Last Updated on 15 July 2025 by Maelle
In today’s article, we’ll discuss what an external consultant does, what to look for when selecting one, and the benefits they can bring to your business. At tout-reparer.fr, we’ve tested their services, and it’s safe to say they’re an excellent long-term investment.
We can define business consulting as the service owners turn to when they feel they need help or advice in solving problems, implementing improvement processes, or when they’re not sure what’s wrong.
The main goal of a business consultant is to provide recommendations based on a preliminary analysis and to be able to implement appropriate measures or solutions for the business in question, increasing its productivity and competitiveness. Whether you’re a company like ours, or even an aeronautics company! The most common reasons why a company decides to hire a consultant are: Specific problem: This occurs when the owner detects a problem or need in your organization but lacks the resources (time, personnel, knowledge, etc.) to resolve it. This is when you contact a specialist who can help. Generic problem: When something is wrong, but you don’t really know where the deficiency comes from. The company is showing symptoms of declining sales, loss of competitiveness, etc., but is unable to see what is happening. In this case, the consultant, with a different perspective and experience in different situations, can objectively see what is wrong and how to fix it.
Implementing or improving processes and systems: occurs when new systems or processes are implemented, or when you want to improve existing ones. You can correct a situation that has deteriorated, improve a situation, or create a completely new one.
- This is why
- tout-reparer.fr
- offers you its guide: The Importance of an External Consultant for Your High-Tech Industry!
1- A Fixed and Temporary Cost Hiring a consultant for a project (Innovation Consulting, Purchasing Consulting, or other!) is a one-time cost. They are not on the payroll; they are hired for a fixed period and for a fixed amount of money, and when the work is completed, the cost disappears. 2- External, Impartial, and Comparative Perspective
An external consultant, by definition, has an outside perspective. Since they are not involved in the day-to-day management of the company, they are not influenced by the history or relationships (good or bad) between individuals or departments. A good advisor knows that they cannot teach their client how to run their business, but they can offer a different and impartial approach. Furthermore, having worked in several companies in the same sector, they have a comparative perspective and can provide the best insights (benchmarking).
3- Methodology SpecialistThe advisor is a specialist in their services, and has therefore acquired expertise and a methodology that allows them to save their clients a significant amount of time.4- Time to devote to a project There’s no doubt that many studies and reports conducted by an external consultant could have been prepared by someone within the company. But beyond the aforementioned methodology, organizations generally lack the time to seriously dedicate themselves to this study. Many professionals know perfectly well that if their daily work gave them a little more time, they would conduct an IT system failure analysis, a comprehensive cost analysis, or even a marketing campaign. But there’s never enough time; daily urgencies don’t allow for it, and the opportunity to gain more productivity with a better IT system, more money with more optimized costs, or more sales with an improved image and reputation is lost. Obviously, the consultant doesn’t do everything alone and will need to rely on certain people within the company. But these people will devote very little time to the assignment and will work within a very well-defined project framework. How to Benefit from the Services of an External Consultant
After seeing these benefits, many companies, including tout-reparer.fr, decide to hire a consultant. To avoid unpleasant surprises, it’s best to define three things from the outset:
1- The objective of the assignment. This seems obvious, but it saves a lot of time and money to be clear from the start about what you want to do, how, and to what extent. 2- The duration
As a former CFO told me when I first started: when you hire consultants, the first thing you need to do is set a departure date, otherwise they’ll never leave. He said it humorously, but it rings true. With a clearly defined objective, the timeframe for the assignment is easily defined.
3- The Budget
The company should know from the start how much the assignment will cost, but don’t set this amount too rigidly. Having already defined the objective and deadline allows you to calculate a baseline budget, but there can be variations. It’s similar to what happens with a car repair: you know how much it costs, but there can be surprises (another broken part that couldn’t be seen without disassembling the first one, for example). A consultant may find that important information is missing or that they have to work with information on paper when it’s normally available electronically. In both cases (car repair and business consulting), the important thing is to warn, explain, and seek the customer’s consent before taking any action. If you don’t do this, you run the risk of the customer feeling deceived, even though this isn’t the case.
In short, by properly defining the objective and budget from the outset, a consultant is an unbeatable and inexpensive opportunity for a business to improve productivity. The entire tout-reparer.fr team remains at your disposal in the blog’s comments section.
