In recent years, staff augmentation has been a game-changer for businesses by lowering costs and shortening time frames while achieving better software development projects. Whether hiring remote programmers, ensuring timely delivery, or increasing customer satisfaction, companies worldwide are reaping the benefits of staff augmentation.
Despite the myth that staff augmentation can be expensive, it is actually a cost-efficient strategy compared to traditional staffing. And when it comes to the advantages of staff augmentation, this is merely the tip of the iceberg.
In today’s article, we’ll share some of the key benefits of staff augmentation services and how they will leverage your business. After reading this 10-minute post, you'll know its importance, the things to look for when finding a staff augmentation partner, and the best options you can consider.
Let's dive deep.
Importance Of Staff Augmentation - A Brief Overview
The staff augmentation model allows an organization to hire outside personnel for a certain period to fit their requirements. It is one of the most effective hiring models to increase labor capacity and acquire specialized skills temporarily, especially when there is a sudden boost in development needs and consumer demands.
Studies have shown that the US talent scarcity has tripled over the decade, and is predicted to reach 85.2 million shortage by 2030. It gets more severe when 34% percent of workers in the US freelance today instead of full-time jobs.
To overcome this challenge, more companies from varying industries choose staff augmentation. And some of the reasons for this include:
- Acquire talent without geographical and timezone limitations.
- Lessen the threats and risks while maximizing the resources and outcomes.
- Secure more economic opportunities by employing suitable talent when required.
- Able to execute better project management tactics and information-oriented concepts.
- Get high-quality results as the service provides quality control, reliability, and accuracy.
- Obtain the perfect solution to your project development while reducing annoying office politics.
- Save time and effort without needing to submit complicated legal documentation protocols to officials.
Now that we are aware of the importance of staff augmentation for an IT firm, let’s take a look at some of its surprising benefits.
Top 7 Benefits Of Staff Augmentation
Let's discover why staff augmentation is deployed by companies worldwide and what benefits can you get from it.
1. Cost-Saving Without Affecting Quality
Sometimes you need to hire someone for a short period, maybe for weeks or months. In such cases, hiring temporary staff via staff augmentation is more cost-efficient than hiring full-time employees. It gives you quality talent with fewer dollars spent on recruitment, overheads, and employee expenses.
Studies have shown that recruiting an expert engineer as in-house staff could take an average of 43 days, and this leads to a potential productivity loss of about $41,049. Hiring a full-time programmer also costs you between $11,000 to $20,000 in recruitment costs, not to mention the average of 29 weeks of training for new hires to achieve optimum productivity.
By hiring augmented personnel on a short-term basis, you save vast human resource expenses in recruiting, interviewing, and training staff. And since these professionals have adequate expertise in your required segment, they do not need much training.
Another significant expense saved is the business overheads like office space, hardware, and other facilities. Besides, you only pay them for the hired period on a specific project, hence reducing your employee expenses on:
- Salary
- Staff benefits
- Tax expenses
- Social security
- Parking benefits
- Health insurance
- Retirement benefits
- Commuting benefits
Using these costs towards other profit-generating efforts like sales and marketing strategy can benefit in leveraging your business.
2. Access To A Larger Pool Of Experienced Talents
No more months of training to get less-skilled in-house employees up to par with your company’s developmental needs. Augmented employees are experienced professionals in their area, ready to hit the ground running. You only need to provide very little training so they can adapt to your company culture and they’re prepared to bring great value to your company.
It may sound strange but it's a reality that hiring in-house teams can prevent you from onboarding talented professionals. In contrast, staff augmentation gives you access to an immense pool of experienced professionals. You get domain-centric talents to generate excellent results based on your needs.
Besides, you get peace of mind assigning tasks to these augmented professionals. They have adequate knowledge and experience in delivering your requirements based on their skill sets. With minimum time and cost, you yield more results from the augmented personnel.
At Aloa, we have a large pool of skillful developers and programmers that underwent a vigorous vetting process. Our talented team has helped hundreds of companies worldwide achieve efficiency and scalability in their software development. By choosing Aloa, you can rest assured that you’ll get the right developers to meet your business goals.
3. Higher Scalability For Expansion
Most software companies tend to scale up their operation and business to achieve more from profitable market conditions. However, they may face challenges like risks of failure and shortage of capital, especially when they opt for less flexible traditional staffing.
