IT staff augmentation is the new buzzword in the technology world these days. You might have heard of it a few times before entering the blog. Indeed Staff augmentation is the most emerging outsourcing service profiting both the clients and the outsourcing company.
IT staff augmentation is the new buzzword in the technology world these days. You might have heard of it a few times before entering the blog. Indeed Staff augmentation is the most emerging outsourcing service profiting both the clients and the outsourcing company.
According to a source, the IT outsourcing market is expected to reach 206.9 billion by 2024, which is relatively high compared to 70.9 billion dollars as of the year 2019.
But there are some challenges about this tech hiring trait you may have overheard. As long as you go through the blog, you will simultaneously understand the problems and solutions related to IT staff augmentation.
What is IT Staff Augmentation?
It is an outsourcing strategy that enables you to hire tech staff for your stipulated project. You can choose a tech talent globally required according to your project. Thus you can enhance the scalability of your augmentation team hiring remotely.
The hiring strategy suits well for a client as he can decrease or increase the team accordingly. You can also hire augmentation staff directly from IT staff vendors
According to a report, the global outsourcing market before the coronavirus pandemic hit the world was 92.5 billion dollars, and after the pandemic, it grew up to $132.9.
What are the IT Staff Augmentation Challenges?
Hiring tech talent is not a bed of roses since it requires lots of elements to consider. No company would deliberately incur a loss just because of its wrong selection of the staff.
Hence, it becomes an important issue to check all the projects' measurements and requirements before hiring the talent. To help you tackle the hiring scenario, I have put some critical challenges so that you can comprehend them before you hire.
1. Communication Issue
Communication barriers are the most common phenomena for hiring staff. Clients are often seen struggling with the issue as most outsourcing companies hail from south Asia or east Asia.
If you want to ensure your project's success, you will not let it fail the project because of the communication barrier. Moreover, if there is a breach in interacting with outsourcing companies, you will have to face many problems leading to your project's failures.
How to tackle it?
Need not bother as each situation has its solution, and to deal with the communication challenges, I have provided some best methods to overcome the issue.
# Since IT staff vendors provide the staff for your project, you need first to ensure whether the tech is comfortable communicating in English.
# Start to maintain harmony from the beginning to not face communication gaps at any stage of your project development phase.
# Integrate some communication tools like Task management tool (Trello, Jira, Visual Studio Online), Messenger tools (Slack, Skype, Telegram), Video conferencing tool ( Zoom, Hangouts, Slack), Continuous integration tool (Jenkins, CircleCI, TeamCity), Source code repository (GitLab, Github, Bitbucket).
2. Time Zone Issue
The time zone issue is also the most common challenge clients go through while hiring staff. Since outsourcing IT staff companies are primarily based in Asia, it becomes a headache for far away clients to cope with leasing staff.
How to tackle it?
The average working shift in the south or east Asia is 7 am to 9 pm. There is, of course, a limited overlapping of time between the location of outsourcing companies and clients; even then, with the proper collaboration, the issue gets solved.
Moreover, synchronize both the teams, i.e., in-house and augmented team, according to the ongoing project's requirement and schedule the meeting on the optimal hours based on skype, zoom, Hangouts.
As the young, enthusiastic tech staff often works till late at night, Clients would not have to struggle much to complete offshoring projects.
3. Monitoring Issue
Once you hire the staff from outsourcing companies, you have to contemplate how to monitor or supervise them whether they are working appropriately or not. Because one can not compromise the delay of completing the project.
How to tackle it?
Before hiring a tech ensure the complete information given on the CV and if possible gather the additional information from the outsourcing company.
Moreover, clients can control or monitor the staff using different software available in the market.
4. Trust and Quality Issue
Now trust and quality factor comes along the way to hire developers as we believe our permanent employees are much better than the hired for a temporary phase.
It should be a high priority for the client to check the project's expectations and augmented staff accordingly. If a programmer delivers low-quality assistance like developing incorrect codes, implementing unsupportable techniques may lead to an inferior product.
As per Statista, the total expenditure worldwide in the outsourcing industry recruitment process reached $18 dollars in 2020, which was earlier only $15 dollars in 2019.
How to tackle it?
Clients should thoroughly check the augmented staff service feedback given by their past clients and take help from the internet to ensure the same.
Additionally, clients can check the quality by setting alternative goals from time to time.
5. Cost and ROI Issue
Cost is one of the major factors that a client wants to comprehend before hiring from outsourcing companies. There are several questions that come to mind: how much will I have to pay? Will it be worthwhile hiring from outsourcing companies? And so on. A top software consulting company can help you here.
If you hire augmented staff, you will pay for the number of hours the team is working for and skip many extra investments. Moreover, look at the following chart to understand the investment scenario, which gives you better insights.
| Clients Investment | In-house team | Augmented staff |
| Infrastructure | Yes | No |
| Health Insurance | Yes | No |
| Retirement benefits | Yes | No |
| training & development | Yes | No |
Thus you can understand, hiring the augmented staff is not costly as it saves many additional investments.
Let's Focus on the Benefits of Choosing Staff Augmented Services:
1. Time-saving
If you hire a candidate, especially for expertise in a particular field, the interview process consumes lots of time.
On the other hand, when you hire from Augmented staff services, you refrain from the interview and further selection expenses and get the best-skilled professionals who expedite the project development process.
2. Cost efficiency
Cost efficiency is the most inclusive feature of IT staff augmentation and the service cost structure is transparent where you get specialized staff.
Moreover, You don't need to bother about administrative and organizational expenses like setting up the office, managing required tools.
3. Flexibility
Clients avail flexibility while hiring a tech from IT staff vendors across the world. You can decrease or increase the augmented team size according to your project requirements.
4. Seamless productivity
A hired staff puts his 100% into the project as he is focused on the particular assigned task.
There are some common misconceptions regarding staff augmentation, which are only delusions and not more than that. I have enlisted here some of them.
# Lose control over the project
It is a baseless misconception that you will not have control over your project once you hire developers from staff augmentation services.
One can contact his project manager directly and have authoritative power to check the project's progress and overall development.
# Staff augmentation is risky
Hiring a tech from IT staff services is not at all risky. Instead, it provides you a pool of skilled professionals out of which you can shortlist the best candidates according to your project expectations.
# Suitable for big enterprises only
IT staff services are meant not only for large-scale enterprises but also for small ones. A client can hire staff with reduced cost and get his project completed within a stipulated time.
Wrapping up!
As discussed above the challenges, solutions, and advantages you might have comprehended the staff augmentation's utility. You can now avail of staff augmentation services in India by contacting staff vendors.
In no time, you will complete your ongoing project with the help of augmentation staff and reap the benefits.
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