Staff Augmentation: Quick Access to Skilled IT Talent Pool
Speed, cost, and quality. These three determinants are mentioned the most often while building digital products. What's more, the cost can affect the other two - low production cost often does not go hand in hand with the speed of software development and its quality. Be wary of taking the cost-cut method. It rarely yields the overall benefits a business really needs. Instead, review existing processes, make resource optimization, and invest the available funds into the right software development solution.
One of the solutions that work really well for many companies is staff augmentation. Why do we claim that it works really well? Because it’s all about collaborating with the exact talent that your team or project requires. Moreover, with the support of an experienced staffing provider, you can be certain that the optimal amount of resources will be assigned.
63% of specialists responsible for running tech departments expect to spend the same amount or more on IT staff augmentation in the coming months - they see a huge value in allocating the right talent in the project only for its duration. Keep reading to find out more about staff augmentation and make the best decision for your company.
What is staff augmentation?
Staff augmentation, sometimes also called body leasing, is a service where a company outsources needed expert or a number of experts from a staffing company to strengthen their in-house development team in building products or software according to the current objective. Such service doesn’t require including any recruitment process from the client-side and it’s based on permanent hiring.
Even though your company signs the contract with a staffing company, not a specialist itself, such a person acts as your team extension and you fully manage their responsibilities. In the staff augmentation model, project management is done internally by your in-house Project Manager despite the project being developed by an external workforce.
The service provider is fully responsible for ensuring and assigning such IT experts to the project who have the necessary knowledge, experience, and skills to support and develop the project with your team members immediately. At Blue House, we take full responsibility for the skills verification process and the overall cooperation between both parties.
When to use staff augmentation/body leasing service?
Body leasing service works best when:
- you have an in-house development team,
- you want to have full control over project development,
- you want to avoid the recruitment costs,
- you need experts with a narrow specialization, not necessarily versatile.
In such cases, a company usually needs an IT expert with specific skills – a specialist who can work effectively shortly after joining the team and who will support it with expertise and knowledge.
An alternative to this service is hiring a contractor through an IT marketplace platform or conducting a recruitment process to find and hire the right employee permanently. The main difference between staff augmentation and in-house hiring is that you don’t need to invest additional time and money into the process of finding talent, and the service provider assures assigning a person matched precisely to your project. There is no risk of a bad hire, and all the money you invest into an outsourced specialist will bring desired outcomes in the form of a job well done.
Organizations should look at their major skill pools to understand the skills required for the future and whether they are long or short on the required talent. That means embracing a more expansive and dynamic view of their talent supplies—one that tosses out the usual preoccupation with titles and traditional roles (...). Indeed, we find that when companies start with skills (the ones they need, the ones they have, and how the mix may change over time), they can free up their thinking and find more creative ways to handle the mismatches (source: McKinsey).
What are the main advantages of staff augmentation?
According to data collected by Gartner, 32% of organizations are replacing full-time employees with contingent workers. Temporary specialists can support an organization in building products or services as well as permanent employees do. Below, we gathered the 5 most important benefits of choosing IT staff augmentation.
1. You gain immediate access to a needed IT expert. Body leasing provides access to specialists even with a narrow specialization who are needed on the spot for the client's project. At Blue House, we have built a community of IT talent, composed of experts who are the best in their field and who, thanks to their experience, support our clients in the development of technology and their products. When you decide to use staff augmentation service, the next step from our side is scanning through available talent in our community and quickly assigning a person who will be the best fit.
2. Your team's tech knowledge is augmented. One of the long-term benefits of a collaboration with outsourced software developers is their contribution to the project. Their skills very often lead to higher efficiency and increased speed of the product development, which translate into a sooner launch. Moreover, also your internal tech team can benefit from such cooperation. IT experts share their extensive knowledge with your company members throughout the project. We ensure that Blue House specialists follow proper communication standards, promote a feedback culture, and share their experiences.
3. You save money on hiring and training talent. The in-house recruitment process of software developers is often time-consuming and expensive. Forbes states that the amount of money that employers need to spend on it in the UK is close to 14k pounds per hire, and the process can take up to 42 days. On the other hand, the recruitment agency fee is 15-30% of an employee’s annual salary. When choosing a staff augmentation service, you bypass the recruitment costs and either pay a fixed project price or fee is based on hourly reports. Moreover, every specialist you outsource doesn’t require training and management time to work effectively.
4. You keep full control over project development. Staff augmentation service means having full control over the workflow and the team. When you handle the management operations yourself, it gives you more authority compared to leaving team management to the outsourcing provider. You are informed about the progress of work on an ongoing basis, and you can immediately react if any problem appears. Outsourced IT experts behave as part of your company. They also report what they delivered weekly or monthly and follow the project development schedule you established.
5. You pay for your expert only during the project duration. It often happens that the available budget is not allocated to full-time jobs but a specific project. The solution is body leasing, i.e., acquiring a specialist or specialists who will help you in action and during this time will be in the company's structure, but as temporary employees, not on FTE contracts. It's a great way to manage and control the budget because you can estimate how long you need specific experts and how much they will cost you. Contracts usually last between 3-12 months, and you are not obligated to extend it when additional resources aren't necessary anymore.
How to get started with IT staff augmentation service?
The first step you need to take is defining your project needs. The idea of a specific product – its main functions and purpose – gives only a vague concept of work to be performed. Before you reach out to the IT staffing company, have your project specification ready. It’ll help you determine the scope of work and become clear if your existing resources are enough or do you need additional specialists. Blue House can also help you understand exactly whom you need to hire and why to meet your strategic goals and needs.
When building your initial work plan, identify how much time is needed to finish the project and what activities can be done sequentially and parallelly. Estimating project duration will help you decide whether you need a specialist temporarily or hire someone permanently is more beneficial. It may also turn out that using a dedicated team service may be a better option.
Then get in touch with Blue House or any other chosen IT staffing company. We provide an expert IT staff augmentation service, under which we match professionals with appropriate skills and personality traits to given projects. We have built a community of IT talent, composed of people who are the best in their field. We reach out to those who correspond 100% to your requirements and send you an agreement. Shortly after, outsourced IT experts start working for you.
Summing up
Modern companies consider staff augmentation as a powerful tool that can be used to their advantage. Now, organizations need agile and resilient talent to be able to move fast, adapt to change, and continually learn. IT staff augmentation services open new possibilities for companies and if you choose such a service provider wisely, they will deliver you top professionals or build an entire team that is tailored to your project's exact needs.
Get in touch with Blue House and receive a free consultation with a detailed quote.
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