All too often, companies hire outside consultants to suggest ways for the company to operate more efficiently. If companies were to spend more time listening to their own employees, such consultants would be unnecessary.

In this competitive era, if companies do not keep improving their products efficiently, it can spell doom for them as there are other companies springing up every day aiming to be the next 'new thing' in the industry. To keep up with the competition and the top industry trends, it is not only necessary but inherent that companies hire outside consultants to help them improve and operate efficiently.

It is often seen that when companies are facing issues for which they do not have the internal resources, they hire external help from professionals in that industry. For example, if the company does not have an efficient employee management system, it will hire a service providing company which will help improve the layout of the employee management system within the company's database. Outsourcing the work generally gets the job done better than coming up with a slapdash solution which may lead to a collapse any moment. Outsourcing generally involves hiring an external company on a temporary basis, to help provide some solutions to the problems faced by the company or to advice on efficiency improvements. Most corporations follow the mantra that, if faced with a problem, don't fret and outsource the problem. Not only is this efficient, but it is generally the best way to solve the issue at hand as we all know that an 'outside eye' can be more efficient at finding and solving existent problems.

Sometimes it is possible that the employees within the company are aware of such problems prevalent in the organization and they bring it up to their managers in the hopes that the problem will be solved by their recommended course of action. But such solutions are ingenuous. It is likely that many other employees may provide the company with a different set of solutions and though equally likely, the company may end up wasting additional resources trying to fish out the best solutions from the pool of suggestions. So, the companies generally resort to the external experts who follow a set of guidelines to tackle any problem and ensure that such problems would not arise again in the future. Even if the company did resort to listening to their employees' suggestions on the form of a survey, there may not be concrete and consistent data points for improval and may have a negative effect on the company's efficiency.

While hiring consultants is generally a great decision, many at times such consultants charge the company much more than it would have costed the company if they had solved the problem internally. Most of the service-providing companies have exorbitant rates to justify the services which they provide. They justify these rates by claiming to be the best in the industry and that some particular issue faced by the company would not be faced again. Despite stating the above, they make the companies to sign a contract with them for future servicing which indicates that the problems may arise again. Hiring external eyes also opens up the company to the risk of corporate espionage. There have been many cases, where the company hired an external firm for a persistent problem and the 'executive' from that company made away with trade secrets of the company and releasing it to the public, thus leading to extreme loss for the company.

Despite the above considerations, it is generally a positive decision to hire external counsel to advice on a company's efficiency issues. It would always be more efficient to outsource a piece of work than to come up with an in-house solution which may break down under some unforeseen circumstances. Though listening to the employees is important, the final suggestions and actions should be left to the experts in the field.