What Is IT Staff Augmentation?
IT staff augmentation is an outsourcing model that you can use to add additional specialists to your team on a short-term basis. When your company has a temporary need for additional IT personnel or requires specialized skills for a period of time, staff augmentation firms can provide the qualified specialists you need to supplement your team.
Companies seeking IT solutions have two main outsourcing options; managed services and staff augmentation. With managed services, you are paying for an outcome and transferring your IT processes to the outsourcing firm for the duration of a project while with staff augmentation you are basically hiring an employee to fulfill a temporary need while you retain control of the IT process. When you consider managed services vs staff augmentation your best choice will depend on your specific requirements.
For organizations looking to navigate the technical intricacies of their projects or to bring a strategic tech vision to life, finding CTO consultants becomes an imperative step. Engaging with a CTO consultant, especially one familiar with the Ukrainian IT landscape, can bridge the gap between the company’s core objectives and the augmented team’s execution, ensuring cohesion, innovation, and efficiency.
Pros and Cons of IT Staff Augmentation
There are a lot of positive aspects to using resource and staff augmentation services to fill vacant positions on your team. Here are some of the pros of hiring through a staff augmentation company:
- Acquire specialized skills: staff augmentation services can provide you with talent with hard to find specialized skills that you may not require all the time but are needed for a specific project.
- Scale up quickly: if you need to increase the size of your IT team on short notice you can quickly get the help you need. A staff augmentation consulting specialist can assess the number of personnel required and the skill sets needed to supplement your team and fill the needed positions.
- Reduced costs: using staff aug services can help you avoid the additional costs and liabilities that come with directly hiring a larger staff.
- Retain control: when you look at staff augmentation vs outsourcing IT projects, staff augmentation allows you to maintain full control over your process during all stages.
Staff augmentation isn’t necessarily the right IT projects outsourcing choice for every situation. Some of the cons of staff augmentation include:
- Additional training: although you are getting skilled IT professionals some training will be required to familiarize new staff with your company’s internal processes.
- Internal issues: should there be any issues with the internal working of your company any augmented staff will likely be affected as well.
- Slowdowns during integration: while augmented staff is becoming fully acquainted with your company’s processes your team to be less efficient until new members adapt
When Should You Consider Staff Augmentation for Your Business
Offshore staff augmentation is an outsourcing solution that involves collaboration between your permanent team and supplemental staff, generally to meet specific goals. Here are a few reasons why you may want to consider using a staff augmentation remote recruiter to enhance your current team:
- Meet temporary requirements: your current team may normally be sufficient but you experience a case where it is too small for a particular job. This is exactly the type of situation that staff augmentation IT companies can assist with.
- Lacking specific capabilities: your team may lack a necessary skill to complete a specific project but it is a skill you only require for a limited period of time. Software development staff augmentation enables you to obtain a specialist with the qualifications you require without having to take on a full-time employee.
- Lack of time: perhaps your intention is to hire a permanent team but you need a stop-gap to handle IT tasks until you can recruit and onboard full-time employees.
- Time and/or budget constraints: when you have a deadline that it is essential to meet or a limited budget, staff augmentation is a good way to speed up the process and keep expenses down .
What Are the Steps to Succeed with Team Augmentation?
Once you have decided that staff augmentation is the correct option for you will want to take the steps to ensure it will be successful.
- Select a provider: research staff augmentation firms and select the best for you based on previous work, recruitment process, services and expertise.
- Define your requirements: discuss your needs with the provider, identify your talent gaps and clarify your specific requirements such as number of staff, skill sets and time period to be covered.
- Select a staff augmentation model: choose the staff augmentation model that works best for you. The provider will advise you on this and a good agency can tailor a solution that meets your needs.
- Maintain communication: keep on open line of communication with the staff augmentation company, provide them with feedback and make them aware of any potential issues.
- Staff augmentation implementation: a plan will be prepared and implemented based on your requirements that covers everything from start date to an exit plan for augmented staff.
Why Consider Our Company as Your Trusted IT Staff Augmentation Service Provider
Our company provides IT consulting and staff augmentation services on both a short-term and long-term basis. Whether you need to find a specialized skill your team is lacking or temporarily increase your team size we are capable of fulfilling your needs. There are many staff augmentation providers out there so why should you choose to use? Here are a few of the reasons to consider us as your staff augmentation service provider.
- Quality of talent: we have access to a large pool of top IT specialists with experience in diverse industries. We can quickly find qualified specialists to meet your needs including hard-to-find skill sets.
- Cost-effective: salaries for our IT specialists are significantly less than those in Western Europe and North America for an equivalent level of skill providing an excellent cost-to-skills ratio.
- Flexibility: we can tailor a solution to fit your specific needs and adapt if those needs change. If you need to scale up on short notice we can provide the necessary staff.
- Communication: our IT specialists are proficient in the English language. Many of them speak additional languages such as German, French and Spanish as well.
In addition to IT staff augmentation, we offer additional BPO services such as remote customer support outsourcing and data annotation teams.