What to Look for in IT Consulting Software
To help you navigate the overwhelming list of features that most IT consulting software options offer, we’ve compiled a list of the top 6 features to look for in IT consulting software. By today’s competitive standards, IT consultants and consulting companies must be a jack of all trades.
Besides tackling complex client cases daily, there’s also a business to run and daily problems to solve. Choosing the right IT consulting software to manage your day-to-day can save hours spent on trivial tasks and ultimately free up your time to spend on helping clients with projects.
1. Features to Record and Manage Data, Requirements, and Evaluation Criteria
IT consultants are tasked with compiling and managing large amounts of data. Finding IT consulting software with robust data management features is a good way to save time in your process. During the requirements-gathering project phase, spreadsheets and pre-made templates are used to document this work. Gathering and ranking your client’s requirements can lead to sleepless nights of spreadsheets and lost information. A formula in the wrong place of your evaluation criteria can erase weeks of due diligence, so when looking for the right Spreadsheet tool, make sure it’s secure, efficient, and scalable.
Examples of software that have features to record and manage data, requirements and evaluation criteria include:
- Olive
- Microsoft Excel
- Apple Numbers
- Google Sheets
- Quip
- EtherCalc
- Zoho Sheets
- LibreOffice
- Apache OpenOffice Calc
- Smartsheet
- Airtable
2. Project Management Features
Project management is necessary for keeping your technology evaluations or multiple technology evaluations on track. This helps also facilitate more seamless collaboration with clients. For IT consultants, it’s important to look out for features such as ease of use, collaboration, clear reporting and aggregation of data.
- Olive (Software Selection)
- Avaza
- Zoho
- Mavenlink
- Accelo
- Jira
3. Streamlined Features for Efficient Software Evaluation, Sourcing, and RFP Processes
To sustain successful business transformation, IT consultants must thoroughly evaluate technology vendors against their client’s unique needs. Despite this necessity, tech evaluations are complicated by a typically long and complex process; including cross-referencing information in project management tools, and spreadsheets to determine a shortlist of solutions which often leads to inefficiencies.
To be effective, IT consultants and consultancy companies need to gain insights from key stakeholders on the business’s needs, build lists of requirements, determine the validity of each requirement, and build out an RFP. The process is tedious and can often be rife with bias and risk, but it is necessary to transform successfully.
To streamline the process, IT consultants are turning to software like Olive, built to help automate the more tedious aspects of their tech evaluation.
Features for IT Consultants include:
- Project Discovery
- Intelligent Requirements Libraries
- Requirements and Project Templates
- Automation of Requirements Tracebility
- Detailed Automated Due Diligence Reporting
Requirements Traceability Matrix on Olive platform – Feature for IT Consultants
Even the largest consulting firms still run the process of technology evaluations in outdated tools (basically, a collection of spreadsheets). More and more consultants and consultancy firms are finding it easier to leverage the benefits of digital transformation by integrating technology like Olive into their vendor selection process.
4. Features to Support RFx Creation (RFP, RFI, RFQ) Operations and Management
RFP software is used to simplify and automate the proposal and RFP processes. Common features include; proposal templates, RFP, RFI, and DDQ templates. etc. While still helpful for waterfall technology evaluations, most consultants still need to export this information across spreadsheets, or paste it into their chosen project management software. If running a more agile process, can create opportunities for human error as you revisit requirements.
- Olive – RFP alternative – vendors respond directly to requirements in the app, vendor responses saved for future evaluations
5. Requirements Management Software for IT Consultants
Requirements management software is a key feature in any IT consultant’s tech stack. There is always the question of build VS buy. Automating requirements management should also be a key part of growing a consulting business. Automation can deliver many benefits, such as the option to perform an in-depth analysis of your client’s requirements and automated due diligence or evaluate whether there is a need to build VS buy.
