In simple terms, technical consulting is a service that helps businesses and individuals solve technical problems within a specific niche, industry, or even software. The main focus of technical consulting revolves around the improvement of technical infrastructure and operations.
It is without a doubt a challenge for businesses to keep up with the latest technological trends and best practices, given the steadily rising complexity of technological systems. Technical consulting provides solutions that help businesses stay up-to-date, and improve their overall performance.
The expertise of technical consultants isn’t limited to just technical solutions. Many companies erroneously assume that technology and automation can fix the majority of their problems, but this is not the case. While technology can fix some parts of bad processes, it is much wiser to improve the processes themselves, before worrying about the technical aspect of the problem. That is why creating streamlined processes is an important part of technical consulting and should be the primary focus of the job. Technology doesn't fix bad processes; it makes good processes much more performant.
In short, technical consulting focuses on improving not only the technical infrastructure but also the processes to improve overall performance and efficiency.
Why use technical consulting for HubSpot?
There is a multitude of reasons why a company should use technical consulting for HubSpot. I'm only going to outline a few of them.
Harness HubSpot's full potential
To start, if I were to guess, I would say that most of HubSpot's customers aren't using the platform to its full potential. I've seen a good number of subpar HubSpot setups; some of them were quite terrifying. Duplicate properties, inconsistent data, and sync errors are just some examples. HubSpot isn't cheap; if you're going to pay for the tool, you might as well use it properly. Sometimes, bad setups can be fixed quickly, but an inexperienced admin/user won't be able to spot these mistakes. The solution is to get someone who knows what they're doing—a technical consultant.
Save time
It takes time to manage the technical aspects of the business, especially if you lack expertise in a particular area. For example, let's say you assign your leads manually because you don't know how to assign them to your reps based on their timezone. In this case, not only are you spending a lot of time doing the process of the assignment itself, but you're also being inefficient by not assigning those leads quickly enough. Streamlining your operations can save you time and increase efficiency.
Why not regular consultant
In my opinion, to manage HubSpot properly and use it to its full potential, the admin has to be technically literate. Someone who has a good understanding of how things work behind the scenes will always have an advantage over those who don't. Many good practices have been developed over the years that sometimes only technical consultants understand and have the knowledge of (which is strange since most of us have access to the same type of information).
Common technical consulting projects
While the range of HubSpot technical projects is large, here are a few common examples.
Process automation
One of the most common technical projects is process automation. This can include automating marketing or sales operations (and more). For example, you may want to segment audiences based on certain attributes, and then email the members when they take a certain action. Or you want to distribute leads based on their region. In both cases, you should automate the processes because they are repeatable and predictable.
Lead tracking and attribution
Generating leads from multiple channels and campaigns is no good when you have no visibility of performance by lead source. Lead tracking and attribution (or lack thereof) are common problems at companies that simply lack the technical expertise to use HubSpot. While HubSpot has some sort of built-in lead tracking, it's not enough. Oftentimes, good tracking requires custom setups using JavaScript, as well as numerous custom properties automated via complex workflow processes.
Data-backed lead scoring
Building an effective lead scoring model to help you reach out to leads that matter is a part of technical consulting. Let’s just say that HubSpot itself is rarely enough to create an effective lead score—you also need enrichment software that needs to be integrated, and its data needs to be formatted/normalized before it becomes usable.
Data integrity
A common problem that companies face is data inconsistency. When you have multiple instances of the same property, or worse, multiple values representing the same thing, it's almost impossible to draw accurate conclusions and make good business decisions. A technical consultant can point out these inconsistencies and provide solutions to make the data useful.
Training
At the end of the day, HubSpot is only as good as its users' abilities to use it. Training your employees to use the platform to its full potential is important. Good training goes beyond standard usage, but it also touches on best practices, so that the user can be as efficient as possible. Proper training can also help with data integrity, and can affect the ability to report on certain CRM activities.
Who is it suited for?
In reality, every company could use a technical consultant, especially if they don't have an internal expert. Knslta focuses on helping out smaller companies that often don't have the budget to work with expensive agencies, or simply don't like to deal with bureaucracies that so often plague agencies.