Staff augmentation is the solution for all small to medium-sized companies that have constantly changing working requirements. It allows you to hire on a project basis only when you need it, for what you really want. You need not invest in a full workforce and still be able to continue your development effort and achieve goals.
There is also more scalability for companies with regular shifts in their hiring demands. You could alter your team of developers from time to time to ensure they meet your standards. This is beneficial if you need to boost your capacity and workload quickly to achieve customer satisfaction.
4. Better Control Over Company Operations
High operational costs could be a disaster for startups and small businesses, particularly when they've yet to generate a desirable return on investment. At this stage, hiring full-time internal teams can increase productivity, yet could lead to higher costs, which presents a dilemma for businesses.
To overcome this situation, staff augmentation gives you more operational efficiency while reducing operating costs. You need not worry about allocating tasks to permanent staff or constantly providing training to upskill them. Not only do you save time and effort in managing your team, but you also get better control over your company's operation.
Besides, staff augmentation gives you boosted flexibility, whether it is 50 exhaustive hours of software programming in just a week or 5 hours of ad-hoc work the following week. You'll better match your long-term goals and short-term targets as you augment staff based on the progress of your projects. Consequently, you can grow your productivity to achieve better profitability.
5. Constant Nurturing Based On Objectivity
A full-time workforce brings more stability but could also mean stagnant business growth. You might find it challenging to generate new ideas and options as you can only acquire limited knowledge from the same team of people.
Staff augmentation presents you with diverse skills and opinions from multiple programmers. You get rational and equitable opinions from these professionals of different backgrounds, cultures, and ages. It helps attain valuable comments from varying perspectives to enhance creativity and innovation for your projects.
In contrast to subjective feelings, objective voices allow you to assess every situation based on reality and facts without the influence of personal emotions or biases. Your decision-making is more convincing. These logical and informed decisions will gain more trust and support from your stakeholders.
As a result, staff augmentation gives you new ideas to ensure continuous improvement. Brainstorming with these experts will help build an excellent idea bank to propel your operations.
6. Greater Project Visibility
Having transparent project visibility allows the team to accomplish the goals and milestones. However, most companies neglect its importance, causing poor project planning, unclear objectives, and unrealistic expectations. In this case, staff augmentation teams come in helpful in ensuring timely project updates and progress.
With staff augmentation vendors, software companies can hire a team of skilled professionals that quickly fill the vacancies. Such a team of external talent often produces the best results based on their skill sets to support the core team. They are also experienced in managing, completing, and informing the work progress from time to time.
As a result, you can better sort project information to allow team members to understand the entire project's lifecycle and the current progress. It also:
- Promotes productivity
- Enhances execution
- Eases communication
- Improves resource management
Nobody understands this better than Aloa. We know the challenges in hiring skillful and experienced developers for staff augmentation. That is why we, one of the top staff augmentation firms, keep a team of developers that are constantly trained to make sure that you get better quality and timely deliverables in software development projects.
7. Result-Centric Approach
Various IT cooperation models, including staff augmentation, are available for companies worldwide to meet their IT development needs. Let's take a look:
- Staff Outsourcing: You pass the work to outsourcing companies that handle tasks like implementation, maintenance, and deliverables, but allow limited control over the team.
- Managed Services: You outsource the entire faction or function to external teams that report to you, and you can track their progress from time to time. And they share the same risks and responsibilities for the projects.
- Independent Contractors: You work with self-employed developers responsible for delivering a complete service. Their primary focus is the deadline agreed upon and the outcomes, not the work process.
Staff augmentation provides an ideal result-centric approach compared to the other IT cooperation models mentioned above. It is helpful if you require an additional team of talent for a specific project, whether due to a lack of skills or to meet a tight deadline.
You can better manage the work process and monitor the team closely. It also helps reduce risks as you pass the responsibility to the augmented talents and do not solely rely on the stagnant experience of your current staff.
Now that we are aware of the advantages of staff augmentation, let's talk about the requirements you should consider before hiring a service provider.
