To ensure its effective development and intense market competitiveness, any modern organization must meet the expanding number of IT requirements. Companies frequently turn to specialized software development firms to efficiently handle all IT processes while maintaining an emphasis on delivering their primary service or product.
Software outsourcing enables businesses to boost operational efficiency, professionally handle their daily activities, and reduce the cost of their IT services. “Read more about IT outsourcing cost.” Companies might select staff augmentation and outsourcing as their primary outsourcing models.
Employing an outside contractor to cover for current workers who are on leave or require help with certain assignments is known as staff augmentation. When a business outsources a specific project to a third party, they are outsourcing its entire product development process. Each model has advantages and disadvantages, so firms must weigh their needs before choosing one.
Which is better—staff augmentation or outsourcing, which has benefits and drawbacks? All of it will be covered in this article. Continue reading, and decide on the best possible staff augmentation services to hire an ML developer!
What is Outsourcing?
Outsourcing has its own advantages and disadvantages and differs from staff augmentation in several significant ways. The primary distinction between outsourcing and staff augmentation is that when using staff augmentation, you pay for a specific, prearranged outcome and share the burden of risk with the outsourcing vendor while retaining direct control over your team (and the risks associated with a potentially negative outcome). In contrast, with outsourcing, you pay for a specific, prearranged outcome and give up direct control over some aspects of your business operations.
A team of qualified individuals will be assembled, trained, and managed by an IT outsourcing company to carry out the development duties you’ve assigned to them. This outside team will operate independently of your business and won’t be directly involved in any other in-house programming projects or the rest of your internal development initiatives.
In a recent study released by Computer Economics, it was found that North American businesses have been allocating an increasing amount of their IT expenditures to outsourcing (onshore, nearshore, and offshore), with midsize and larger businesses experiencing the most notable increases in the past few years.
Outsourcing is still an incredibly viable option to choose when it comes to filling internal skills gaps, finding outside expertise, or saving money by offloading less critical business operations to an outside vendor. With technology hubs popping up all over the world, from frequently overlooked domestic options (outside Silicon Valley) like San Diego or Durham to more conventional overseas destinations like India, or up-and-coming spots like Brazil and Vietnam, outsourcing is still a remarkably viable option to select.
What is Staff Augmentation?
The IT sector is expected to reach $5 trillion in revenue in 2020, according to the nonprofit IT association CompTIA. Whereas the United States remains the largest tech market in the world, other areas, such as Asia-Pacific, India, and even Latin America, have been making significant technological advances over time. As a result, the design, IT, and software divisions of North American companies ought to sharpen their competitive edge in order to meet potential challenges from both domestic and foreign rivals. Keeping your costs as low as you can while yet having quick access to top engineering expertise when needed is one of the best ways to do this.
One delivery strategy that an IT staffing firm may offer you that will help you maintain your competitive advantage is staff augmentation services, which temporarily increases the number of your software engineering team with qualified people during a project or during specific phases.
Benefits Of The Two
- Outsourcing
- Cost Reduction
One of the most obvious advantages of project outsourcing is cost reduction. In a Statistics Brain survey, 44% of American businesses indicated cutting costs was the main factor in their decision to use the project outsourcing approach. After the contracts are signed, it is the vendor’s responsibility to set up, train, and manage a remote workforce as well as to deliver the finished product and, with a reliable vendor, hopefully, ensure the quality of that product as well.
- Technical Experts
When it comes to project outsourcing, having access to individuals with specialized technical abilities is a huge bonus, especially when those qualified candidates aren’t readily available locally. According to another poll, conducted by CIO Magazine, “recruiting and hiring data science and analytics experts is by far and much CIOs top concern when it comes to talent,” with “42 per cent of respondents” also having similar staffing concerns.
- Managers Get More Time For In-House Management
Managers can provide in-house staff more time by choosing the project outsourcing engagement model and assigning some development work to external teams. Managers have more flexibility in how they can use their on-site staff when some of the coding work is delegated to an outside team. This is because the employees are now free to be redeployed to work on projects that are more important to the company’s mission or that fall within its specific area of expertise.
