Technical consultant: a profession at the heart of technological development

Definition of a technical consultant

The name technical consultant is a generic term for a profession that goes by different names depending on the technological expertise, the company’s sector of activity, the functional specializations, etc. The technical consultant can be called “web consultant”, “information systems consultant” or “computer expert consultant”.

His role is mainly to propose and develop technical solutions adapted to the customer’s IT specifications. He generally works with companies that want to develop their information systems in conjunction with the advent of new technologies. He must therefore manage the entire project from the construction phase to its completion, i.e. its implementation at the customer’s site.

Its main missions

To carry out his project, the technical consultant proceeds in stages. His work makes him the IT technical project manager who must direct the project from the writing of the specifications to the production start-up, including the management of the teams’ schedule:

• Elaboration of the offer: after having grasped the client’s needs, the consultant must write a specification sheet including all the functional specifications, essential to the work of the development engineers. Moreover, in order to be able to intervene in different companies, he must carry out a technological watch in his field of expertise and be able to train quickly to new technologies in order to answer all the technical requests of the customers. Very often, the consultant needs to get closer to new technological partners to expand his offer or complete his team with providers.
• Pre-sales phase: he participates in meetings prior to the signing of the contract. He thus gives a technical dimension to these meetings and proposes the first IT solutions through the drafting of the response to the call for tenders.
• Technical audits and recommendations: he analyzes the information system used by the customer through a technical audit. At this stage, he is able to establish a diagnosis and make recommendations concerning the software solutions to be implemented and to respond to the company’s problems.

The consultant is both a project manager and an expert in computer development (like a software engineer) that masters a particular programming language. He can therefore take charge of part of the development and be a technical referent for the engineering teams. In addition, his mission leads him to contribute in several ways to the development of the project. He/she may be required to configure the developed tool, manage the deployment at the client’s site, assist the project manager and write the specifications for the project manager. All of this is to ensure the performance of the new application.

The missions of the technical consultant can be confusing and correspond to missions that are close to other IT professions. They can be assimilated to those of the functional consultant.

The functional consultant also carries out audits and is responsible for evaluating the technological issues and risks concerning the company’s operations. He works essentially in front-office with the customer. The technical consultant does not have the same working method and usually works in the back office.

Note that among the activities of the technical consultant, some are more dominant than others depending on the field of activity of the company. Within an ESN, he/she is required to take more responsibility for IT development. Whereas in a consulting firm, he is fully occupied as a consultant with a well-defined technical expertise. For a software publisher, he/she is mainly responsible for marketing and responding to calls for tender.

The skills of the technical consultant

If we were to compare the different forms of analysis and talk about a pyramid of uses, we could consider that descriptive analysis allows us to know what is happening in practice. Analytics aims to answer the question “why?”while predictive and prescriptive analytics offer the opportunity to know what will happen and what actions can be taken.

Finally, companies that are currently interested in leveraging prescriptive analytics are faced with certain legal constraints, such as the General Data Protection Regulation(GDPR). It is therefore important to find the best solution in terms of privacy policy to stay within the legislation, for example by anonymizing user information.

Also read in our “project governance” file:

• Project comitology: the governance bodies of an IT project and their roles
• Steering and governance of an HR project: which profiles should be involved?
• Steering and governance of a Finance IS project: which profiles should be involved?
• Steering and governance of an IT project: which profiles should be involved?
• Project governance: what role for the steering committee?
• The actors of a project team: organisation, role and skills
• The IS manager at the heart of the development and evolution of systems
• HRIS Manager: what role in the evolution of HR Information Systems?
• IS project manager : what role and responsibility in an IS project?
• Functional consultant: a role close to the business processes
• Technical consultant: a profession at the heart of technological development
• Solution architect : a profession that manages development and deployment
• DevOps Consultant: role, missions and development skills
• Data Protection Officer (DPO): what roles and missions?
• CISO: a key job within the business for system security
• The service delivery manager at the heart of team management
• Scrum master, a key profession for Scrum project management
• Data scientist: a strategic profession at the service of management
• MOA / MOE: how are the roles divided on an information system implementation project?