7 Signs Your Tech Team Needs IT Staff Augmentation

When you form an IT team for a project, it is based on its current requirements. But let’s be real; the future can be unpredictable. You might land a big client soon, or an existing client might come up with requirements that go beyond your current IT capabilities. Once it happens, your parameters will change. 

• You might urgently need to upskill your tech talent.
• You might need to scale up your current employee base.

Both scenarios involve high costs. Providing training or hiring additional people for such short-term spikes can drive your operational costs through the roof.  

As a third option, you might want to consider IT staff augmentation services—they could be a game-changer if you give them a shot. Read on to know more about this service and how it adds long-term value to your business.

What is IT staff augmentation?

According to the Manpower Group, staff augmentation in IT is growing at a whopping CAGR of 35%. That means it will reach approximately $82 billion by the end of 2024. 

Staff augmentation is a flexible outsourcing strategy. Here, businesses can hire skilled professionals from external service providers on a temporary or project-to-project basis and supplement their existing tech workforce. The benefits? Companies can quickly fill skill gaps or scale up their teams without the long-term commitment that full-time hiring entails.

By turning to IT augmentation services, companies get on-demand IT expertise at a fraction of the cost. These professionals are highly trained and have specialized soft skills to understand and execute your project successfully. When you put across your technical specifications to such a service provider, they will round up a team of professionals who are relevant to your project. This dedicated team will temporarily become a part of your core IT team. 

Here’s what else you get:

• You can scale up your team immediately, meeting quick TATs
• You get access to specialized skills, meeting the technical requirements of your project
• Your financial outgo is much less and time-bound
• You eliminate the need for costly and time-intensive talent sourcing

In a nutshell, staff augmentation takes a different approach to talent management. Here, you temporarily augment your team’s capacity with outside staff to get in-demand expertise without doing the hiring yourself. You fill in talent gaps at significantly reduced financial outgo. 

Opting for staff augmentation sure has tangible benefits. But to reap those benefits, you must know when to opt for staff augmentation. Selecting the right IT staff augmentation partner is another factor that impacts the success of this venture. Let us explore both aspects. 

When must you opt for a firm offering IT staff augmentation services?

We will look at some fairly common scenarios that most IT and ITes firms frequently face. 

1. You need cost-effective IT services

Traditional hiring is costly and time-consuming and offers no guarantee that it will fetch you the right talent. By adopting a cost-effective solution like staff augmentation, you get access to a pool of skilled global professionals and save time and money by selecting and onboarding them immediately. 

2. You need to expand your team immediately

Projects often come with strict execution timelines. Missing them can cost you money and dent your reputation. 

Leveraging cost-effective IT services from outsourcing agencies allows you to improve your project team strength. It also improves your technical expertise, elevating the quality of your output. Further, unexpected leaves taken by key team members also impact the progress of your project.  Seeking specialized skill sets from companies offering such services can help mitigate the impact of such absences. 

3. You witness seasonal highs and lows in business

Today’s business uncertainties make it impractical to maintain a huge team of diverse IT professionals. Yet you must cater to increased demand for your services as and when they arise. 

Flexibility is one of the key advantages of staff augmentation services. Collaborating with an agency offering such services allows you to scale up and down based on your business demands. 

Also, you can do away with the need to hire additional employees and carry them around the year despite witnessing a reduction in their service demands. 

4. You need some specific specialized skills

With technology undergoing rapid innovations, it is not possible to maintain a workforce proficient in all possible tech skills. Yet there are times when, as a company, you might require specific specialized skill sets unavailable within your team. Such requirements are generally one-off or infrequent, like for business-critical projects that cannot support permanent hires.

Here, partnering with a firm offering staff augmentation services will work to your advantage. Such a partnership will give you access to a global talent pool where you have a better shot at finding and fulfilling your exact tech requirements.

5. You do not want the legal hassles involved

Hiring involves a lot of documentation. It is a legal responsibility. There are taxes to be calculated, employee benefits to be given, payroll to be maintained; the list is endless. 

When you opt for staff augmentation, the service provider acts as their official employer. You just use their services for a fee. Thus, the outsourcing company bears all the legal responsibility, and you can focus on other critical matters.

6. You do not want to spend time on hiring

To hire in-house talent, you must undergo specific processes. Put an advertisement on social media, filter through the candidatures, select the appropriate ones, set them up for interviews, etc. The list is long and extremely time-consuming. You might not want to go through this entire rigmarole. 

So, what do you do? Connect with a staff augmentation partner. Discuss the terms and conditions vis-a-vis your requirements and onboard people immediately. 

7. You have the flexibility to pick and choose

What happens when you select a team member and find him unsuitable for the role? You will replace him. But, the entire process will eat into your project time and costs. 

If you opt for staff augmentation services and find the selected staff incompatible with your role requirements, you get a replacement almost immediately. This neither impacts your project costs nor lets the output quality slide.

While many such instances can benefit from building partnerships with local and foreign outsourcing agencies, you must be careful of your selection. Let us explore it briefly in the next section.

Choosing the right IT staff augmentation services

There are many agencies that claim to offer cost-effective solutions that reduce hiring costs. But do they really walk the talk? Here are a few tips to ensure you get what they promise. Just keep the following factors in mind when choosing them.

• Check their market reputation: Look for customer reviews and testimonials.
• Have detailed meetings: Communicate with them extensively to cover all critical aspects involved before signing.
• Review their previous work experiences:  Understand whether they have worked with similar requirements before.
• Assess their technical expertise: Do their skills align with your project?
• Create a stringent contract: Ensure it includes an NDA to minimize your risks and other project-related headaches.
• Select compatible timezones: Ensure your timezones match.

Keeping these points in mind will help make the process seamless and easy. You will also ensure that your project keeps moving forward without any hiccups.

Wrapping up

IT staff augmentation offers a smart, quick fix to cover your talent gaps . It helps you stay agile and responsive. You can successfully cater to the challenges of a dynamic technological landscape. With project requirements shifting alongside technological advancements, this is your go-to solution for meeting this challenge and overcoming it successfully.