Two trades that meet, not two that rule each other out
If you already have an IT consultant looking after the company's computers, you don't have to choose between him and an automation. The consultant and the person who writes automations for your processes are looking at two different parts of the company
Whoever handles your IT keeps the machine running, and the network, the connection to the business software, the printers that stop printing on the day of a deadline, the backups, the antivirus, the new computers to set up, the accounts of the people who join and the people who leave. It's work that, when it's done well, nobody sees
Whoever writes automations for processes is looking at something else. At what a person does in front of that business software from nine to eleven every morning, which fields she fills in, which documents she opens, where she checks. Then he writes a system that does those steps in her place
Bringing him in helps, going over his head doesn't
The IT consultant who already looks after your company knows things no outside supplier can know at the first meeting, and they're exactly the things you need to start an automation without surprises
He knows where the business software really runs, whether it sits on a server in the building or on a machine in a cabinet. He knows whether the license allows one more login or whether every session costs money, how the access rules are set up, which computers stay on overnight and which get switched off at six, and which update is due in two months and will change half the screens
That's why Muffin Suite would rather talk to the company's technician than work around him. If you have a relationship with him that works, that relationship is worth something to the project, not an obstacle to get past
If your technician pulls a face, listen to him
If the IT consultant is against it, or at least cool about it, the instinctive reaction is to think he's defending his own patch
Nearly always it's something else. He's afraid somebody will put their hands in the systems he has to keep running without telling him, and that at eight in the morning, when something breaks, the phone call lands on him and he doesn't even know what was touched
Clearing it up is simple. You say openly where the system runs, which credentials it logs in with, what it writes and what it doesn't, and you agree all of it with him and with you before starting instead of afterwards. Then if one day there's a problem to look at, everyone knows where to look
What changes for you in practice
Your technician carries on doing what he does today. The automation leans on the programs you already have and uses them the way a person would, so the business software stays as it is, the network stays as it is, and nobody asks you to change a setup that works
If you want to understand the part that really touches your consultant, the choice between running the automation on an office computer or on a dedicated machine is covered in where the automation runs, and it's the decision his opinion weighs on more than any other