IT Staff Augmentation Vs IT Outsourcing: Which is Best for Your Business?

In the modern business landscape, with the adoption of cutting-edge digital technologies and the rapid evolution of the IT industry, it is critical for any business to remain competitive in every aspect, be it marketing, finance, or workforce. A skilled workforce always gives you a high edge over your competitors. With the changing nature of every industry, the methodology of hiring a workforce has also revolutionized with the evolution of two ways of hiring: IT Staff Augmentation and IT Outsourcing.

Both IT staff augmentation and IT outsourcing offer a plethora of benefits and are considered for different requirements. IT staff augmentation focuses on expanding your in-house teams by adding external talent to your team temporarily, while IT outsourcing is handling your projects or requirements to third-party companies. The aim of IT staff augmentation is to provide flexibility and specialized skills, while in IT outsourcing, the focus is on cost savings and efficiency.

In this article, we will go through various aspects of IT Staff Augmentation and IT Outsourcing along with their benefits, common use cases, and much more so that you can get an answer for IT Staff Augmentation IT Outsourcing, which is better.

What is IT Staff Augmentation?

In the IT Staff Augmentation practice, you just extend your team with outsourced workers who are aligned with the required skills and meet the required objectives. Simply put, if you want to develop a food delivery app and you require seven developers. However, your in-house development team consists of only four people. Considering that your project requires skilled developers with experience in the specified technologies, it may take at least a month to find the right talent, explain their objectives, and start the process. It will ultimately cause a delay in your project and deprive you of predicted revenue.

However, with IT staff augmentation, it would take much less time to replenish your team with three developers. Thus, IT staff augmentation facilitates quick hiring for timely project completion. Also, once the project is complete, you don’t need to retain those hired developers. So there won’t be any legal hassles or documentation of full-time employment.

Key Benefits of IT Staff Augmentation:

Choosing IT Staff Augmentation practice means you are hiring temporary staff on a contract basis with top-quality skills to help you achieve your requirements. These professionals work with your in-house team and help in improving or scaling your business.

·  Access to Global Talent:

You get access to a global workforce with IT Staff augmentation practice. You can find the right talent with the particular skills you require, regardless of the location of the professionals.

It is helpful because it is not necessary for the required talent to be located within your country’s boundaries. You also don’t need to depend on only your internal staff either. With staff augmentation, the doors for global talent get open.

Also, you can hire professionals of any specialization, be it cybersecurity, mobile or web app development, cloud computing, software development, artificial intelligence, machine learning, etc.

·  Cost-Effective Solution:

The IT staff augmentation strategy has much more cost advantage than working with in-house full-time employees. With staff augmentation, there are almost no overhead costs like of office space, furniture, internet, systems, etc.

Also, you don’t need to pay for insurance or other perks. The IT staff augmentation vendors have all the required equipment and office space to facilitate the client’s needs. That’s why, for short-term or temporary projects, it is best to hire dedicated developers through IT staff augmentation.

·  Flexibility and Scalability:

Whether you require temporary help or need long-term assistance, both are feasible with the staff augmentation model. It gives you the flexibility to meet your desired goals. You can manage the number of professionals by incrementing or decrementing as per your requirements. Also, you can switch the resources on a case-by-case basis. Thus, it offers high scalability.

·  Faster Time-to-Market:

You get high operational efficiency with the staff augmentation team. As you are hiring talented individuals who will boost your productivity and efficiency, they will reduce your time to market. These professionals would be able to manage even highly complex projects without any heavy training. They will just work with your internal employees and will speed up the processes.

·  Risk Mitigation:

Staff augmentation and project outsourcing, in general, mitigate risks involved with hiring full-time employees. For example, you are simply committing to a temporary employee, which is a significantly smaller commitment than hiring full-time, in-house employees.

Common Use Cases of IT Staff Augmentation:

It is essential to rightfully identify when and under what circumstances to increase staff through IT staff augmentation. Here are five major common use cases of IT staff augmentation:

a. Reinforce your in-house team:

Although you have in-house developers, you can complement your team or improve the existing expertise while starting a new project or releasing a new product. In such scenarios, augmenting your IT team is a great choice.

b. Bridging Skill Gaps:

It may occur that your company is working on multiple projects simultaneously. In most of these projects, varied skills or expertise may be required. Thus, you need to dynamically address this issue on a project-by-project basis.

