How Staff Augmentation Can Drive Business Agility?

We live in such uncertain times that technology and the staff working on it might become outdated quickly. This is because the digital lifestyle has connected people and provided them access to unlimited information, which drives innovation.

Staying on top of your competitors with the right and appropriately skilled resources becomes a problem. We all know that the hiring process at least takes a month or two and sometimes problems like backouts, and rising salary demands make it more difficult, which means the required work and projected launch or deliveries will be delayed. In short, loss of revenue and clients’ trust.

Staff augmentation is the boon of the 21st century, which can provide you with reliable and skilled resources in a short span.

What is Staff Augmentation?

Staff augmentation is a service that helps you hire expert skilled resources without wasting your time, energy, and money. They come with the trust and credibility of your vendors and are thus responsible and accountable.

The best part about Contractual Resources is that once you have completed your project, say, website development, you can remove them without worrying about notice periods and/or severance payments.

Let us understand it further.

Types of Staff Augmentation

Staff augmentation has two types of classifications: one depends on the quality of the resource hired, and the other depends on the services availed.

Depending upon the resource Type

• Commodity hiring

The client hires bulk resources that are not that skilled. It is done to immediately fill the gap, either due to high iteration or a new project. For example, a production company hires semi-skilled workers. 

• Skilled hiring

The client hires skilled resources, but the number of hires is lower compared to commodity hiring.

• Highly-Skilled hiring

The client hires highly skilled resources for time- and skill-sensitive projects. They could be hired for the long or short term.

Depending upon the services availed by the client

• Onsite Resource Services

If the client requires resources who can work from their office, they will opt for the onsite services. You can hire onsite employees that you want and need without spending months on the hiring process. The strenuous searching process for expert staff and then managing the payroll and overheads will be reduced to just interviewing the right candidate and hiring on the spot.

• Remote Resource Services

If you can work with remote resources, you can opt for this type of staff augmentation. Remote Resources are one of the best kinds of resources, as you save money on office infrastructure and the employees save time, energy, and money by not traveling to the office. Plus, they get to work from their comfort zone, so they are much more productive, and the work done is exquisite.

As per a study done in Stanford on 16,000 staff over the period of 9 months, working from home helped increase their productivity by 13%.

Also, as per a survey done by ConnectSolutions, by working remotely just a few times per month, 77% of staff showed increased productivity. Out of these, 24% did the same amount of work in less time, and 30% started doing more work in less time.

• Project-based Resource Services

If staff augmentation is needed for a particular project, which will include diversely skilled resources and suitable tools’ expertise, then project-based services are chosen. 

• Team Services

Sometimes, you need a team of resources to deliver the project on time, so you can opt for team-based services.  The best part about hiring a team via staff augmentation is that you get to customize it.

You pick the skillset that best suits your needs as per your project Gantt chart. This way, you only hire and pay for each resource depending on their need during the project execution.

For example, let us make a rough estimate for a website’s development (3-4 months total time).

A UI/UX designer would be needed in the first 2 months of the development and then the developers will come into play and will be needed for 3–4 months, and
Finally, quality analysts and testers will be needed before deployment for 1 month. Thus, each resource can be hired as per their requirement, as a bundle, or as a team.

The above classifications helped in understand that staff augmentation can be customized as per the requirement and help us save operational costs. 

Situations that necessitate Staff Augmentation Services

There are certain situations in which there is a demand to hire contractual resources. It is beneficial to know it beforehand and be ready for it. They are,

• Due to many reasons, be it a new project or more, the in-house team needs to be reinforced. Then you can opt for on-site staff augmentation services.
• Sometimes, the requirements of certain projects require a varied skill set. A few of these might not be available in your human resource pool. This gap can be supplemented with On-Demand Resources.
• A few times, the lucky ones might get bombarded by many projects. This kind of rapid request to expand the team can be fulfilled only by Contractual Staff Augmentation.
• Meeting deadlines is the main milestone to garner clients’ satisfaction and trust. But unforeseen circumstances, be it a disease, family issues, or any other issues, can hamper the commitments made. With staff augmentation, these last-minute crises can be averted.

Maybe you have tried all the hiring models with the recruitment and staffing companies, and none of them work for you. Staff augmentation always comes to your rescue than working with recruitment and staffing companies.

One might wonder what types of collaborations are possible with vendors and how staff augmentation is better than them. 

