STAFF AUGMENTATION

Is your talent prepared to take up all your projects and close them efficiently?

Are you struggling with low budgets, more projects and in a real need of workforce?

Get-off with your confusion as Staff Augmentation really answers your concerns and enhances the way you manage your projects with skilled and competent workforce. Staff Augmentation is a popular and effective strategy that draws in highly skilled and technically competent resources with minimal investments to work on the projects.

Staff Augmentation addresses the following crucial challenges- 

• The gap of acquiring skilled and competent workforce
• High recruiting costs and imbalance of Capital management
• Exploitation of time with long recruiting procedure
• Keeps the HR professionals off from setting career paths and other set responsibilities they take up in regard with permanent hires.
• Ineffective project management 

Staff Augmentation is the right resource provider that gives out many advantages, some of them are-

Minimal Recruitment Costs:

Staff augmentation is a way to lessen your recruitment costs. It gives you a clear picture on your economic dealings while you recruit according to your project requirements. As highly skilled talent is hired, organizations have nothing to worry about the training investments. It also keeps you away from benefits costs.

Cost Effective Results:

The process which includes hiring resources for a limited period offers you an edge of staying within the budget and also avoids additional expenses. In other words it's a process where the expertise is hired and effective results are experienced. One of the most important benefits it brings in is the cost-effective managing of special purpose projects, also enabling the meeting of deadlines in time. This process not only creates a focused team but also streamlines all the complex work flow involved.

Flexibility:

Another benefit of Staff Augmentation is flexibility. It enables organizations to promptly adapt to the emerging demands and opportunities of the market conditions. With its pool of prepared workforce, it provides effective solutions to fill the gaps in case of inadequate resources. And also the process through which it takes in the talent is devoid of the long hiring process including screening and interviewing. All these avoid over exploitation of time and promotes an unhindered path for acquiring your resources.

Resource Maximizer and Risk Minimizer:

Staff Augmentation aids you in achieving project goals rapidly by maximizing the resources and minimizing risks and investments. It not only guarantees efficient planning on the availability of talent but also gets much done with substantial investments. By offering an advantage of hiring dedicated expert developers or team with adherence to time schedules, it is a strategy leading to reach the desired outcome.

Faster Accomplishments:

And finally it is the ultimate method, very popular in practice through which organizations are geared up towards result driving, and quick accomplishing of projects. It is efficient, reliable outsourcing strategy to keep things moving. In today’s world of ever growing demand for technology workforce, Staff Augmentation is what most of the IT organizations rely on, to intellectually and economically address their project management challenges, in particular with acquisition of right teams to handle projects. This industry with a scope of ever expansion is on its track, to enable organizations with much more efficiency and accuracy transforming the involved processes into ways that positively impact and expand their unique value.

Pixentia Staffing services, accompanied with a vision to debilitate the recruiting load of IT organizations, offer you with an advantageous way of hiring and acquiring the right talent at the right time. With a proven track record of hiring in the field of software engineering domains like Software Development, Architecture Design, Database Management and Computer Networks, it follows a distinctive approach of professional recruitment services leading to quality impacts.

No matter how well a project is thought out there is always the potential that something could go wrong. Executives are expected to take ownership of not only their team’s output but also their ability to sustain optimal performance during major technology projects. Although there are many responses to the IT skills gap, it must be noted that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution. Technology staff augmentation fits well for many organizations. However instead of automatically assuming the choice is a good fit for your company, we suggest to respond to the question not based on latest trends and best practices. Afterall your company is unique and requires a non-static approach.

The result takes precedence over the start

By performing a quick google search, you’re bound to uncover a plethora of white papers, blogs and articles boasting about the benefits of staff augmentation. We all know about the potential for reduced costs, flexibility, control and expert training for in-house staff. Regardless of the benefits, unless it helps your company achieve and surpass expectations, they are all just words on a monitor. So where do we start? How about starting with the end in mind?

Understandably the focus is on achieving consistent results, despite dealing with the challenges of a reduced budget, decreasing margins, and high expectations to do more with less. So then the next step would be, as always, to look at the data to form an opinion. Here we’ll peer through the lens of a few common concerns top executives have brought up.

