With IT talent shortages becoming a significant challenge, companies see up to a 30% efficiency boost by leveraging outsourced expertise. However, the main question businesses ask when it comes to filling skill gaps is whether staff augmentation or IT outsourcing is best. Here, we answer this question by comparing the two approaches and how they impact growing businesses.
What is the Difference Between Staff Augmentation and IT Outsourcing?
The staff augmentation vs IT outsourcing dilemma is common among growing businesses as they often face many problems when scaling up their operations. The best way to choose between the two options is to understand them better. Below, we give you a brief overview of the two approaches and how they can help you scale your business.
What is Staff Augmentation?
Staff augmentation involves hiring an external talent to work alongside your in-house team on a temporary or long-term basis. This option is typically preferred when you need an expert’s skill set but can’t afford long-term costs.
Regarding staff augmentation vs. IT outsourcing, the most significant upside of the former is that you still get to manage the team internally while filling your skill gaps with external experts. For example, you can use staff augmentation to hire front-end developers to speed up product development for an urgent project.
What is IT Outsourcing?
IT outsourcing involves your company handing over the entire development project or function to an expert Software Development Company like NewAgeSysIT. In this case, the vendor is responsible for the whole project, from planning to delivery.
When you compare the staff augmentation vs. IT outsourcing scenario, the latter is preferred for companies that do not have an expert in-house team. While IT outsourcing can be more convenient for startups and even bigger companies, it tends to remove control from the development process.
Staff Augmentation vs IT Outsourcing: Key Differences
Staff Augmentation vs IT Outsourcing: The Pros and Cons
As a leading IT Staff Augmentation Services provider, we often advise our clients on their staff augmentation vs IT outsourcing questions. Our answer is always the same: staff augmentation and IT outsourcing have advantages and trade-offs depending on your company’s needs.
The key to finding the winning strategy in the staff augmentation vs. IT outsourcing dilemma is to assess the pros and cons of both strategies. Below, we discuss the pros and cons of both strategies to help you identify the best approach for scaling your business.
What are the Pros and Cons of Staff Augmentation?
Below, we discuss the pros and cons of staff augmentation to help you answer the question of staff augmentation vs. IT outsourcing.
Pros of Staff Augmentation
- Superior Control: You can manage the augmented staff directly, giving you control over the project and maintaining your internal process with minimal changes.
- Flexible Scaling: Scaling your business operations is significantly easier with staff augmentation, as you can add or remove talent without the issues of long-term hiring commitments.
- Access to Specialized Skills: You can quickly fill skill gaps without the complexities of a full-fledged hiring process. It is faster and more effective, making scaling your business more straightforward.
- Rapid Onboarding of Experts: With staff augmentation, your hiring process is significantly faster, minimizing delays of a full-time hiring process that can often stand in the way of scaling your business.
Cons of Staff Augmentation
- Higher per-hour Costs: While staff augmentation can be very effective, it can have higher per-hour costs compared to in-house employees for long-term projects.
- Internal Management Responsibility: While staff augmentation gives you better control of the team and the process, supervising and integrating augmented staff can initially be challenging.
- Potential Cultural/Workflow Differences: You may find it challenging to ensure that the augmented or temporary staff fully integrates with your company culture.
While staff augmentation can be challenging in some aspects, an expert service provider like NewAgeSysIT can help you overcome most of these challenges. Our augmented staff specializes in integrating seamlessly with companies and their workflows. As a result, we are able to solve the staff augmentation vs. IT outsourcing dilemma for numerous business organizations.
What are the Pros and Cons of IT Outsourcing?
The following are the major IT outsourcing benefits and drawbacks you should know before deciding on an approach to scaling up your business.
Pros of IT Outsourcing
- Cost-Effective: Outsourcing can be more beneficial and cost-effective for businesses dealing with a larger project. Furthermore, it is often cheaper than hiring full-time employees.
- Less Management Overhead: When outsourcing a project to an expert like NewAgeSysIT, you can relax while our team handles everything from planning to execution.
- Access to Global Talent: Like staff augmentation, IT outsourcing gives you access to a global talent pool.
- Superior Scalability: An expert in IT outsourcing services like NewAgeSysIT has the resources to scale the project according to your requirements without you having to hire or fire employees.
Cons of IT Outsourcing
- Less Control: With IT outsourcing, you have less control over the project and internal processes as the service provider makes key decisions that may not always align with company expectations.
- Communication Barriers: Differences in time zones, language, and work styles can slow collaboration in an outsourced approach.
- Quality and Security Risks: Employing IT outsourcing services may result in subpar work and security risks due to an unreliable IT partner.
To harness the IT outsourcing benefits to their full potential and mitigate the potential challenges, you need the help of an expert like NewAgeSysIT. Our Dedicated Development Team can take over the project while still keeping you in the loop throughout the project with consistent and transparent communication. As a result, we can turn the inherent cons of the approach into IT outsourcing benefits for your next big development project.
When to Choose Staff Augmentation vs. IT Outsourcing to Scale Your Business?
Choosing between staff augmentation vs IT outsourcing approaches to scaling your business can be difficult. Here, we try to simplify this decision by explaining when either approach is better aligned with your business goals, project needs, and internal capabilities.
When to Choose Staff Augmentation
The staff augmentation can be a better choice for your business in the following situations.
- You need to scale your internal team without any long-term commitments.
- Your project requires close collaboration with the in-house team.
- You need more control over the development process.
When to Choose IT Outsourcing
In the following cases, the IT outsourcing benefits can be better aligned with your business needs than staff augmentation.
- You need to complete a project without managing or hiring an in-house team.
- You need a cost-effective and scalable solution than hiring an in-house team.
- You want specialized expertise for your one-time or temporary project.
Final Thoughts
The staff augmentation vs. IT outsourcing question can be difficult for your business to navigate. Ideally, your development partner should be one like NewAgeSysIT, whose expertise and services extend to staff augmentation and dedicated development teams.
As a leading mobile and Web Application Development company with experience working on projects of all sizes and niches, we empower our clients with the best services tailored to their unique needs. As a result, we are able to offer our dedicated development teams or staff augmentation services based on your unique requirements.
CTA: Tackle your business scaling challenges with staff augmentation and IT outsourcing services from NewAgeSysIT