- Staff Augmentation
- Hiring Flexibility
Without the burden of being concerned about recruiting, hiring, and then dealing with the costs associated with full-time employees, staff augmentation allows businesses and organizations a great deal of flexibility when it comes to scaling up or down their teams (administrative duties are handled by IT staff augmentation vendors).
- Managers Get Direct Control
Managers have direct control over how temporary hires integrate and work with their employees because auxiliary personnel collaborate closely with their internal team. An added benefit is that because these new team members are only engaged in a project temporarily, your full-time employees won’t need to be concerned about their job security or feel threatened by the arrival of fresh talent from technical staffing companies.
- Easy Integration Of External And Internal Engineers
When compared to working with an outsourcing vendor’s team, which frequently has ingrained cultural and technological differences that can be difficult to align with your company’s goals, using the staff augmentation model makes it much easier to find and then integrate external engineers into an internal team.
- Saves Money
You can probably accommodate in-house weak areas with outside personnel through staff augmentation. Additionally, if implemented properly, the augmentation model will help you save money by lowering general overhead expenses as well as the costs involved with finding, hiring, and training additional personnel (as I’ve already covered).
Drawbacks Of The Two
- Outsourcing
- Ceded Managerial Control
Whenever engaging with an outsourced contractor and the offsite team the vendor has assembled, your company will cede direct managerial control. When trying to convey your growth goals with foreign employees and supervisors, you could run across language and cultural difficulties in addition to annoyance with communication procedures (which is frequently exacerbated by time zone differences).
- Reduced Direct Oversight
With this model, you give up direct oversight, which increases the possibility of quality problems with the finished product. These problems can hurt productivity and team morale as employees, managers, and outsourcing providers struggle to identify the culprits. Coding flaws that don’t meet your company’s strict development standards, hidden technical debt, or other technical issues brought on by an external development team can be time-consuming and challenging to fix.
- Staff Augmentation
- Repurposed Managerial Sources
You’ll need to repurpose managerial resources as necessary, or even office space (if choosing the onsite model), when you bring in temporary recruits to make sure your management team is prepared to handle the increased staff members.
- Delayed Productivity
The best individuals that your IT staffing company can uncover will be offered to you. Despite this, you might still need to invest some money in their training and inform them of how your business runs. Supplemented employees may take some time to get used to and integrate with your team, much as a worldwide franchise doing so for the first time in a foreign region. This can occasionally reduce productivity, at least initially, as your supplemental personnel becomes familiar with your internal business procedures and their protocols.
How to Choose the Right Staff Augmentation Services vs. Outsourcing Services?
Finding the correct contractor will be your biggest obstacle when learning how to recruit offshore software engineers, regardless of the model you opt for between staff augmentation and project outsourcing.
However, outsourcing software projects presents more of a challenge than staff augmentation, particularly when potential customers are more interested in the generic attributes of the vendor than the traits of specific team members.
As a result, this section concentrates on outsourcing methods, however, the criteria can also be used to assess specific providers.
The most qualified contractor (temporary employee or committed team) is not always the best choice. Instead, they need to combine the following:
- Abilities
- Experience
- Industry knowledge
Regardless of the models of staff augmentation or software outsourcing, these are non-negotiable. What should you consider when making your choice? This section addresses certain topics.
The process of choosing the ideal contractor involves two steps:
- The first is the pre-search phase, during which you must establish the foundation for subsequent decision-making.
- The second stage is the search phase, where you must weigh a variety of aspects to decide whether or not a contractor is a good fit for you.
Conclusion
For every business, finding the appropriate talent is essential. Before beginning, it is generally helpful to establish a direction in mind. It’s difficult to determine whether the approach—staff augmentation or outsourcing—is superior.
What is essential is that the model you select meets the current demands of your business and that the people you hire have the skills necessary for the position. Either staff augmentation or outsourcing can be made to work for you.
We have the best talent at Folio3, eager to contribute their creativity, knowledge, and experience to produce the best outcomes for all your projects.
