Starting your own business is always a risky deal. That’s a decision that needs your full commitment, deep expertise, and thoughtful analysis. But what’s weird is that such a decision can be made in one moment. Today, yesterday, or tomorrow, drinking coffee or something a bit more fun, all it takes is just minding your own life and suddenly seeing how much better you can make it.
Your idea is your brainchild, and it’s natural you may have parenting feelings for it. This may blind you and get in the way of your future success. But there are other reasons for failure.
According to Forbes, 9 out of 10 startups fail. The reasons are many; bad market condition, not enough funding, disagreements among founders, etc.
But one of the best ways to omit failure is probably involving an expert to evaluate your chances on the market. This is why the demand for consulting agencies is so high nowadays. There are also the development companies that provide their clients with an IT-consulting service. However, these 2 types of consulting are different, so you’ll get different benefits from each one. This is what we’ll be talking about in this article.
What a consulting agency can do for you
Consulting agencies provide their clients with paid consulting services to evaluate young businesses’ chances on the market and give them directions for better growth. Often the best consultants are has-been startupers who learned from their mistakes and are ready to provide their clients with valuable expertise.
The experience is what makes them those people who can teach you a lot. This way, a consulting agency may perform a series of tasks that will bring you one step closer to the goal you have.
Business expertise
A consulting agency can conduct a business analysis of your startup, assessing the potential demand on the market. This way, the consultant can give you an independent opinion, as a third-party expert, on how your project may be perceived by your future clients. You may not always be able to see clearly the strengths and weaknesses of the startup you are working on. That’s only natural. Because of your full commitment to the project you may consider each decision to be the right one.
The consultant, though, will be able to clearly see what decision is wrong and what is right, since your project to them is part of their business, not a dream. So their expertise combined with your ambitions and ideas will result in better chances for your business.
Useful connections
If your startup consultant is a former startupper, ask how far their startup proceeded. They may have acquaintances useful to you and it’s not about investors only. It can be people with projects or experience similar to yours, potential partners or co-founders, and literally anyone who can help your project gain more valuable experience and information.
You won’t regret it later on when you’ll be seeking funding.
[Some of them may] Find competent staff members for your startup
We have already mentioned that above: a former startupper as your potential consultant has connections and acquaintances. Some of the consulting agencies can help you find your first employees among critical personnel: HR, top managers, developers, etc. If you are lucky enough, you will have the opportunity to work with the right people who already have experience in such activities.
It is well known that the right team is almost half of your project’s success. Unfortunately, the “rightness” of the team is determined not only by competence but also by experience. It would be very nice if a cool guy with a diploma could be your best option without a question. But alas, after university even an A+ excellent student needs to gain experience. Even if your potential employee needs a more detailed study of the topic, they are who you were looking for if they have experience in the field and empathy for the target audience.
What a consulting agency can provide you is not necessarily limited to these points. It is a priceless experience that helps in creating your own project. But it is only a part of what you can get in cooperation with a software development company that provides IT consulting.
What an IT-company with a consulting service can do for a startup
According to BCG, the need for technological expertise is among the basic needs of a technological startup. The need for technological expertise was identified as one of the most significant by about 39% of all startups that took the survey.
There are several significant differences between consulting from the agency and consulting from the IT company. The goal of the IT company is not to provide you with experience but to achieve the business goals of your startup through software development. So, what can an IT company do for you?
Provide you with both business and technological expertise
Unlike a consulting agency, an IT company clearly knows how to help you with your project’s technological side implementation. They can assess your idea, goals, and business as a whole, analyze your market segment and competing businesses. And, the pièce de résistance is that the IT company can provide you with a practical solution to the problems mentioned above.
Business analysts will consult you so together you can choose the optimal solution, and developers will integrate the unique solution, your own little something, into your product.
So, the essence of it all is that your unique idea can be brought to life not in some random way but after the thoughtful analysis of your market, your competitors, your business, etc. This makes the software that perfectly fits into the market, satisfies your clients, stays relevant to the trends, and does things better than anything your competitors can.
Knowing your business specifics, learning about the project itself, IT-company with consulting services builds a unique commitment that helps them understand what business goals the software has to achieve.
All this ensures a better quality of the software developed with IT-consulting.
That is, by working with an IT company that provides startup consulting, you get a comprehensive solution within one company, without the need to involve outsourced specialists.
Find the best technological solutions
Each new business has its own specifics and needs. An IT consulting company can not only help you define your main goals according to your market analysis, but also implement those functions in your product. This will help you achieve a competitive advantage and higher business value.
Each solution is based on analysis, careful collection of requirements for future software. Development company with IT-consulting often offers you some of the best ideas based on analysis of the market, competitors, and your business needs. These can be special features, innovative technologies, and even some of the design features that are aimed to ensure your startup has its loyal customers.
And even though the final decision is up to you, IT-company with a consulting service will always be here to help you find your crème de la crème features.
Evaluate the relevance of your idea and its components
Like a consulting agency, an IT company can assess the relevance of your idea and its components, but from both a business and technological perspective. Perhaps you want to implement a function that your startup doesn’t need at this stage. A technological partner, an IT consulting company, may offer you to remove it or replace it with a more relevant one. Since the development company has a strong technological side, it can advise you on what would be the most powerful technological solution for you. The main part of their services is still software development, and you can’t disregard it. Their technological expertise will help you assess whether you need one or another feature, make it relevant and trendy. They also may find the best technology for your software development so the product you get would have maximum functionality and scalability in the end.
That is, you can get not just a solution that fully meets your requirements, but a solution that fully meets the real needs of your business. And a long-term perspective to improve and add new components.
And, besides, the development company can include estimation of the project in their IT-consulting services. This won’t be an average sum or anything like this; the development company’s estimates are accurate and most detailed since they are about your project and not any other.
Develop a prototype & minimum viable product (MVP)
This is vital for startups that don’t have massive funding yet and try to attract investors. IT-company with a consulting service may not only help you present your project but create a visual of it along with all documentation needed.
This is what creating a prototype means.
Presenting a project when you already have a visual concept of what you plan to create becomes much easier. So, your potential investors will be able to understand what makes your project unique and what you expect from it. This will grant you more opportunities to interest them. In addition, the IT company will prepare documentation for you: software requirements specifications (SRS) which will give you an understanding of what should be implemented and, based on it, the work breakdown structure (WBS), through which you will understand how it should be implemented. In this way, you will be able to go back to the development process after you have enough funds and continue working on the product without having to go through the approval and estimating again.
What about the MVP part is that it’s incredibly useful if you need to assess customers’ experience to see whether your product is interesting for your target audience. You’ll be able to analyze the customers’ behavior and reviews, which will help you make your software better. IT-company also can grant you some options on how to improve the software.
So, working with them you’ll be able to make your product so much more fitting into the end-clients needs.
Provide expert support on all stages of its lifecycle
IT-consulting specialists of the software development company will maintain your project at all stages of its development, from the first consulting to post-release support. In this way, you will always be sure that your software product meets your market and business needs, goals, and requirements.
In addition, the infographics below show in detail all that you will get from an IT consulting company.
No one is telling you that working with a consulting agency or IT company will make business amazingly easy. Your idea, the product you want to create, is hard work that requires full commitment and attention.
Consulting can give you a better chance of being one of those who’ll achieve their goal. You have all the cards in your hands, and the more steps you take to succeed the better your chances will be.
We hope that after this article you know better what type of consulting is best for your business. But remember that your success is a result of your actions only. So listen and critique, find the best decisions together with the consulting specialists, and in the end, you will be proud of your achievements.
