Question 1

What does an IT consultant actually do?

Accepted Answer

An IT consultant diagnoses business problems and prescribes technology answers: which software to buy or build, how to secure data, when to move to cloud, what a fair price is, and how to manage the change. Unlike a reseller, a good consultant is paid for advice rather than commissions on hardware. Typical outputs are an assessment report, a recommended architecture, a vendor shortlist and a costed implementation plan.

Question 2

Does a small business really need IT consulting?

Accepted Answer

Not permanently — but at decision points, yes. Choosing an ERP or billing system, recovering from data loss, opening a second branch, or answering a big client's security questionnaire are moments where a wrong choice costs lakhs over the following years. A few days of independent advice at those points is cheap insurance. Day to day, most small firms need reliable support — an AMC or managed services — more than they need strategy.

Question 3

What is the difference between IT consulting and managed IT services?

Accepted Answer

Consulting is advisory and project-based: assess, recommend, design, then hand over. Managed services (MSP) is ongoing operations: monitoring, patching, helpdesk and backups for a fixed monthly fee per user or device. Many firms, Addroit Nexus included, offer both — but always know which hat your provider is wearing, because advice that conveniently requires the adviser's own managed service deserves extra scrutiny.

Question 4

How much does IT consulting cost in India?

Accepted Answer

Indicative ranges: independent consultants and small firms charge roughly ₹1,000–5,000 per hour or ₹8,000–25,000 per day depending on specialisation; a scoped assessment for a small office (network, security and backup review) commonly lands between ₹25,000 and ₹1.5 lakh; large-brand firms charge multiples of that. GST at 18% applies. For a first engagement, a fixed-scope quote beats open hourly billing — you learn the real cost before committing.

Question 5

Should I hire in-house IT staff or outsource?

Accepted Answer

Do the arithmetic first: a competent full-time system administrator in a tier-2 city costs roughly ₹3.5–8 lakh per year plus management overhead, and one person cannot cover 24×7 or every specialisation. Below about 40–50 employees, outsourced support with a clear SLA usually costs less and covers more skills. In-house starts winning when IT is your product, or when daily on-floor presence genuinely matters — manufacturing lines, hospitals, trading desks.

Question 6

What is an AMC in IT?

Accepted Answer

An annual maintenance contract is a fixed yearly fee for keeping specified equipment and software working — typically covering preventive visits, repairs, patching and phone support, with parts either included (comprehensive AMC) or billed separately (non-comprehensive). Indicatively, hardware AMCs in India run 6–12% of equipment value per year. Read the exclusions carefully: consumables, physical damage and ageing batteries usually are not covered.

Question 7

What is an IT audit?

Accepted Answer

A structured review of your technology against a checklist: what hardware and software you own, who has access to what, whether backups actually restore, how patched your systems are, which licences you are missing, and where single points of failure sit. For a small firm it takes a few days and ends in a findings report ranked by risk, with quick wins separated from long-term fixes. Auditors should show evidence, not just opinions.

Question 8

What does a cybersecurity assessment include?

Accepted Answer

For a small business, typically: an external scan of everything exposed to the internet, a review of email security (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), password and two-factor policy checks, an access review covering ex-employees, backup and ransomware readiness, and a phishing awareness check. Deeper engagements add penetration testing. The output should be a prioritised fix list — the top five items usually remove most of the real-world risk.

Question 9

Can a consultant help me move my business to the cloud?

Accepted Answer

That is one of the most common engagements. A migration project covers inventory (what runs where), deciding what moves and what stays, sizing and costing cloud resources, the actual cutover with rollback plans, and staff training. A 20-person office moving email, files and accounting to cloud services is typically a 2–6 week project. Insist on a written cutover plan with a rollback step for every system.

Question 10

What is digital transformation in plain language?

Accepted Answer

Stripped of jargon: replacing manual, paper or spreadsheet-driven processes with systems that capture data once and reuse it — orders flowing into billing, billing into accounts and GST filings, inventory updating itself. The technology is the easy half; changing how staff work is the hard half. Genuine transformation shows up as measurable outcomes — fewer hours on month-end, faster quotes, lower error rates — not as a list of software purchased.

Question 11

Should I buy off-the-shelf software or build custom?

