I am currently providing IT consulting in person to several agencies and individuals in my area as well as remotely to others over the Internet. When I call this "consulting," I'm using that word in a very broad sense as I generally perform most of the IT work for those I provide with traditional consulting.

Something I've noticed is that small businesses think of consultants as something the big corporations have. In fact, just an hour of one-on-one consulting can save you many hours of research and thousands of dollars in software and hardware that you didn't really need.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• How is technology making my small business more efficient?
• How much could I be saving by making use of free and open source software?
• What is our company's IT security policy?
• What is our company web site bringing into the company?
• What new technologies do we need to be investing in?
• Is our company fully compliant with security, privacy, and licensing laws?

If you don't know the answers to those, you probably need an IT consultant!



Maybe you don't have the time or the interest to stay on top of all your IT concerns. That's fine. Consultants like myself can step in and handle them so that you don't have to.