How To Choose a Data Science Consulting Company? [Step-by-Step Guide]

Last Updated on October 21, 2021 by Editorial Team

Author(s): Edwin Lisowski

How to choose a Data Science consulting company? [Step-by-step guide]

Data science is in great demand nowadays. Grand View Research suggests that the industry will see a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26.9% from 2020 to 2027, providing an eventual revenue value of $25.94 billion.

Business company’s models generate a huge amount of data that needs to be processed and analyzed for further use to grow their business in numbers. Consequently, consulting companies are gaining more and more popularity for giving data engineering services, AI consulting, and data science services every day.

More and more companies are looking for technologically advanced solutions and experienced experts who turn companies’ data into valuable insights. Therefore, consulting companies help better understand customers, automate and improve business processes and of course to increase revenue.

Making the correct decision in choosing an experienced consulting company can be quite challenging, so here are tips for choosing a data science consulting partner for your business growth.

Step 1: Your business goals and expectations

Before doing Google research and choosing the best data science consulting company, clarify your business goals and analyze what you need. Firstly, answer the following questions:

• Why do you need data science services?
• What do you expect to get from a consulting company?

Step 2: Make a research

• Establish clear criteria for the selection of data science services providers. Here are some key factors that can affect your choice: tech and industry expertise, relevant experience, company size, industry recognition and awards, price and pay more attention to the company’s portfolio.
• Do Google research. Select from the results list the relevant companies based on the above key factors.
• Analyze the main website of each company and find detailed information about the company’s provided solutions and services. Check out the client’s portfolio. It helps you to draw certain conclusions about the company’s profile and operations. Additionally, it is useful to check references of the company you’re considering and their case studies.
• Find out the listed companies on different social media platforms (LinkedIn, Clutch, etc). This will allow you to check the content of the company, the style of communication with the audience, and above all the reputation among other companies.

Step 3: The technology stack for your business

• It is essential to determine the technology stack for your business case and with which the companies are working.
• An experienced data science consulting company must have knowledge in working with such open sources and trusted technologies as Google Cloud Platform, Scala, Keras, PyTorch, TensorFlow, and more.
• Check out also project management tools that help effectively communicate with clients: Slack, Trello, Google Meets, GitHub.

Step 4: Consultation, contract signing, and long-term cooperation

• Most consulting companies offer free consultations on their website, so feel free to fill out the contact form and talk in detail about your business needs. During the conversation, be clear with your business goals, expectations, and project’s needs.
• Sometimes, data science consulting companies also offer to quickly get an estimate of your data science, data analysis, or data engineering project within 1 business day. It’s worth taking advantage of and estimating future project costs!
• When the decision to choose a particular company is made, it is important to carefully read the contract, especially if long-term cooperation is expected. Check the inclusions, turnaround time, terms of payment, and other details. This will help to prevent unwanted surprises in the form of hidden costs or unfinished projects.

To sum up

The volume of data collected every day will continue to drive demand for quality data processing services. More and more companies will be looking for proven and experienced data science consulting companies that will help to get valuable insights from data.

So, use this step-by-step guide that will help to choose the right consulting company for your future business growth!

Tutorial was originally published in Towards AI on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Published via Towards AI