But now a new breed of consultant can perform their magic over the Web.
One such consultant is Mr Excel, who, as his name suggests, is there to provide virtual assistance when you're experiencing spread sheeting nightmares.
Mr Excel specialises in the development of VBA solutions for Microsoft Excel. But his consulting company also does VBA development for Word, Power Point, and Access.
Mr Excel is Bill Jelen, president and founder of MrExcel Consulting.
Like many other consulting companies, Mr Excel was initially a one-man operation, but now he has surrounded himself with a team of specialists who consult online with their clients.
"I have a great team. For the first year, I was doing all of the work myself. Now, we've grown to where we have three full time coders, a project manager, and several part-time coders."
"We are focused on Excel," Jelen explains. "Also, our projects are generally small. They are often short 10-20 hours projects. These are projects where it does not make sense to have an onsite consultant show up to spec the project. By the time you've paid for his or her first day on the job, you've paid for us to complete the project."
MrExcel Consulting (its site receives more than 10 million page views per year) is an excellent example of a company that is using the resources of the Web to their full potential to service clients regardless of where they are located.
"We've done work for clients around the English-speaking world. One of my coders speaks Spanish," says Jelen. "So we can handle clients in South America. Our three major markets are the U.S., Australia, and England. We've done work for clients elsewhere in Europe and South America. And we've had requests for bids from Africa, Malaysia, and Indonesia."
In fact, Jelen is of the opinion that the MrExcel.com website was the key to making the entire operation work.
"We have a great community of people who answer questions at the site. Last year, over 33,000 Excel questions were answered by volunteers, totally for free. This is an incredible resource that keeps people coming back to the site," he says.
There's also another bonus in having the site.
"The Web site has brought me all of my network of coders. If we need to grow our staff, we can often select one of the volunteer "MrExcel MVP's". By watching their answers, we know who can do a good job of explaining solutions and who really knows the topic well," Jelen says.
Serving up solutions
So what are some examples of the sorts of problems that Mr Excel and his team have tackled successfully for clients online?
"It is amazing to me the wide variety of problems that we solve," Jelen says. "A typical application is where someone would normally import data from the company mainframe system and then go on to manually produce department reports.
"The first day that someone manually does this, they are the big hero for producing the report. However, when they find that they are manually producing this report day after day after day, then it quickly makes sense to hire us to automate the process."
And an example of a rather more "bizarre" project that he was involved in was with a weaver who used Excel to design quilts!
By now, you're probably wondering how Mr Excel got started with online consulting.
"For 12 years, I was the guy taking mainframe data to Excel in order to run ad-hoc reports. I became very adept at power Excel techniques. In 1998, someone suggested that I should write a book on Excel. I launched the MrExcel.com Web site in order to get questions that could be incorporated into a book. After the traffic picked up, I realized that you could make a business out of doing larger projects for a fee."
According to Jelen, there are a range of advantages to be gained from online consulting, from both the consultant's perspective and the client's perspective.
"The client benefits because of the reduced costs. They don't have to provide a desk or workstation for us. Our projects can be done and installed quickly," Jelen says.
For the consultant, Jelen points out that there is no need to travel, as they are able to work for clients around the world without ever stepping on an airplane.
Of course, he warns that there is certainly the possibility of misunderstanding requirements described by e-mail.
So what sorts of special skills does a person need to possess in order to be successful at online consulting?
Jelen believes that it is essential to have the necessary discipline to stay focused on the client's tasks. Additionally, it helps to be able to write user-friendly documentation so that the client can easily install and use the software without the consultant being present.
Finally, what sort of computer set up is required for online consultations?
"The client and I simply use the telephone or e-mail," Jelen explains. "And my staff and I use a combination of e-mail, MSN Chat, and WebEx to conduct virtual meetings."
Tony Stevenson is the author of the two best selling Internet books, "The Australian Guide to the Internet" and "The Australian Guide to Online Business". His company also publishes the two popular, free email newsletters, "Internet Update" and "Sites of the Day". These newsletters are distributed to readers in 17 countries around the globe.
