Defining Consulting

I was listening to a TED Talks video on Education by Ken Robinson: "How schools kill creativity" today and the speaker on the video says that when he tells a person he works in education, the blood runs from their face, I know exactly what he is talking about. When I am introduced to people at business gatherings and they come around to me and ask what is it you do? I say I am an IT Specialist, and Small Business Consultant, and of course the blood runs out of their faces too. I think this is directly due to the reputation of consultants in enterprises and industry. The long history of consultants costing a fortune and serving little to no real purpose has tainted people's understanding of the purpose of a consultant.

In the instance I am talking about (as a consultant) I am an expert on IT, I know the trends, what is paying off and what isn't. I know what capabilities are out there, what you should pay for and what you shouldn't. It's like having a hunting guide for your first few hunting trips. At some point, you may no longer need me at all. But you may want to have a meeting with me now and then anyway, just to find out what is changing, what is about to die from a disruptive technology displacing it, little things like that.

Today, I am embarking on a little research into what Email Marketing companies are providing and the prices for such services. There are a lot of them out there, but I have decided to narrow my scope down to what I consider a more humanly manageable top five sites people are finding useful. Email Marketing companies also try to act as Contact Relationship Management tools (CRM) for businesses and individuals. In doing so, they are also going to provide several other marketing tools along the way. How they implement them and who is offering what solutions is what I am after here.


This is a blurb from Flex Jobs web site concerning a definition of what a Consultant is.
What are Consulting Jobs?
What are consulting jobs? Simply put, consultants are hired to help companies and organizations pinpoint business problems and trouble spots, help plot an organization’s next move, or generally transform the organization’s work practices to make them more efficient and productive, and less wasteful. Pretty vague, right? Think of it this way: Consultants provide an outside, objective point of view to help organizations spot problems or better their performance in ways that the organization might not be able to see themselves.