Examples of requirements management software for IT consultants and small consultancy firms:
- Olive (Software Sourcing and RFx Ops)
- Jira (Software Engineering)
- Jama (Software Engineering)
Source: How Software Development Consultancy can help your business via invozone
6. Streamlined Administration Tasks
A quick google search of “software automation for IT consulting software” results in a mishmash of ambiguity. Tedious administrative tasks such as cross-referencing spreadsheets and multiple productivity tools slow you down, create more work, and increase human error risk. Streamlining this tedium will bring many automation benefits to consultants. Focus on features in your software that enhance your output and facilitates an agile, collaborative process. You can easily streamline your administrative tasks with Olive’s software, allowing you to free up time to focus on growing your consultancy business. With Olive, you can automate your process with repeatable project templates and easily create and reuse project templates. Preload with initial discovery questions, functional requirements, non-functional requirements, and surveys. Vendor details and responses will be saved in your data for future projects, saving time and resources. You can also implement Olive’s surveys to facilitate a seamless collaboration process, helping you easily capture and record feedback from stakeholders across the organization.
How IT Consultants Can Lead by Example? Stay on Top of the Latest Software Features Available for IT Consultants
To be effective, IT consultants need to stay in the know about the latest tech and most recent digital trends. If IT consultants make recommendations about innovation, automation, and technology, they must also be thought leaders and innovators in these categories to engender trust in their clients.
Olive can act as an advisor to keep IT consultants’ knowledge fresh and up-to-date.
Olive is Software Built for Consultants that Automates Evaluations, Requirements Management, Projects, Solution Comparison, Vendor Management, and Due Diligence. These features ensure that IT consultants are updated with the latest digital transformation trends and can execute them effectively.
Transform YOUR Process before helping clients Transform
Consulting businesses have a huge opportunity right now – in the form of automating their services and offerings. Our world is transforming, and our business processes are becoming more agile. Smaller consulting businesses are more agile and able to adopt new technologies with higher success to automate and streamline their processes.
In an increasingly competitive environment, IT consultants who prioritize adopting the right software will come out on top. Try Olive. Olive is an Software Sourcing and RFx Platform that helps consultants streamline processes. You can gather and rank requirements in Olive, with detail, automate vendor scoring and due diligence and compare all available solutions out there to client requirements. Whats more, you can save these project and requirements templates for future use in the platform.
Olive consultants provide their clients with thorough evaluations of all potential solutions in weeks. With features and solutions created to streamline requirements gathering and software selection, consultants can reap the benefits of a tool that speeds up time to implementation. We help you simplify your software selection process, increase agile collaboration with your clients and vendors, bring consistency to your process and decrease your time to value.
Olive Features at a Glance – The Ultimate Software for IT Consultants
Automate the Process of Enterprise Software Selection, Without Sacrificing Collaboration or Due Diligence
Forget Spreadsheets, Meetings, and Emails
Manage the entire process in Olive. From gathering business pain points and requirements, to collaboration with departments, keep all your data and insights in one location.
Intelligent Requirements Libraries
We are constantly building new requirements libraries to kickoff your process. Leverage our work, or build your own just for your team. Once Olive knows the kind of project you are running, it it will suggest relevant requirements that you can select and edit to your specific use case.
Identify, rank and manage requirements through Olive surveys
Olive’s surveys facilitate a seamless collaboration process, helping you capture and record feedback from key stakeholders across the organization.
A high-level view of ALL vendors in the market VS your requirements
Evaluate the full market of solutions in a matter of weeks. Our team and community constantly add new solution providers and ensure 95%+ engagement. Leverage our vendors, or easily add your own.
Secure Digital Transformation
Protect access to your work, and safely include new stakeholders. Assign the appropriate permissions as needed.
Planning and Discovery
Dashboards keep everyone on track. Ensure you are solving the right problem.
Detailed Automated Due Diligence Reporting
Everything is time-stamped and saved in Olive, so you can always refer back to why a decision was made.