IT staff augmentation lets you add experienced developers and bring expertise that may not be required after the current projects. Thus, you are not required to spend time, energy, and money on training your in-house employees for those temporarily required skills.

c. Quick Expansion of Team:

If you require a local developer with an extensive understanding of IoT, Dart, software development, and so on, be prepared to look for a while. The augmentation strategy saves time when discovering and hiring experts. Simply contact the vendor, evaluate the developer’s resume, and schedule an interview.

d. Close Deadlines:

It takes time to hire new in-house resources as the process is quite long. You may neither have the time nor patience for such a delayed hiring. IT staff augmentation is an effective way to increase IT staff and meet the desired requirements in much less time. It also provides rapid access to a worldwide pool of software developers, allowing businesses to augment from all over the world.

e. Skills not available locally:

There may be cases when the desired IT skills are not available within your geographical region or are at a cost that is too high. In such cases, it is economical to opt for IT staff augmentation and hire resources from overseas nations.

Read More: Nearshore vs. Offshore Outsourcing: Which One To Choose?

What is IT Outsourcing?

In the IT outsourcing practice, the software, web, mobile, or any other IT requirements are outsourced to external service providers who have experience and expertise in delivering the required solutions. It is a cost-effective strategy for businesses to explore untapped outsourcing benefits and gain access to the right talent.

An IT outsourcing company like ours takes complete responsibility for development, from ideation to design, development, testing, deployment, and maintenance. The tech companies have all the required infrastructure, teams, equipment, etc., to develop outsourced projects and deliver within deadlines. Outsourcing includes utility services, Software as a Service (SaaS), and cloud-enabled outsourcing to help clients develop the right sourcing strategies.

Key Benefits of IT Outsourcing:

Whether you are a startup or an enterprise, developing a website, mobile, or Software requires a complete team of experts for whom hiring, onboarding, and training is a strenuous and costly task. With IT outsourcing, you can just outsource your requirements to an IT development company that has all the required infrastructure to meet your requirements.

Here are the major benefits of IT Outsourcing:

a. Reduce Costs:

The first question may arise: “How is it possible to save costs if I am taking additional service from a third-party company?”.

The answer is simple. If you compare the costs of hiring full-time employees, onboarding, and training them with the development cost charged by a third-party company, you will find the latter approach much more affordable.

Also, you don’t need to pay the overhead costs or variable costs of hiring full-time employees.

b. Ensure flexibility and agility in the process:

Skilled developers are quite aware of the bugs that always arise with the development of IT software. Operating errors are quite normal and impact the company’s progress and productivity.

With outsourcing, you get higher flexibility as the outsourcing companies can adapt more quickly to internal needs and respond to problems as soon as possible.

c. Get a Dedicated team:

If the project is complex or long-term, it is always better to have a dedicated team. This means that the right set of developers will work on your project on a regular basis and provide updates and timely deliveries of modules.

Today’s modern IT companies mostly follow agile methodology. In this regard, the Scrum framework stands out as the structural pillar of team organization. The regular and timely deliveries of sprints aim for expected results.

d. Increase productivity and focus on core business:

IT outsourcing also gives you a competitive advantage that you can’t ignore. It is not easy to get familiar with all the IT technologies, especially if you don’t belong to this area.

By outsourcing your requirements to a reliable IT partner, you can focus on your core offerings without the hassle of regular IT bugs or maintenance issues. It is a viable, modern, and compatible option with the requirements of new technologies in the daily lives of companies.

e. Access to global resources:

Just like IT staff augmentation, IT outsourcing also opens a gate for talent located anywhere across the world. They can outsource the project to any IT development company having expertise or experience in similar requirements.

Outsourcing is also a wonderful source of specialized knowledge. Even if you have an excellent internal IT department, a brand new piece of technology may be something that none of them are familiar with. That is not the case when you outsource to an IT business that is well-versed in the industry.

