Thriving as a business today often means capitalizing on technology. At the same time, many organizations run into obstacles when they realize they don’t have the staff or skills necessary to use new tech to its full potential. IT staff augmentation — temporarily hiring outside IT experts — can help.
These workers typically come from a third-party service, so it’s different from seasonal labor or simple workforce expansion. It’s also not the same as outsourcing, as the new people will work in and with the business. Bringing in extra IT help for a limited time may seem like a small change, but it can yield significant results.
1. Mitigated Labor Shortages
One of the biggest advantages of IT staff augmentation is that it offers a way around tech talent gaps. While these workforce additions are temporary, they can give your enterprise enough insight and support to reach your goals without a permanent hire.
Artificial intelligence (AI) projects and similar innovations benefit heavily from this upside. You may want to build an AI solution to automate some regular processes or improve strategic decision-making, but lack the skills and experience to manage this complicated technology. Outside experts could help you develop the system and train your employees on how to use it before leaving.
This temporary relief gives you enough of a boost to get your AI goals started and sets you up for success without needing a permanent hire. A lack of internal talent is one of the most common barriers to AI adoption, too, so there’s a lot to gain from this use case.
Also read: A Great Good Workplace: Keeping Employees Happy During the Labor Shortage
2. Access to Top Talent
When you partner with a reliable service, you’ll get access to industry-leading talent you may be unable to acquire otherwise. For example, Programmers.io — a leading IT staff augmentation service — hires the top 0.05% of developers globally and puts each one through over 160 hours of vetting to confirm their expertise. Few companies can viably put so much effort into their IT staff, much less succeed in acquiring this talent before a competitor does.
Augmentation firms do the heavy lifting of gathering leading talent so you can benefit from their skills without struggling in the hyper-competitive tech employment marketplace. That means gaining crucial insights without investing as much time or as many resources.
3. Faster Tech Implementation
The combination of industry-leading talent and mitigating labor shortages means you can implement cutting-edge technology faster. Rapid innovation, in turn, leads to increased competitiveness.
Building, implementing and optimizing AI tools is often a long, challenging process. There’s a lot that can go wrong, and understaffed IT departments have little time to address these nuances. However, getting a boost from outside experts means you can devote more hours and expertise to AI, leading to a quicker return on investment (ROI).
You can also benefit from IT staff augmentation if you’re building tech or software products to sell to clients. Dev cycles are often slow and face obstacles from repeated interruptions and mistakes, but a larger workforce with more experience will help you avoid such delays. As a result, you can bring new technologies to market in less time.
4. Cost Reductions
Faster time-to-market and streamlined ROIs mean your costs relative to your revenue or tech-driven savings will decline. IT staff augmentation’s expense reduction goes even further, too, as it makes labor more manageable. Without it, you have two primary choices when facing workforce obstacles to tech development or implementation.
You could hire more permanent employees, which offers long-term help but entails high job posting and onboarding costs. Salary expenses will likely be high, too, especially if you’re trying to attract top talent. Alternatively, you could try to accomplish your goals with the current workforce, which may keep labor costs down but will entail delays and mistakes from high workloads.
Augmentation offers a balance between the two. You can shorten timelines and improve accuracy by relying on leading talent, but you won’t need to spend as much as you would when hiring such labor internally.
5. Innovation Through New Perspectives
One less obvious advantage of workforce augmentation is that it brings in people from different backgrounds and experiences. While that may seem like a small difference, increasing diversity within your team — even if only temporarily, can kick-start innovation.
Even the most skilled team members can struggle to overcome obstacles after getting accustomed to a certain environment and rhythm. Bringing in a fresh perspective makes it easier to see alternative solutions. As staff from the augmentation service collaborate with your employees, the mingling of experiences and ideas is more likely to produce something original, creative and effective.
This improved decision-making and brainstorming is most beneficial when trying to overcome long-standing challenges you’ve experienced with technology. It’s also useful when attempting to capitalize on new and nuanced solutions like AI and automation.
6. Increased Scalability
IT staff augmentation improves your organization’s ability to scale up or down as necessary. This flexibility can be crucial when navigating new technologies or uncertain macroeconomic conditions.
Scaling up or down is challenging and expensive by conventional means. Hiring can take weeks or months and involves significant costs. It’s also best to avoid permanent expansion if there’s a possibility of needing to scale down shortly, as that would leave you with layoffs to manage or unnecessarily high workforce expenses.
By contrast, augmentation is temporary by design. You can bring in extra help when you need it to deploy new IT solutions or scale up your tech infrastructure at a lower investment. Similarly, when you no longer need help or need to scale down, you can part ways with the service for immediate cost and labor reductions.
7. Risk Reduction
Finally, workforce augmentation lets you accelerate innovation with less risk than outsourcing. While outsourcing provides some of the same cost-effectiveness and flexibility benefits, it introduces unique hazards from a lack of transparency.
You typically can’t see all of what an outsourced IT department is doing. Relatedly, you often lack control over their workflows beyond what your initial contract specified. This loss of visibility can lead to quality assurance issues and may increase your regulatory or security concerns, as many organizations have experienced breaches from third-party vulnerabilities.
Staff augmentation is more collaborative. You’ll retain control and visibility so you can ensure all tech projects meet your regulatory requirements and match your business-specific goals.
Also read: The Power of Employee Engagement: Why It Matters for Businesses
Choosing an IT Staff Augmentation Business
As these seven benefits portray, IT staff augmentation is an excellent way to drive innovation at your company. However, you should be careful when choosing an augmentation partner to get the most out of this investment.
First, consider your specific technologies or IT goals. Different providers have varying specialties, so you’ll want to find one that aligns with your unique position. The same concept applies to your budget and the kind of help you hope to get.
When comparing firms of similar specialties, look at their past projects. The ideal partner will have proven success in helping others with similar issues. You should also consider certifications like ISO 27001 and official partnerships with leading tech vendors, as these showcase reliability and capability.
Transparency is another sign to look for. The best IT staff augmentation services are communicative and clear. Being upfront about their specific services and their workers’ qualifications is a positive indicator, as is a dedication to customer service. Success stories, case studies, and public reviews can also reveal if a provider offers what you need.
Turn to Programmers.io for Your Staff Augmentation Needs
Consider partnering with Programmers.io for your next IT staff augmentation project. Its specialists have years of experience, and the organization has a 96.8% customer satisfaction rate. You can also trust its ISO 27001 and ISO 42001 certifications.
Whether you need help with an AI solution, digital transformation or custom software development, Programmers.io can assist your existing employees in getting on the right track. Take the time to review your goals and examine how a trustworthy augmentation service can help you today.
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