IT Team Augmentation: Why It's Beneficial For Your Business

As the name implies, team augmentation allows firms of all sizes to add competent employees to their existing personnel. Because of their project-based needs, this recruitment strategy is widespread among successful businesses all over the world.

Staff augmentation services can take different forms based on the organization's needs, ranging from increased workforce on-site to remote professionals. Due to the vast benefits that staff augmentation businesses provide, IT companies increasingly prefer them to other traditional kinds of staffing.

While small businesses primarily prefer to recruit permanent employees, whether it be for MVP development or project launch and support, middle-sized and large companies supplement their permanent employees with project-based personnel to maintain a healthy balance. IT staff augmentation companies have grown increasingly popular since they operate as ideal demand and supply partners for successful project delivery.

Significance of IT Staff Augmentation

Staff augmentation links the available and highly-skilled talent pool with the open positions in companies. While a total takeover of staff augmentation is still a long way off, most businesses are capitalizing on the potential of a hybrid model, combining the advantages of both having in-house employees and turning to a third-party talent pool.

Advantages of IT Staff Augmentation

Project outsourcing and staff augmentation are typically the preferable option for project-based firms continuously in flux. With IT staff augmentation, companies can use outsourced expertise on an as-needed basis while still being able to monitor employees’ performances directly.

IT team augmentation provides companies with the following advantages:

Flexible recruiting to fill workforce gaps

One of the numerous benefits of IT staff augmentation is the ability to recruit based on needs. If you have gaps in your IT staff that need to be filled, it can be an effective technique for growing your team. Using staff augmentation, you may hire tech experts from all over the world and add talented technical personnel to your in-house development team on a short- or long-term basis, depending on your needs.

Investing in what you require

Organizations can also save money over time by using IT staff augmentation. This one-of-a-kind strategy allows you to engage temporary workers rather than full-time employees, which can be very expensive. You simply pay for what you require for the period you need it without bearing additional infrastructure costs.

Essential time-saver

You can save your executives a lot of time with IT staff augmentation. Hiring full-time staff takes time as you need to generate job listings, conduct interviews, and complete the necessary documentation. With IT staff augmentation, you can save precious time by not having to permanently recruit new employees.

Keeping track of your outsourced employees’ performances

Another significant advantage of using IT staff augmentation is the option to keep track of your temporary employees’ performances. When you outsource your project to a professional IT vendor, you participate in choosing the temporary team’s composition, who will lead the project, and what will be prioritized.

You can sidestep some geographical issues by using IT staff augmentation. Firstly, you can delegate control over your project to a vendor from any country, no matter how distant it is. This means that you have a broader choice of specialists no matter where they are located. And secondly, professional vendors often provide their customers with the options of sending specialists on long-term business trips to their sites or working from the vendor’s development center in the customer’s country.

The benefits and drawbacks of Staff Augmentation

While IT staff augmentation might appear to be a good idea, there are many factors to consider before implementing it in your organization. The benefits and drawbacks of adding IT personnel in this fashion are listed below.

IT staff augmentation benefits

Below are the key benefits of turning to an outsourcing IT company.

Guaranteed talent

An outsourcing IT partner can meet your company's demands and, more importantly, ensure your vendor’s specialists smoothly integrate into whichever setting you require, boosting your workforce's effectiveness. As a result, you will be able to stabilize the very processes that are facing bottlenecks.

Efficiency in hiring

For IT staff augmentation, outsourcing companies with experienced and credentialed IT experts on hand at all times are used. Regardless of what the customer’s industry is, the outsourcing company’s entire job is to help the customer achieve the objectives they've set for themselves.

It's much easier to hire IT staff this way than to trawl through dozens of job postings and sort through candidates on your own. The hiring costs can be expensive, with each hire statistically costing about $4,000 and jobs remaining unfilled for over a month and a half. With IT staff augmentation, you not only save time but also save money.

Enhanced flexibility

Widespread reduction in workforce numbers is common during economic downturns, such as the Great Recession of 2007–2009 or the Great Resignation that began in 2020. Suppose you designate a percentage of your team to be constantly temporary through IT staff augmentation? In that case, the unexpected will not wreck the lives of permanent employees, and temporary employees will be able to find new work through their agency.

Because of this flexibility, businesses can adjust their workforce as needed and be more stable overall.

IT staff augmentation drawbacks

Now that you know the benefits of IT staff augmentation, you must evaluate if its disadvantages are deal-breakers or just minor annoyances.

Risk of poor quality

Despite the fact that outsourced teams are typically comprised of highly skilled individuals, there are still inherent dangers associated with IT staff augmentation. One of these dangers is lack of familiarity. For example, getting your augmented staff up to speed on your IT project can be difficult if it requires a high amount of context.

Time delays

Meeting deadlines can also be difficult due to the above factor. Getting your vendor’s specialists up to speed on your project can take a long time, but it's necessary if you want a high-quality result.

On the other hand, onboarding and training time needed when hiring your own team can cause even greater delays in your project.

Long-term dependencies

It’s challenging to maintain dependence on third-party services and continually rely on external resources to achieve an end objective. Even though you have authority over your company and IT project , the outsourcing vendor’s specialists are ultimately under their control. So theoretically, you could be left vulnerable if something went wrong with your augmented team or their outsourced company.

Opting for the right IT Staff Augmentation company

Now that you have learned about the advantages of IT team augmentation, it's time to learn about the five primary criteria to consider when choosing a company for your outsourcing needs:

• Technical data involved in your project;
• Current nature, type, and availability of workforce resources;
• Actual scheduling and deadline estimates;
• Testimonial verification before the final recruitment;
• Whether you need a new team or to extend your existing team.

Opting for the right IT Staff Augmentation company

IT staff augmentation is an intricate, well-oiled process that could be a bonafide answer to all the questions you’ve been asking about getting your project started and successfully implemented.

Staff augmentation in IT companies has progressed beyond its infancy and is now widely recognised. Flexible hiring benefits businesses. They cost-effectively and efficiently utilize the talents of professionals with extensive skill sets.

Contacting Andersen is an excellent way to ensure a steady supply of incredible talent for your project of any complexity, for an agreed period of time, and with outstanding outcomes.