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It can happen to any company. You’re in the middle of a major software development project, or mired under an onslaught of accumulated tasks, and the realization hits that your team is short on the tech talent needed to get back on track. Staff augmentation services offer a way to keep moving forward.
Staff augmentation is the practice of using outside personnel to expand, enhance, or (of course) augment your company’s capacity. For instance, you may be dealing with a temporary spike in work due to new projects or programs. You might be trying to catch up. You could be trying to stand up a new line of business. Or, you might be trying to develop a new product but lack the internal expertise to account for all the details.
Staff augmentation services keep work moving forward, and it’s becoming more common — particularly for IT teams and software development. Recent research shows that outsourcing for software development is expected to increase by 70% between 2022 and 2023. The use of staff augmentation and outsourcing is now seen as essential and is driven by an increasing gap between supply and demand for developer talent — along with societal changes such as more remote work, the Great Resignation, and a still-expanding gig economy.
Startups and SMBs are exploring their options here like never before. These companies eye tremendous growth potential, but often struggle to scale quickly and efficiently. Staff augmentation services give them an avenue to pursue that scalability. IT teams now also realize they have some resilience in expanding — even temporarily — their scope and resources. A recent Gartner survey indicated that CFOs and CEOs view investments in talent and technology as the last items to face potential cuts in uncertain economic times.
SMBs can lean on the flexibility and reach that staff augmentation provides. It allows them to move on initiatives they already planned out, but just can’t carve away a team to handle internally because of higher, or conflicting, priorities. Businesses of any size can add the talent and expertise needed to reach goals, finish projects, get to market, and more.
External Support from VAULT: From fractional CTO services to a full design and development team to shepherd projects, VAULT provides vetted, experienced help to address talent deficits. Connect with us to learn more.
Companies turn to staff augmentation for the benefits that fuel project completion. When working with the right outsourcing partner, businesses can unlock all of them.
One of the common reasons to use staff augmentation services is to tap into specific expertise or a particular skill set that your own team doesn’t have. The potential needs here are nearly limitless with the varied tech sector. Maybe you need a well-versed React Native or Python developer. Perhaps you’re branching out into AI or data science and need an experienced hand to guide you. Or perhaps you’ve had a web app for years, and now you want to dabble in mobile but no one on your team knows the intricacies that would involve. All are good examples of why investing in staff augmentation makes sense.
It’s a simple fact that improving the scalability of your cost structure is a necessity for startups and SMBs alike. Keeping your fixed cost low is an essential element of that. Implementing more variable costs into traditional fixed cost categories — staffing and the related benefits — is a tactic for many large companies, which typically outsource considerable portions of their staff via individual contracts or through an agency. This smooths out the bumps that come with either drastic spikes in required work, or dry spells.
Staff augmentation opens up variable cost structure benefits to companies, no matter their size. Think of it as a spigot that you control. You can turn it on when needed, turn it off when you don’t. You gain access to the talent you need, without the expense required to make new hires or deal with the ongoing administrative overhead of more in-house personnel.
With staff augmentation, you gain access to the right talent, in a more cost-effective manner. You’ll also get them contributing faster than if you further invested in full-time internal team members. With a full-time hire, there is the hiring and onboarding process and the acclimation period — and it might be months before they’re firing on all cylinders. With outsourced personnel they can be up and running on an essential project in days or weeks.
The speed-to-market benefit increases with the more people you need to bring in. If you need a full team, three or four people or more, taking the time to vet and hire candidates on your own can be agonizingly slow. By working with a proven staff augmentation partner, that team is already assembled, vetted, and ready to jump in as soon as you are.
There’s an element of risk involved with every new hire. Even with the best processes and stringent vetting sometimes things just don’t work out. And when an employee leaves, the time, resources, and knowledge invested goes out the door with them. This can severely hamper software development or other digital projects caught in midstream.
The right outsourcing partner will be able to provide value throughout the relationship. Their own teams are ready to go with planned redundancies; if they lose someone, they have another to fill the gap and continue progressing on your project. Their reputation, and further business, depends on it.
Know What to Look For: Need tips on what to check on when investing in an outsourced team? Vault has you covered with key aspects to consider.
At Vault Innovation Group, we’re more than just another software development and digital product company — we’re a partner in your success. For more than a decade we’ve assisted tech-powered brands, founders, and visionaries in solving design challenges and ship purpose-driven products and software. This includes staff augmentation services to address your needs.
We’re equipped to add individual developers to your team and project, allowing you to quickly add the human capital to move forward while retaining full control. Additionally, Vault can provide a fully constituted, capable, and complete team. Complete with designers, developers, project managers, and more, we can dive deep to flush out a project. We can run parallel to your own team, or operate separately.
Too often, startups and SMBs have been faced with a dilemma. They face a task that needs to be done, but weigh the cost of internal hiring to accomplish the goal against putting it off or not finishing it. Staff augmentation services give you a third option — avoid the long-term fixed cost of hiring and still get it done. VAULT is the proven partner you need to augment your own capabilities.
Connect with our team today to learn more or schedule a no-obligation discovery session.
