Benefits of IT Staff Augmentation

The modern business environment is speeding up and seeking new effective solutions to boost business, reach cost-effectiveness and attract the best talent pool that would end up in producing high-quality product or services. Being one of the most progressive hiring strategies, staff augmentation is nowadays on the peak of popularity and is excessively implemented by many firms all over the world. It is used to deal with modern staffing challenges like finding the right talent within shortest terms and finding specialists advanced in rare technologies. In such a way, staff augmentation consulting services allows international companies to handle quality control, mitigate risks of turnover, and leverage costs by means of combining marketing and operational plans in the workflow.

Staff augmentation model implies hiring proper specialists for businesses closely following their requirements with a high-level of education, experience, required knowledge, and skills. The market is overwhelmed with IT staff augmentation companies that offer hiring workforce for long- or short-term projects, part-time or full-time on a permanent or temporary basis.

Why Staff Augmentation Services Are So Popular Today?

Staff augmentation growing popularity among all types of organizations is the result of the following processes that the business world has encountered. Lack of full-time staff that is already working overtime, while new projects is waiting to be implemented. In this case, dedicated team extension is a necessary step to ensure continuous and effective workflow. Sometimes a few full-time staff members announce extended leave for several months or up to a year for a number of reasons. Since their positions are critical for business, it rushes in search of the proper talent acquisition within shortest terms.

Inability of the organization to find the right talent for the ongoing or future project is one of the most usual reasons why companies decide to hire software developers via staff augmentation companies. As the business world is spinning faster and faster, these processes are taking place globally. The recruitment sector had to adjust to the rapid needs of the market, and it did it by developing a new hiring strategy.

everything you should know about staff augmentation services

Staff Augmentation vs Managed Services vs Dedicated Development Team

With different outsourcing models available for companies, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with the options and pick the wrong solution for the business. Thus, it’s vital to learn the distinctive features of each outsourcing model and what each model brings to the table before opting for one.

Let’s take a closer look at the staff augmentation vs managed services model vs dedicated development model:

  • Managed services imply that an outstaffing agency deals with mainly all processes within the team regarding the project and provides A to Z product development. On the bright side, the company won’t be overloaded with any tech-related duties, as there will be no need to keep an eye on every project detail, and the agency will simply report timely on the progress. On the downside, the company usually can be unaware of the real progress or possible real-time issues with the project. 
  • With the staff augmentation model, the company is able to choose the best matching expert to contribute to the existing team, managing their work and monitoring progress. One of the benefits of staff augmentation is that the company can fully manage the augmented team and set up preferred workflows, while the staff augmentation company offloads the firm from the organizational hassle, such as workplace, tools, and so. 
  • A dedicated development model (DDT) is usually a long-term commitment between the dedicated team and the company, where the company holds the entire control over the team. The company will spend more time negotiating with the team and revising the development process but will have the ability to fully engage in it. The staff augmentation services provider takes responsibility for organizational and administrative issues, including hiring expenses, resource and staff augmentation salary, and more.

Business Cases of IT Staff Augmentation Consulting

The number of various companies that have used staff augmentation SoW (State-of-Work) in their early stages is enormous. Here are examples of the most prominent ones.

Slack

slack

Back in 2013, Slack hired a designer team to make sufficient changes to Slack early prototype. So Slack’s logo, web and mobile applications together with marketing sites were completed by a third-party firm in about 6 weeks. As of today, Slack has over 1million of daily users and is valued at $3 billion.

Alibaba.com

Alibaba.com

When Alibaba.com was just started in 1999, the author of “China’s eBay” Jack Ma decided to delegate the technical work to third party. Since the time when its first website had been launched, oriented at small Chinese manufacturers and businesses, Alibaba Group has eventually grown into a global online commerce.

Microsoft

microsoft

Microsoft is the global company that still uses the option of remote developer hiring for operational processes. In fact, they are one of the world’s largest companies that are hiring outside staff. As of today, Microsoft outsources 100 of positions.

Skype

Skype

Skype is known to have started with the help of external labour too. It was an Estonian team of developers to get the business started. In 2011, Skype was sold to Microsoft for $8.5 billion.