Accepted Answer

Default to off-the-shelf: accounting (Tally, Zoho), HR, CRM and billing are solved problems, and ₹5,000–50,000 a year in licences beats lakhs in development plus permanent maintenance. Build custom only when the process is genuinely your competitive edge, or when no product fits your workflow after honest evaluation. A hybrid is often smartest: standard products connected by small custom integrations.

Question 12

How are IT projects priced — fixed price or time and materials?

Accepted Answer

Fixed price suits well-defined scope: you carry less risk and the vendor pads the quote for uncertainty. Time and materials (hourly or daily rates) suits evolving or exploratory work: cheaper when managed well, open-ended when not. A useful middle path is phased fixed pricing — a paid discovery phase first, producing the specification that makes an honest fixed quote possible for the build. Distrust precise quotes given before anyone has studied your systems.

Question 13

What is scope creep and how do I prevent it?

Accepted Answer

Scope creep is the quiet growth of a project beyond what was agreed — one small extra request at a time — until budgets and deadlines fail. Prevention is contractual and procedural: a written scope with explicit exclusions, a change-request process where every addition gets a price and schedule impact before approval, and one named decision-maker on your side. Good vendors welcome this discipline; it protects both parties equally.

Question 14

What do response time and resolution time mean in a support SLA?

Accepted Answer

Response time is how quickly the provider acknowledges and starts working on an issue; resolution time is how quickly it is fixed. Contracts commonly promise firm response times — say 30 minutes for critical issues and 4 business hours for normal ones — but only target resolution times, since fix duration depends on the fault. Check the severity definitions carefully: providers grade tickets, and an issue graded low gets the slow lane.

Question 15

How long do typical small-business IT projects take?

Accepted Answer

Indicative durations when scope is clear: a business website 2–6 weeks; an office network with structured cabling and firewall 1–3 weeks; migrating email and files to cloud 2–6 weeks; a Tally-to-ERP move or new ERP rollout 3–9 months including data cleanup and training; custom software 3–6 months to a first usable version. The recurring cause of overruns is not technology — it is slow decisions and unclean data on the customer side.

Question 16

What is an IT roadmap and why have one?

Accepted Answer

A one-to-three-year plan mapping business goals to technology steps with budgets: this quarter fix backups and email security, next quarter replace ageing PCs, next year evaluate an ERP. It turns IT from surprise emergency spending into planned expenditure, helps in loan or investor discussions, and stops vendors selling you things out of sequence. For a small firm it fits on two pages and gets revisited twice a year.

Question 17

What compliance rules apply to a small Indian business's IT?

Accepted Answer

The common baseline: GST e-invoicing and returns need reliable, compliant billing systems; the DPDP Act 2023 governs any customer personal data you store, with breach reporting duties; CERT-In directions require reporting certain cyber incidents within six hours and retaining logs for 180 days; sector regulators (RBI, IRDAI, health) add more. Large customers increasingly impose their own requirements too — ISO 27001-style controls now appear in vendor questionnaires.

Question 18

How do I compare proposals from different IT vendors?

Accepted Answer

Normalise before comparing: make every vendor price the same written scope, list exclusions, name the people who will actually do the work, and state support terms after go-live. Then compare total three-year cost — licences, AMC, upgrades — not the first invoice. Reference checks with two existing customers of similar size tell you more than any presentation. The cheapest quote usually re-enters through change requests later.

Question 19

What should I receive when an IT project is handed over?

Accepted Answer

A complete handover pack: administrator credentials in your name (not the vendor's), source code and licences where applicable, network diagrams and configuration documentation, a runbook for routine tasks, backup and restore procedures tested with you watching, and training for your staff. If the vendor disappeared tomorrow, another competent firm should be able to take over from the documentation alone. Withhold final payment until this is delivered.

Question 20

What are red flags when hiring an IT consultant?

Accepted Answer

Watch for: confident quotes given before studying your environment, insistence on proprietary lock-in with no exit path, admin passwords kept in the vendor's name, no written scope or SLA, reluctance to share references, pressure to buy hardware through them at unverified margins, and jargon offered in place of measurable outcomes. Addroit Nexus publishes its engagement terms in plain language precisely because this industry has earned buyer scepticism.

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