If you don’t plot out time carefully in computer consulting, you will waste not only time but money.  

Time Journaling

You can figure out a lot about computer consulting time spent by journaling.  You should write down everything you do for a few weeks to get a good sample of how you use your time. Where are you wasting it?  How can you improve time management?  Use your journal to evaluate and combine it with an Excel spreadsheet or calendar.  Do you have enough time to do the business development for larger accounts?

Evaluation

Time is at a premium when you are working in the computer consulting business.  You may need to make decisions about where you can and can’t afford to spend as little as ten hours per week.

Make Time for Training

Training can be expensive.  But a lot of computer consulting firms do training that is more costly time-wise than financially.  Don’t send people out for five-day $2,500 Exchange Server courses.  Instead get the action pack subscription and buy some resale copies.  You can load it up on spare machines and whenever your techs have downtime, make them go through the tutorials.  Have them look at the read-me files, resource kits and have them do the CBT training.

Computer Consulting Plans Are Critical

If you are billing out computer consulting techs at 65 or 70 percent capacity and they spend six or eight hours per week just sitting there or doing some work around the store, structure their downtime more wisely.

Give them a plan during the month to concentrate all their time on learning how to do Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 or get stronger on troubleshooting Exchange Sever.       

The Main Point about Computer Consulting

Track where your time is spent and have technical staff spend some time each week keeping skills up to speed.  Identify your computer consulting skills gaps to get to the next level.

Added By:  Computer Consulting Kit