Bringing in external IT experts: how to strengthen your IT team

Your roadmap is ready, but the people to carry it out are missing. The cloud migration is waiting for an architect, the AI project for a data engineer and the service desk is overflowing. Hiring internally takes months, and specialists are scarce.

In this guide, we set out how to bring in external IT experts so they contribute to your goals from day one.

With IT consultancy, you deploy external IT specialists within your own organisation. They strengthen your team for the duration of a project, expand your capacity structurally or take over part of the work. You set the priorities, the consultants bring the expertise.

The difference with classic secondment lies in the partner behind it. A partner with its own expertise teams provides profiles who think along, can switch quickly when your needs change and makes sure the knowledge stays in your team.

• For a project with a clear deadline, such as a migration to the cloud or a Microsoft 365 roll-out.

• For expertise you rarely need, such as a security architect or a Power Platform specialist.

• For structural extra capacity, when hiring is too slow or the market does not supply the profiles.

• For a peak at your service desk, for example during a roll-out or an acquisition.

Describe the goal, not just the profile. What must be delivered in six months, which knowledge is missing today and how long do you need it? The sharper the goal, the better the partner can propose the right profile.

Are you looking for one specialist, a complete team or someone to strengthen your service desk? And do you need someone on site, or can part of the work be done nearshore? A combination of local and nearshore profiles often gives you the best balance between proximity, speed and cost.

An external expert delivers results faster when they know your environment, your processes and your people. Plan an onboarding, give access to the right systems and pair them with a fixed point of contact in your team.

Have consultants document what they build and let them work together with your own people. That way the knowledge stays in-house when the project ends.

Discuss at fixed moments what has been delivered and what is still needed. A good partner scales up and down with you, and suggests improvements itself.

An international materials technology group has worked with Xylos for fourteen years on the architecture, build and day-to-day management of its Microsoft 365 environment. Eighteen consultants contribute to that project. When extra expertise was urgently needed, two senior specialists were ready within two weeks, and costs are forty percent lower than before.

• Does the partner propose profiles based on your goal, or only based on a job description?

• Does the partner have its own expertise teams behind the consultants?

• Can the partner combine local and nearshore profiles?

• How quickly is someone ready, and how do you scale up and down?

• How does the partner make sure the knowledge stays in your team?

Xylos is a Belgian family-owned tech company headquartered in Antwerp, with forty years of experience and more than 150 certified experts. With IT Consultancy, Xylos deploys specialists within your organisation, for the duration of a project, as a structural team extension or to strengthen your service desk.

The consultants come from Belgium and from our nearshore center of excellence in Europe, and are backed by the Xylos expertise teams in cloud, workplace, security, data, AI and automation. That is how Xylos works for Mediahuis and De Lijn, among others.

Which profile are you looking for? Tell us what you need and we will propose the right people.