Bodyshop

Some consultancies act more like agencies, putting people into client sites for work which is much like employment. ACS Solutions is not a bodyshop.