Consultants are not the ones who, at the end of the day, get to “own” the products, services or solutions in question and are generally judged on their ability to aid the business effectively. Because of this they have a distinct advantage in being more emotionally distant and therefore more objective in deciding on recommendations. The coolest, newest solutions have little effect on them while cost effectiveness and business viability do. More importantly, consultants and internal IT working together provide an important balancing of biases, experience and business understandings that combine the broad experience across many vendors and customers of the one, and the deep understanding of the individual business of the other.