Also Read: Top IT Outsourcing Companies in India

Common Use Cases of IT Outsourcing:

If you are unsure when to opt for IT Outsourcing services, here are the major scenarios when you must utilize IT outsourcing services:

a. Organization has grown quickly:

Although it is great news that your organization has experienced quick growth, it would be challenging to keep up with the demands of IT infrastructure. In such scenarios, hiring a permanent staff wouldn’t just be a costly affair, but also take a lot of time. Also, the in-house teams can’t always meet varied technology requirements. So, it is better to outsource your IT requirements to a third-party vendor.

b. IT systems are constantly going down:

If your website, mobile app, or any other IT system is constantly going down, it is a sign that you must outsource your IT responsibilities. Inaccessible systems cost your firm money in missed productivity, and they frustrate your employees who rely on them to complete their tasks. Occasional system outages occur in every firm, but if this is a recurring problem, it’s time to seek outside assistance.

c. In-house development is too expensive:

As repeatedly mentioned, outsourcing your requirements is always more affordable than hiring in-house resources. In outsourcing, you pay only for the services you need. You don’t need to pay for unnecessary IT infrastructure, Software, or support staff.

d. Need the latest technology trends:

If you want to develop in alignment with the latest technology trends, then it is always recommended to outsource your IT requirements. Outsourcing IT companies are constantly adapting themselves to the changing IT industry. That way, you can focus on running your organization while they keep your entity’s IT structure up to date.

e. Competitive advantage:

If your competitors are leveraging IT support through outsourcing and doing better than you, then why shouldn’t you leverage it as well? When you work with an outsourced IT company, you can level the playing field and remain competitive in your business.

Key Differences Between IT Staff Augmentation and IT Outsourcing:

Ostensibly, IT staff augmentation and IT outsourcing may seem quite similar, but there are many differences between the two practices. Here are the key differences between IT staff augmentation and IT outsourcing:

Aspect	Staff Augmentation	Outsourcing
Cost Implications	Highly cost-efficient for the short term as it avoids long-term employment costs.	Potential for significant savings by saving on infrastructure and labor costs.
Control and Management	You get full control over your resource as he/she solely works for your organization.	The third-party vendor will manage the resource, which may result in cultural differences.
Flexibility and Scalability	You can adjust staff easily and give quick responses to market changes.	In outsourcing, adjustments may require contract renegotiations.
Quality and Expertise	Specialized professionals bring innovation	Domain specialists require clear specifications for alignment.

Pros and Cons of IT Staff Augmentation:

Here are the major pros and cons of IT Staff Augmentation in brief:

Pros	Cons
Access to a global talent pool	Initially, integrating remote developers and in-house teams may take time
Get employees only when required	Your data is at risk with remote developers and requires NDA to safeguard
Save costs by eliminating recruitment and infrastructure costs	Communication could be a problem if there are language or time zone barriers
Saves time for training
The vendor is responsible for any issues.

Pros and Cons of IT Outsourcing:

Here are the pros and cons of IT outsourcing in brief:

Pros	Cons
Access to a global talent pool with specialization and skills in that area	There can be quality concerns with some unprofessional companies
Organizations can focus on their core competencies	Communication challenges can arise when managing remote teams located in different time zones.
Leverage the latest technologies and practices.
Scale up and down resources aligning with business needs.

Factors to Consider When Choosing:

Here are the right choices of approaches as per different scenarios:

Factor To Consider	IT Staff Augmentation	IT Outsourcing
Rapidly scale up or down the resources	Yes	–
Short-term skill gaps	Yes	–
In-house control	Yes	–
Cost-efficiency	Yes	Yes
Project-based work	Yes	Yes
Well-defined Projects	–	Yes
Cost Predictability	–	Yes
Specialized Expertise	Yes	Yes
Focus on Core Competences	–	Yes
Reduce Management Overhead	–	Yes

Conclusion:

In this article, we have gone through all the major aspects of IT staff augmentation and IT outsourcing. If you want to manage the resources on your own, you can hire dedicated developers. However, if you want to focus on your core expertise, then IT outsourcing is the right approach.

At Developerperhour, the best IT outsourcing company in India, we provide services for hiring dedicated developers and delivering outsourced projects. We have expertise in software development, website development, mobile development, AI development, and much more. Let us know your requirements.