Google

Google

Being one of the global techno leaders, Google never stopped outsourcing the services and is continuously entering new markets to do so. It is involved in so many projects and startups that staff augmentation vs managed services have become an inevitable part of the company’s hiring policy.

Benefits of Staff Augmentation Consulting

A number of advantages to businesses over other hiring strategies.

  • Decreased hiring costs

Regular employees present additional expenses for companies such as dental and medical health insurance, retirement or maternity plans, etc. Staff augmentation enables companies to obtain required skills workers quickly and to save budget.

Team augmentation model helps to save not only on everyday expenses or in case of health problems. The company also provides the hired specialist with a workplace equipped with everything necessary. The  most expensive thing, of course, is a computer and the software installed on it that is needed for work. The additional part of the team, in‌ ‌this‌ ‌case, is a great idea because usually each specialist already has the whole set of tools necessary for work. No need to buy equipment separately, pay rent of a workplace, or download paid programs with a monthly surcharge. Sometimes, of course, you need to invest additionally in a team for effective work, but this is still much cheaper than an additional in-office employee.

  • Flexibility in adapting to changing business environment

Fast business conditions often foster occurrence of unexpected events that influence the workflow and the results, as well as quality of the product and might create some gaps in the production processes. These gaps can be filled in by means of development team extension and fast hiring of the skills specific talent to fix existing issues.

Staff augmentation companies can easily solve the problem of a quick change of work environment not only by finding and providing the best available employees. The process of introducing them into the workflow will go much more painlessly and quickly. You will not need to spend time and resources on introducing a specialist into the course of all things and explain what’s what from the very beginning. When you use the support of such companies, you are guaranteed to get employees who are ready to perform the required tasks, who can immediately begin work. You can direct your core team to carry out the most important and top priority tasks and delegate smaller tasks to augmented part of the team. Or you can strengthen the core team to quickly solve complex problems.

  • Avoiding shortage risks

Augmentation helps to avoid situations with staff shortages that might unexpectedly appear when employees are leaving the company or layoffs. Seasonal fluctuations might also be the reason to shortages, so in case the company is in need to boost their IT team with new workforce during the holidays season, signing a staff augmentation agreement is the best solution here.

Do your project deadlines burn and do this threaten with the loss of a client? Staff augmentation firms are always ready to help. Due to an abrupt and untimely vacations and dismissals, part of the work always remains unfinished. In the best case, the resigned employee can delegate it to another specialist of the same level, but this does not mean that it will be done just as efficiently and quickly. In addition, everyone has their own part of the work which in no case should be abandoned. What to do? You can try to quickly find a new employee to replace the missing one. This, of‌ ‌course, will require a lot of effort and a lot of time. But you can also quickly replace it with the offshore staff augmentation company that already has access to the right employees and will easily pick you the one who can save the project. This will not only help you manage to do all the necessary tasks before the deadlines  but also save the company from losing a client, which can be very, very expensive.

  • Flexibility

Companies can add or remove augmentation staff at any time. This strategy allows business to flow augmented workforce into the work process with minimal interruption. Staff augmentation vs consulting process is seamless and easily adaptable to the requirements and possibilities of any business.

IT staff augmentation process involves such interaction with employees in which they fully understand their role as additional parts of the company’s mechanism. Their work is to solve individual problems, close gaps in the list of necessary skills for the project, partially strengthen the team, and does not always take a long period of time. No one will be surprised that part or all of the team may leave the project due to certain changes in the process. A plus is the absence of additional periods of work after dismissal, fuss with documents, and other things that are peculiar exclusively in working with the main team of the company.

  • Access to rare technologies

Sometimes organizations may require a special set of skills to complete or start a project. Companies might not be able to or want to conduct extra training for existing staff due to time or financial issues. Here’s when staff augmentation is extremely necessary to quickly fill in the workforce gap without time and cost losses.

Development team augmentation solves the problem of missing skills in the core team. First, an additional team can take a specialist with almost any set of skills, depending on what goals the project has and how much money the company is ready to spend on this specialist. Secondly, the search for a developer will take much less time than the acquisition of skills by a team through special paid courses. In addition, it often happens that there is absolutely no time for  additional training and the problems that arise should be solved right now. If a task arises in a project that can only be solved by an additionally hired employee, he can be delegated work until the main team is trained. It is convenient, effective, and does not affect the speed of work on the company’s project.

