Does your business use IT Consultant in The UK? In order to take your business to new heights you need to either grow your existing customer base, increase the transaction value per customer or increase the margin you are making. So either sell to more customers, sell more to your current customers or improve the efficiency of the business by doing more with less resource. Each option is going to need a number of tasks completing. For that you will need a project to do list.
How IT consultants help your business
Get more done, faster with a boost in project resource by using IT Consultants. To do lists help you get more done and they help individuals achieve more, so every successful person and successful business uses them. The downside is that to do lists can seem like they are always growing and never ending. Business priorities are fluid, always changing and some items never even get off the start line.
You should in fact, make sure you have two different lists. One is your traditional to do list and one is your completed list. As soon as a project is completed it tends to get removed from the to do list and forgotten but you should keep a separate list of projects that you have delivered. This second list is the list that should always be growing. The longer it is the more you have accomplished. It can also be used to tell the rest of the business what you and your team have been doing. Individuals can even use it for justifying a promotion or pay rise.
Businesses are having to do more with less but every now and then it is acceptable to throw that little bit of extra resource at a project to make sure that it is completed and off your to do list.
Project non starters
Take a quick look at your list. Can you see items that have been there for a while? Do you keep track of when a task or project was added? The worst part of delaying a project is that it stays on your list. This is one of the reasons that your list constantly grows. You will always add new projects as businesses are always moving forward with market trends but if you do not re-evaluate what is on the list from time to time then it will become a never ending list of unfinished or even non started projects. Having an every growing list can be demotivating and increase stress which just does not need to be there.
If a project is never going to be started then you should remove it from your list. Just having it on the list is going to be a constant reminder of failure, of what you are unable to deliver. You can reduce the amount of stress and pressure that you are under by clearing off non started/needed projects. This will allow you to focus on the actual business priorities. Keeping an ever longer list is neither good for your morale or the morale of your team. If it stays on the list it needs to be started and completed. If you remove it and it once again become a priority you can add it back on.
The hard bit
There are two hard parts to any project, starting it and finishing it. Sometime the best way to get a project finished quicker is simply by starting it. Once it is moving the momentum can carry you forward all the way to the end but to start is the hardest part.
Increase business efficiency by using extra resource to quickly finish off never ending projects. IT Consultants can give you that extra boost of passion to get a project done. By using that extra resource where it is needed you can get a temporary push forwards to get over a bump that is slowing down the rest of your business.
Never Ending Projects
Worse than the never started projects are the never ending projects. There are three things that every good project and every good story should have. A beginning, a middle, and an end. If you leave projects in a never ending state you will always be short of resource. The only way to manage your resource is to start a project and complete it. If you do this then you are constantly moving forwards. Old projects are closed down and the implementation is reviewed to find lessons learned which can help to improve future project performance. Not every project implementation will succeed but you should still learn lessons from every project.
People need closure. It gives a definite end to a process, time frame or project and allows us to draw a line psychologically so we can concentrate on what is next. Having constant lose ends open can be very frustrating and affect our focus. By closing off these projects we tie up the lose ends and can put the experience behind us giving us the focus and indeed the excitement of starting something new.
Time to finish up and clear down
So you have now removed anything on your list that does not need to be completed at all. This will leave two mini lists one with projects that have been started and not completed and one with projects that have not even been started.
You can hire some IT Consultants to do one of two main roles. They can either complete a project that needs to be done. This is a nice clean and easy option. They come in do a set piece of work and leave with minimal interruption to your day to day business. The second option is they come in, you train them up to back fill your perm people whilst they get to work on the fun project stuff. This takes longer as you may have to train up the consultants on your systems and processes but it may keep your staff happier as they are not doing all the boring drudgery of BAU work for the length of the project.
Whichever option you choose, IT Consultants are there to help you jump over a few hurdles in a temporary capacity. By using them effectively you can hit your objectives faster and power forwards with minimum costs.
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