IT staff augmentation offers a strategic solution for companies dealing with time-sensitive projects, facing increased workloads, or seeking to reinforce their in-house IT team with specialized skills.
A high-performing IT team, capable of quickly adapting to temporary requirements, is essential to meeting complex business demands. However, hiring IT staff internally is often a costly, time-consuming process. IT staff augmentation extends your internal IT team and brings in highly skilled talent with the expertise you need to achieve your short-term goals.
Read on to learn how IT augmentation works, its benefits, and how to get started hiring remote IT workers.
What is IT Staff Augmentation?
IT staff augmentation is a strategic approach to supplement your existing IT team with qualified professionals, enabling you to address specific project requirements faster and more effectively. Typically, it involves partnering with a talent solutions provider to source and temporarily hire skilled technical specialists.
Imagine launching a new marketplace platform. This not only increases the workload for your already busy internal IT team, placing pressure on them to meet tight deadlines but also requires specialized expertise. With IT staff augmentation, you can temporarily build up a team of seasoned full-stack developers, DevOps engineers, and QA testers, who can immediately contribute to your project, working alongside your existing team, and bringing the specific knowledge you need.
Staff Augmentation vs Outsourcing
While staff augmentation seems very similar to outsourcing, there are a few key differences between the two models.
With IT staff augmentation, you retain control over your IT operations and your staff. Augmentation offers greater flexibility in terms of project duration and how to allocate resources within your team, providing a high level of control for your managers.
IT outsourcing, on the other hand, involves transferring part of your IT functions to an external provider, resulting in a loss of control. Outsourcing is a more involved process that tends to be oriented toward long-term commitments, while staff augmentation focuses on providing short-term, highly scalable solutions.
Types of IT Staff Augmentation
Based on your business needs, you can opt for different IT staff augmentation models:
- On-demand augmentation. Gain access to IT professionals on a short-term, as-needed basis. Ideal for temporary projects, peak workloads, or projects that require specific skills. It provides flexibility to scale up or down based on your business needs.
- Dedicated teams. Build a dedicated team of IT professionals, exclusively assigned to your organization. This is the best approach to tackling long-term projects or ongoing initiatives that require consistent support.
- Project-based augmentation. Assemble a team of IT professionals for complex projects with defined scopes and timelines.
- Skills-based augmentation. Fill gaps in your existing workforce by hiring IT professionals with specialized skills or industry expertise.
Benefits of IT Staff Augmentation
IT staff augmentation can help businesses scale their IT operations faster, by providing:
Quick Access to Specialized Skills
IT staff augmentation services tap into a much larger pool of tech experts than you could if you were only hiring in-house. This offers immediate access to global talent with the specific skills and expertise needed to address your most challenging projects. Instead of spending months sourcing and hiring IT professionals, you can reduce time-to-hire to just a few weeks. Additionally, you can quickly fill critical roles that might be harder to find internally.
Increased Flexibility and Scalability
Hire all the experts you need, knowing that you can easily scale up or down based on your changing project needs or budget. Augment your IT team during peak periods to handle increased workloads or meet tight deadlines.
Cost-savings
Save money by cutting off the expenses of hiring, onboarding, and training in-house employees. Nearshoring services can also help you reduce costs by bringing high-skilled talent from nearby countries, benefiting from lower labor costs, taxes, and overhead expenses. For US-based companies, for example, hiring remote developers in Latin American countries such as Mexico, Colombia, or Argentina, can significantly reduce costs while maintaining outstanding quality.
Faster Project Delivery
Accelerate your project timelines and improve your time-to-market metrics by leveraging external professionals through IT staff augmentation.
Potential Challenges and Considerations
While IT staff augmentation offers numerous benefits, you should also consider some of its potential challenges and risks, so you can take proactive steps to minimize them:
- Communication and cultural differences. When working with remote or international employees, companies might find communication challenges and cultural differences along the way. Make sure to set up clear communication channels, expectations, and guidelines right from the start, to ensure a smooth collaboration.
- Integration challenges. Integrating external staff into your existing team may require effort and careful planning. A comprehensive onboarding process can facilitate their integration and ensure they are fully prepared to hit the ground running.
- Data security concerns. Maintaining data security and confidentiality is vital when working with external providers. Restricting access to sensitive data based on roles and permissions, and providing regular security awareness training can help you keep your business safe and compliant.
- Lack of long-term commitment. Staff augmentation works great for specific, short-term projects but it may not be suitable for long-term strategic initiatives. Consider a hybrid approach, which combines staff augmentation with internal hiring to balance short-term flexibility with long-term stability.
How to Expand Your Team with IT Staff Augmentation
IT staff augmentation can quickly provide your team with the expertise you need to tackle complex projects or cope with heavier workloads. But how to get started?
Here are a few steps to implement IT staff augmentation solutions for your business:
Assessing Your Business Needs
Clearly define the skills, expertise, and resources needed for your IT team. Whether you are experiencing a skills shortage, or have a complex project ahead, the first step is to evaluate your internal capabilities and pinpoint the specific areas where you need additional support.
Choosing the Right Partner
Time to research staffing providers! Consider their experience, reputation, and industry or domain expertise. Make sure they can meet the requirements of your project in terms of size, scope, and skills.
Selecting the Best Candidates to Fill Your IT Staffing Needs
Staff augmentation providers will typically present a shortlist of their most qualified candidates for your final selection. Evaluate candidates that might be a better fit considering their technical skills, industry experience, and relevant certifications.
Integrating Augmented Staff into Existing Teams
Avoid confusion and overlap by defining clear roles and responsibilities for both your internal and external staff. Additionally, make sure to create an onboarding process that helps your new staff familiarize themselves with your company culture, systems, and processes.
Partnering with Solvo to Scale your IT Operations
Solvo is a talent solutions provider, connecting North American companies with highly qualified nearshore professionals and cutting-edge technology. Through a tailored approach, we help companies scale their IT operations quickly and cost-effectively, saving up to 60% compared to US rates. We make it quick and easy to get started.
Here’s how our IT staff augmentation solutions work:
1) Sourcing
We search for the best IT talent based on your specific skill needs and preferred time zone. Leveraging our extensive network, we source candidates from top universities, social networks, referrals, and more. We then present the most qualified candidates for your approval, providing access to their skills tests, resumes, presentation videos, and insights from our experienced recruiting team.
We can help you find experts in the following languages:
2) Onboarding and training
Once you’ve selected your candidates, we provide comprehensive onboarding and training to ensure they are fully prepared to contribute to your team. We also help them blend into your company’s culture and processes.
3) Account support
We offer flexible support options to meet your needs. You can either manage your remote team remotely or delegate this responsibility to us. Additionally, we provide a Talent Replacement Guarantee to ensure you always have the right talent in place.
Discover our Campuslands Program for IT Professionals
In an attempt to address the tech talent shortage, Solvo is focusing on training the next generation of IT professionals. Through our Campuslands Program, we are recruiting and developing the skills of tech workers, training them on the specific technology platforms and programming languages that leading companies are demanding.
Accelerating Growth through IT Staff Augmentation
IT staff augmentation offers a cost-effective alternative to scale IT operations. By gaining access to specialized skills in a fraction of the time (and cost) it would take to hire internally, companies can accelerate project timelines, handle sudden workload increases, and address tech skills gaps within their workforce.
Solvo provides customized IT staff augmentation solutions, bringing skilled coders and engineers to supplement your internal development team. Our nearshoring model offers significant cost savings while maintaining high-quality standards.
Considering expanding your IT team? Contact Solvo today to discuss your needs and find the best staff augmentation solutions to achieve your goals.