  • Control and security

Staff augmentation allows companies to maintain the full control on all the aspects of the project. It is easy for a project manager to monitor people in charge of major or minor processes, deadlines and progress of work. Controlling the work process is gaining control over the quality of the end product.

IT staff augmentation companies can help you put together a close-knit team of professionals who can work not only remotely but also from another country and at the same time not lose the level of quality of the final product. The main thing is to clearly develop an action plan, a plan for making revisions and reports, and clearly arrange deadlines. Even if they hired specialists are not included in the main team of the company, this does not mean that they will do their job worse or they need additional supervision. The company will not spend money on management, much less establish strict rules for interacting with augmented employees only because they have different terms of interaction.

benefits of staff augmentation

How to Choose a Top-Tier IT Staff Augmentation Company

As previously mentioned, IT staff augmentation trends are rising in modern times, proportionally to the rising demand for such solutions. However, it may not be easy to find a trustworthy services provider that can quickly fill in the open positions with top specialists as it promises to do. Thus, before picking your long-term partner, make sure they can live up to the expectations and are able to provide high-quality services to deliver the end product successfully and on time.

Here are vital tips to keep in mind while picking a staff augmentation services provider:

  1. Transparent terms. A trustable and experienced company will check twice all the negotiable points and ensure that both parties are aware of limitations, terms, and goals. A clear understanding of the end goal and awareness of possible challenges on both sides is the key to success.
  1. Dedicated approach. Staff augmentation IT companies usually deal with multiple projects simultaneously. However, if each dedicated team has their personal space, that shouldn’t cause a problem. You want your augmented team to be fully concentrated, fully equipped, and relieved from all distractions and ado. Mobilunity, for instance, takes extra steps to ensure that each team is provided with a comfortable, distraction-free environment for work. Usually, each team has a separate room and has access to the latest software tools.
  1. Keep the team’s high spirit and engagement. If talking about staff augmentation vs outsourcing, an augmented team without proper leadership and management can feel undervalued and lose the goal vision throughout the process, while outsourced specialists don’t usually get much involved in the project essence. A good resource and staff augmentation vendor makes sure that the remote team feels included in the discussion on par with local teams, being constantly updated regarding changes, issues, and new prospects. 
  1. Have a talent pool ready to work right away. An experienced staff augmentation vs consulting vendor has access to a wide IT talent pool and knows how to build a dream team that will work productively as a joint force. A reliable IT staff augmentation company must be able to provide you with not only devs and tech specialists but also project managers who will act as skilled mediators between the augmented team and your company.

Mobilunity is has been around on the international augmentation market for more than 10 years. We know for sure how to hire real talents according to the company’s needs. Get in touch!

How Mobilunity Can Help Your Business IT Staffing

Finding the right talent is a tough task even with the HR department, while finding the right one among millions of IT staffing companies to augment your staff and boost your business processes is quite a challenge as well. Hope we made things clear on how to find developer for startup and choose the right virtual reality programmer. It is time to start working on your project!

Reasons to Hire Ukrainian remote developers at Mobilunity

It seems logical to be able to address the most experienced and yet affordable companies that will be able to provide you with IT consulting and staff augmentation services and check a staff augmentation contract sample. Being able to provide businesses with easy ways to complete necessary projects without disrupting the operating model, Mobilunity is has been around on the international augmentation market for 10+ years. Contact us if you want to hire a 3D designer, finance software developer or SharePoint programmer.

Mobilunity is able to quickly provide you with experienced project management talent for plan development and implementation, as well as serve specialized technical talent for the accelerated development stage.

FAQ: Staff Augmentation in a Nutshell 

If you are seeking remote teams extension or hiring new technical staff, contact Mobilunity to fill the talent gap in your business in the most favorable conditions.

All salaries and prices mentioned within the article are approximate NET numbers based on the research done by our in-house Recruitment Team. Please use these numbers as a guide for comparison purposes only and feel free to use the contact form to inquire on the specific cost of the talent according to your vacancy requirements and chosen model of engagement.

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