You Have the Team. You Don't Have the System.

• Smaller companies without internal capacity benefit from hands-on consulting that guides them through the entire selection process

• Mid-market companies with capable teams often overpay for big consulting firms when what they actually need is a structured framework they can run themselves

• The right approach depends on whether you have the people to do the work, not whether the decision feels important enough to justify outside help

• Owning your own evaluation system gives growing organizations the ability to make multiple software decisions over time without starting from scratch each time

A $15 million services company needed to replace their aging accounting system. They had a small finance team, no dedicated IT staff, and had never been through a formal software selection. They needed someone to walk them through it, help them ask the right questions, and make sure they did not get steamrolled by vendors. Consulting made sense for them.

A $120 million manufacturer faced the same decision a few months later. They had a CFO, a capable operations team, and an IT director who had been through system implementations before. They also hired a big consulting firm. Six figures later, they had a recommendation and a stack of deliverables. But the work those consultants did was work their own team could have done, if they had the right framework.

These two companies needed very different things. One needed expertise they did not have internally. The other needed structure, not hand-holding.

When Consulting Is the Right Call

Some organizations genuinely need outside help. If you have never been through a major software selection, the learning curve is steep. You may not know what questions to ask vendors, how to separate marketing claims from reality, or how to structure a decision that will hold up under scrutiny later.

For smaller companies without a deep bench, a consultant can fill gaps that would otherwise leave you exposed. They bring experience from similar projects and know the vendor landscape. And this does not have to mean hiring a massive firm. An experienced independent consultant often provides better attention and more practical guidance than a big name that assigns junior staff to your project.

This is not about company size as a hard cutoff. It is about capacity. A 50-person company with a strong operations leader might be ready to run their own evaluation. A 200-person company with a stretched team might need support. The question is whether you have the people and time to do the work yourselves.

The Mid-Market Trap

Here is where things go sideways. Mid-market companies, the ones with real teams and real capability, often default to hiring large consulting firms for software selection. It feels like the safe choice. The decision is important, the dollars are significant, and bringing in a name-brand firm seems like the responsible thing to do.

But what do those firms actually provide? They send junior consultants who follow a methodology. They interview your stakeholders, document requirements, score vendors, and produce a recommendation. The work is competent. It is also work your own people could do with a structured process to follow.

The big firms charge a premium because they are selling expertise and risk reduction. But for a mid-market company with capable teams, that premium often buys you a process you could own for a fraction of the cost. You are paying for consultants to learn your business, do work your team understands better, and then leave without transferring any lasting capability.

What Mid-Market Companies Actually Need

The gap for most mid-market organizations is not expertise. It is structure. They have people who understand the business, know what they need from software, and can evaluate whether a vendor's promises make sense. What they lack is a repeatable framework that organizes the work and produces documentation that holds up later.

This is what PlatformIQ provides. It is not a replacement for thinking. It is a system that channels your team's knowledge into a disciplined evaluation process. You control the criteria. You run the scoring. You own the output.

For a mid-market company facing a platform decision, this changes the math. Instead of spending six figures on a consulting engagement, you invest in a system you keep. The first evaluation takes effort because you are learning the process. By the second or third, you have built internal capability that stays with your organization.

Matching the Solution to the Situation

The choice between consulting and a framework is not about which one is better. It is about which one fits your organization right now.

If you lack the internal team to run a structured evaluation, working with a consultant makes sense. The right advisor will transfer knowledge as they work, leaving you better prepared for the next decision.

If you have capable people but no formal process, you probably do not need to hire a big firm. You need a framework that lets your team do the work themselves. That is where PlatformIQ fits. It gives mid-market companies the structure to run rigorous evaluations without paying consulting rates for work they can own.

The worst outcome is defaulting to expensive outside help because the decision feels important, when what you actually needed was a better way to organize the work you were already capable of doing.