3 Things To Look For When Hiring A Staff Augmentation Provider
Here are the things you must consider when hiring a staff augmentation provider to get the best out of it:
A. Staffing Requirements
Whether hiring a full-stack developer, backend developer, or UI designer, a clear list of staffing requirements ensures efficiency throughout your project. You should know the answer to questions like:
- What skill sets do you need?
- For how long do you need the resources?
- What will collaboration and communication be like?
After listing the staffing needs, you'll get a clear view of the services and talent you need. From there, you can better analyze and filter the staffing providers who stand out among the competition and bring the best hiring choices for you.
B. Knowledge Of Market Trends
Industry trends are constantly changing, resulting in new challenges and opportunities from time to time. That means you need different skills in your IT project development when hiring new staff today versus a year ago.
A top staff augmentation provider must stay ahead of the market changes in offering suitable talent for your business. The ability to forecast upcoming trends allows them to keep a team of augmented personnel with updated industry knowledge and expertise.
Working with them is beneficial as you can catch a glimpse of their latest information and incorporate them into your project development and team management. Consequently, you achieve better productivity and growth in your business.
C. Augmentation Experience
Consider tracking their history and credentials similarly to how you would when hiring a long-term employee. Some of the things include:
- Review their past portfolio and professional credentials
- Talk to their past clients and know their level of satisfaction with the staff augmentation service
- Read the testimonials and reviews on their websites and third-party review sites like Glassdoor to get more objective insights
Reviewing before hiring could lower your risks in working with these third-party service providers. When you find the right service provider, you can reduce quality issues to a larger extent and ensure continuous productivity in your project development.
3 Best Options For Staff Augmentation
While there are numerous staff augmentation providers in the market, here we enlist the three best options to leverage your projects:
I. Aloa
Aloa is a staff augmentation and offshore software development company offering project-based work by its dedicated teams. Our developers provide top-level staff augmentation solutions to save time and money for software development projects while achieving more results.
With Aloa, companies can scale their business rapidly and control the entire development process better. The Aloa software development team gives predictable outcomes on technologies like:
- AR
- VR
- IoT
- iOS
- PHP
- React
- UI/UX
- Python
- Django
- Node.js
- Android
We have years of excellent experience and teams of skillful developers to meet your needs. You can hire staff augmentation services from Aloa for a wide variety of job scopes, including:
- Technical audits
- UI/UX designers
- Project managers
- Website developers
- Full-Stack Developers
- iOS and Android developers
II. BEON.tech
BEON is a staff augmentation company focusing on computer software staff augmentation services. Their team consists of the most qualified Latin American IT talents with tech stacks. You can hire elite developers who can hit the ground running and produce the best results for you. These passionate professionals include those from a wide variety of specialties, such as:
- IT Recruiters
- UX Designers
- Project Managers
- Software Engineers
- Backend Developers
- Frontend Developers
BEON recruits only the best applicants with years of experience, academic excellence, and English proficiency. They'll bring seamless integration, excellent productivity, and dedicated work to your company.
III. CRODU
Founded in 2016, CRODU is one of Europe's rapidly expanding IT staff augmentation companies. They offer a first-class team of programmers to build top-notch software for customers worldwide, using the latest technologies.
They provide innovative, creative, and result-centric IT solutions to match your needs. Their consultancy and developer experts come from various areas of expertise, including:
- Big data and artificial intelligence (AI)
- Mobile and web development for Android, iOS, and cross-platform apps
- Consultancy on UX/UI design, prototyping, usability testing, market research, etc
You can expect dedicated support, comprehensive services, and stringent quality control from the CRODU team. They'll provide outstanding effort in making your projects successful.
Conclusion
Numerous benefits of staff augmentation make it a powerful tool to enhance flexibility and scalability so companies can meet the ever-changing market trends and internal movements. With the right professionals via staff augmentation, filling vacancies and hiring skills are easier since it allows companies to skip the time-consuming sourcing, onboarding, training, and retaining process.
At Aloa, we have helped companies of all sizes with exceptional staff augmentation services. If you are looking for IT staff augmentation to boost capacity while being cost-efficient, Aloa has you covered. We strictly screen through these professionals to ensure you get the best talents for your needs.
Do not hesitate to send us a message by writing to us at resources@aloa.co to discuss the collaboration possibilities further. Alternatively, you can visit our website to discover our solutions for your project development needs.