Other types of vendor collaborations 

There are, namely, five types of collaborations that counter staff augmentation. Let us dwell on them, one by one.

• Staff Augmentation vs. Independent Contractors

Independent contractors lack ownership and professionalism and can even go back on their words, being individual players. 

• Staff Augmentation vs. Managed Services

A managed services vendor would need a lot of control over the team allocated to the client, which could cause privacy and confidentiality issues, conflicts, and more. 

• Staff Augmentation vs. Dedicated Teams

The supervision of these teams is in the hands of the vendors, and thus the clients would lack control, quicker implementation, and resolution (in case of an issue). 

• Staff Augmentation vs. Off-shore Team Development

Since off-shore sites would need to be built from scratch, a lot of capital expenses would be involved. 

• Staff Augmentation vs. Time and Material

The vendor exercises all control over the team and their administrative services. Also, managing and approving timesheets becomes a hassle. 

Even though the above pointers showed staff augmentation in a good light, it is worthwhile to discuss its pros and cons. 

Pros and Cons of Staff Augmentation

Below is a tabular representation of the IT staff augmentation benefits and drawbacks.

Pros	Cons
Flexibility via customization and scalability.	Privacy risk is a big issue.
Drastic reduction of expenses comparing a full-time resource to a part-time or contractual resource.	Managing these resources may become troublesome.
Communication between you and the augmented staff is direct.	Controlling the quality and maintaining its standards could become a hassle with new resources.
Productivity increases due to the presence of worldwide talent and vast exposure. It also adds exposure to new tools and techniques to your team.	If you do not interview the resources properly or are not clear about your requirements, there might be an inadequacy in their technical expertise.

Thus, one must know how to hire resources from a staff augmentation provider.

Best practices to be followed with Staff Augmentation

If you consider the below-mentioned five aspects, then you will steer clear of the aforementioned cons. They are,

• Experience and Expertise 

Always go with a vendor that has proven experience in staff augmentation and has resources that have the required expertise. 

• Scalability and Flexibility

Each vendor has their terms and time durations for adding and removing resources. Thus, choosing the one that requires the least time and easier terms to adapt is the best. 

• Cultural fitness

If the vendor comes from a place that is culturally opposite to your company’s culture, it might become an issue in the future.

• Project Management and Communication Tools

The vendor should either be using the tools you use to communicate internally and manage the work or be ready to switch to the tools you use.

• Talent Pool

It is best to opt for vendors with a multi-talented resource pool so that, with one partnership, you can build many collaborations.

The above information makes you well-equipped to make the right choice and opt for the right staff augmentation vendor. 

A few case studies

It is good to see staff augmentation in action, so we have collected a few case studies to show its relevance. As per Medium, 

Company	Requirement	Reason	Solution	Result
A global technology giant	Rapid hiring in the IT team	Global expansion	Staff augmentation came to their rescue and helped them recruit highly skilled resources from all over the world.	Smooth implementation and flexible staffing as per requirements.
A growing fintech startup	Veteran developers	Finance software app (with a small deadline)	We helped them hire highly skilled remote developers with fintech experience.	Accelerated development, top-notch app (within deadline), and competitive edge gained.
A Healthcare Product Company	IT personnel	Legacy system required upgrade to comply with the latest norms	They hired Remote developers with specialized Hippa compliance knowledge (rare to find)	Quick and smooth upgrade of the IT system to achieve compliant status.

So, not only do you know everything about staff augmentation, but you can also see its effectiveness in delivering the requirements without any major issues. 

We at Wildnet Technologies strive to complement your growth by providing technical experts, be it for Java, DevOps, ASP.NET, React Native, Python, or more. We provide remote, contractual, and on-demand resources for hire and can align them within 48 hours. Since we allocate these resources directly to you, there is no scope for privacy (via NDAs), management and quality control (under your direct supervision), or technical expertise (as we follow a rigorous interview process along with the clients).

We have 250+ resources, have completed 200+ projects, and have been in IT services for 17 years. Some past achievements to up the ante,

• GoodFirms (Washington, D.C., USA) commemorated Wildnet’s techies
• Listed among the top 20 in 2020 (India) in mobile app development
• TopDeveloprs.co rated Wildnet as a ‘Top Hybrid App Developer of 2019’

Email us at info@wildnettechnologies, and let us customize a solution just for you!

Need help ! Contact Us