GIS Consultant versus hiring in-house staff

Hakan Akkurt

Business Developer

It has been a recurring issue for years: municipalities want less external hiring, but in practice external hiring expenditure turns out to be higher. This conclusion emerges almost every year in the A&O Personnel Monitor. I notice that this discussion is very topical within municipalities at the moment. My name is Hakan Akkurt and I work as Business Developer for the municipal market at Tensing. In this blog, I will give you five reasons to choose an external consultant.

Reason 1: level of knowledge is very high

Tensing's workforce comprises 83% per cent consultants in the field of ESRI and/or FME. All these consultants have multiple ESRI and/or FME certifications. In addition, they challenge each other. Put a large number of fall enthusiasts together and a positive upward knowledge spiral is created: there is always someone who knows even better and therefore has an answer to even the most substantive question. Usually within five minutes.

Building such a large GIS team is simply not cost-effective for the majority of municipalities. Yes, it is possible to have your own staff obtain certificates. But then they must also have the space to apply everything they have learned. Moreover, the effect of pulling together is smaller with an in-house team. After all, fewer specialists in-house means less specialist knowledge. At Tensing, we employ 66 GIS consultants.

Reason 2: an external consultant offers an independent view

An internal employee knows better 'how the fences run' within your municipal organisation. It is also easier for an internal employee to put out his or her political feelers and figure out how to get approval to keep your GIS policy moving. I'm certainly not going to deny that.

However, an external consultant can more easily distance himself or herself from the internal organisation. This means that he or she still needs an internal employee to find his or her way around. BUT: this also means that it is easier for an external consultant to take a stance that goes against internal sentiment, without the risk of conflict within the internal organisation.

Reason 3: we (among others) know your industry very well

Tensing has 30 years of experience in GIS Consultancy. Over the years, we have carried out hundreds of projects for various government organisations and other industries. Municipalities, water boards, provinces, utilities, construction companies, contractors and architects, we have a very broad customer base and therefore we have been able to test out many different applications of ArcGIS and FME in practice.

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FME schermen

As an organisation, we have specific experience in the municipal sector. This enables us to quickly understand your challenge and arrive at a solution. In addition, our broader perspective also enables us to apply applications from other industries to the municipal sector. In our experience, all GIS projects are tailor-made. Máár: it is a lot easier to arrive at a customised solution quickly if you have completed many similar projects.

Reason 4: knowledge transfer is in our DNA

Better to steal well, than invent badly. Therefore, I briefly steal the viewpoint of Harvard professor John D. Halamka from Good Consultant, Bad Consultant:

A good consultant trains an organisation to continue working independently after they leave. They make the client self-reliant using their specialist knowledge.

Bad consultants will create a powerpoint for you that contains only already known data. This phenomenon is also known as 'borrowing your watch to tell you the time'.

Knowledge transfer is a central theme at Tensing. Our consultancy teams regularly put this topic on the agenda. Are we taking sufficient care to make a client self-reliant? Thanks to this focus on knowledge sharing, your dependence on external consultants decreases. So you also invest in your own employees.

Reason 5: external consultants are taken more seriously

I admit straight away: this fifth proposition is hard to substantiate, it is mostly a feeling I have. Out of sheer curiosity, I therefore went googling. In the process, I found one study that confirms my gut feeling: a thesis by Joris Kuppens, completed in 2011 for Tilburg University. In addition, I base myself on the sentiment I often pick up in the corridors.

I think there are several reasons why external consultants are better listened to. Firstly, they work for a specialised agency, which only deals with one specific branch of the sport. In our case, optimising and implementing geographic information systems. Second, I think external consultants can quickly gain professional trust by citing relevant benchmarks from similar organisations.

User case Tensing: municipality of Haarlem

Curious about how Tensing works? The user case below tells in detail how we worked with the Municipality of Haarlem to build a website where residents of the municipality can see at a glance whether the roof of their home is suitable for solar panels.

Gemeente-Haarlem-met-logo

Best practice: municipality of Tilburg

The Municipality of Tilburg wanted to provide insight into the most cost-efficient sustainable heat source for all its residents. In collaboration with Tensing, they created a ArcGIS Storymap created that answers this question for all Tilburgers.

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