Getting help with IT: first, communicate your business goals.

• Author: Mayer, Kathy

If you haven't consulted with an IT professional lately, you may not be getting all you could be from your investment. And if you think those professionals will come at you with a language you don't understand, you'll welcome the new wave in IT consulting. Listening to you and understanding your business is the name of the game today, Indiana IT companies report.

"A good computer consultant should be trying to learn about your business, to help you use technology to do what you do better," says Damon Richards, president of Indianapolis' Port-to-Port Consulting. He likens the company, founded in 1991, to an outsourced IT department, specializing in small-business projects. "We make it so our clients don't have to know technology. That's what we know. They communicate what their business goals are, and we turn that into the technology part of the business goal."

Learning those goals is also the first step at 70-employee Keller Schroeder & Associates, operating since 1978 in Evansville, says Dan Ehrhart, vice president of applications solutions. His firm works with a range of businesses, from small to multinational firms and "projects that last half a day to projects that last a year and in between."

In every case, he says, "we put the business objectives first--Why are you doing this? What are you going to accomplish? And then we let the technology follow."

That kind of planning is the biggest difference between professionals and amateurs, says Mike Motsinger, co-owner of nFusion Technologies LLC, a 10-employee Jeffersonville business founded in 2000.

"Professionals plan upfront, as opposed to reacting," he says. "We work with a group to understand where you want to be in five years, to understand the overall picture. We want to know- your goals, what your problems are. We sit down regularly to review and make recommendations on which way to go. The planning process is huge, and the review process is probably bigger."

Bringing systems together. Businesses needing to beef up their IT capabilities don't have to start from scratch either. In fact, one Indiana company, Theoris Inc., specializes in consolidating disparate systems that have already been created but not integrated. Located in Indianapolis and in business about 20 years, Theoris introduced its commercial version of Theoris Vision software last year.

"We have software for all businesses. Our software is next-generation business-intelligence software," says president Mike Cunningham...