When does it make sense to hire a vendor neutral consulting company or system integrator?

Earlier this month FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, published Regulatory Notice 10-06, Social Media Web Sites: Guidance on Blogs and Social Networking Web sites. This is of particular interest for a couple of reasons. First, there are still a lot of people that believe that social networking sites either aren't used for business, or shouldn't be used for business. Now, this is nothing new - we saw similar positions and assertions around instant messaging, and before that around email, and probably the telephone before that. The publication of this note seems to contradict both of those ideas - clearly the question has arisen as to how financial services firms can use these tools for business.