Staff augmentation is a good fit for your organization if :

• You are on the brink of a planned expansion. Of course you could go through the long and  high-cost process of recruiting, naturally the costs for benefits and salaries could potentially expand the current HR budget.
• You are still recovering from the last interruption created by adding the newest team member to your IT Department.
• There is a current need to improve business workflow and to stop the routine disruptions. Generally caused by, skill set gaps, other daily process factors, and employee turnover.

On the surface, staff augmentation may be a good solution, however there are a few drawbacks to keep in mind. The potential negative impact includes, the steep learning curve may cause projects to overrun project budget and deadline; culturally speaking, the augmented staff may find it difficult to fit in with the organizational culture and protocols. Hence the reason we strongly recommend for you to do your due diligence when it comes to researching your potential vendors.

Although at this point you may be thinking your organization is not large enough for staff augmentation, yet regardless of size, all companies deal with critical backlogs. You know the ones that always seem to occur at the most inopportune times. The fact is, that typically the smaller the organization, the greater the impact of those incidents. And for most smaller organizations the time to recover takes longer.

The ROI of utilizing staff augmentation trumps most alternatives, yet unless you personally look into it, you will not know exactly how it can benefit your organization. Again the most compelling benefits are useless if it does nothing for your company.

The staffing services at Pixentia include a complete assessment of your current IT situation, our vision to help reduce the load and expense of your recruiting efforts comes standard.

If you manage an IT staff, you know fluctuating workloads can be hard to support. Most IT organizations staff for minimum ongoing needs, and periods of high demand can stretch your people beyond their ability to deliver.

When a large project outstrips your ability to service it, you have a range of choices to meet the need.

• Hire more people. If you have a need for permanent staff, hiring is a practical choice. You can control costs and hire individuals who fit your organizational culture.
• Contract managed services. For a long-term need, this can be a cost-effective option. You can predict costs and realize the value of economies of scale a company with a large client base can offer.
• Outsource to a consulting firm. If you have a short-term need such as a human capital management implementation, a consulting partner can work best. If you do not have experience with the technology, you can work side by side with the consulting partner to gain the expertise over time.
• Supplement your staff with contractors, independent consultants, or an augmentation service. Each of these options has benefits and drawbacks.

Contractors and independent consultants often work on a time and materials basis. That may be the best way to work if you are uncertain what your needs will be over the life of the project. However, if you can accurately estimate the effort required, a fixed fee contract can lower your costs.^[1]

An augmentation service is the best choice if you want to avoid a long search for the right skills, control your costs, and scale contracted services as your needs change.

Augmentation Pros and Cons

Augmentation has distinct advantages over other limited time engagements, but it also has disadvantages.

           Benefits of Augmentation

• Avoid recruiting and separation costs
• Contract for specific skills
• Avoid violating headcount policies
• Quicker ramp-up
• Flexibility and scalability
• Simple cost model

Disadvantages of Augmentation

• Higher cost over a long project
• Commitment is to provide time, not service
• Low control
• Knowledge leaves with the person

Controlling Augmentation Costs

Managed services providers are becoming more common as more companies contract with them to share the cost of IT support. When you use managed services along with augmentation, you can reduce IT staffing cost without losing the ability to handle your needs. We can imagine a future CIO operating as a single-person department, managing an ever-changing mix of managed services and augmentation services.

Control your expenses with careful planning and oversight. Use these three tips to control your staffing costs.

• Take the time to assess your needs so you can contract only for the services you need.
• Define each role carefully to help your provider find the right match and avoid over-staffing.
• Don’t pay for expertise you don’t need, but don’t settle for less than the job requires.

Staff augmentation can be an effective way to control costs, but it takes careful planning. Take the time to find the right provider. A staffing firm that only gives you a database to search will not be a good partner. Seek a company that takes a proactive approach to meeting your needs and is willing to commit to service levels.

References:

1. Overby, Stephanie. "4 Ways to Cut Application Development and Maintenance Costs." CIO. July 24, 2015. Accessed November 01, 2016. .