A consultant shared his opinion with me, that small non-profits shouldn’t waste their money on in-house technical people; that a maintenance contract with a consulting company like his is enough. I have a lot of problems with this logic assuming it is not solely driven by self-interest. To meet short-term goals such a circumstance may make sense but so much is ignored in such a recommendation.
When I speak of in-house technical people, I’m referring to a manager-type that can make informed technical and business decisions, not just a helpdesk-type person. While the latter is very important, a small IT department will force all staff to fill multiple hats. A young, inexperienced, purely technical helpdesk person, for example, is not going to be able to make decisions effectively and non-technical supervisors don’t know enough to query decisions made by them. So you wind up with situations like the one I mentioned in the last post (post) and the more common, more innocent scenarios like the one Michael Stein commented on (post).
I feel, however, that any in-house tech is better than a removed, immediately unavailable consulting firm. Before my arrival, the current company I work for relied heavily on consultants for everything from server crashes to workstation slowdown. It worked fine for a short while but I sensed some of the staff were becoming unglued with no one attending to their individual/departmental needs. Much of the minor work can be done more effectively by in-house technical staff who would eventually gain experience with common company issues, whether technical or functional.
Plus, as I mentioned earlier, there is self-interest with consultants that cannot be ignored. That’s not to say they are deceptive but they are human and they are running a business for which a significant portion of revenue could come from reselling. Can one really trust the salesman to make unbiased suggestions? Even if the product they suggest works fine for you, are you sure it is the best that you could have done.
I don’t discount consultant opinions, I depend on them, but I also look for alternatives and other opinions where non-technical administrators would not. Any IT Manager would do the same. The overarching, company-wide impact of certain decisions need to be considered by a technically capable person who is working in the interest of the company. It may not be realistic for every non-profit to invest in an experienced IT Manager but they should find someone who doesn’t just sell to them but can advocate for them; someone who doesn’t just focus on an individual project but will look at the whole business; someone who doesn’t just consider the company occasionally but thinks about the company’s goals every day. That’s what an IT Manager is for.