In the modern IT industry, the requirement to augment your employees with outside talents is relatively common.
There is a huge need for IT experts, but it can be not easy to find them. Businesses use staff augmentation or consulting services rather than handling the entire employment process, reducing their costs significantly. But, then the question arises: which approach is best for businesses and why? As both strategies produce remarkably similar results!
Today, in this blog, we’ll cover every aspect possible of staff augmentation and consulting services, along with their pros and cons.
What Is Staff Augmentation?
When a business hires outside employees on a temporary, occasional, or short-term basis to boost capacity and skills, this method is known as staff augmentation. Staff augmentation enables businesses to hire dedicated developers or entire teams to help manage their various services and workloads, particularly for urgent or short-term projects.
Businesses can evaluate their needs and hire dedicated developers according to their project requirements with the help of a staff augmentation company. Businesses can flexibly increase or decrease the number of employees in response to any changes in project requirements.
Staff augmentation services are a stunning approach to getting the super-specialist you need with the least amount of money and time spent, which is always a great bonus. Now, let’s then examine each benefit in greater detail!
Pros & Cons of Staff Augmentation Services!
The pros of hiring a staff augmentation company are:
1. Minor legalities
Businesses don’t have to worry about their employees’ taxes, payroll, or other perks because staff augmentation companies will take care of it. By using staff augmentation rather than a full-time resource, there are no legal concerns. Only projects or hours determine how much staffing firms are paid.
2. Faster onboarding
As the developers are highly trained by the staff augmentation company, businesses can hire many of them without conducting any training drives. So that the workflow may continue uninterrupted after the remote team joins.
3. Full control
Managers will have more authority and power to supervise crucial aspects of a project and guarantee that the project is done on time if professional staff maintains overall leadership.
4. Scalability
Depending on the needs of the project, businesses can increase or decrease the size of the team. They may end the contract with just a few days’ notice when the project is finished. Companies won’t have to pay additional cash when there are no current projects.
6. Cost-effective solution
Hiring experts on a project basis can be a cost-effective solution compared to hiring permanent employees, as you only pay for the resources you need for the project’s duration. This eliminates your expenses associated with employee benefits, payroll taxes, and other overheads.
7. Access to specialized skills
Staff augmentation will allow your business to access a pool of specialized skills and professionals that may not be readily available in their in-house team. If your business requires specific technical or niche skills, you can gain expertise by hiring additional specialized resources.
8. Flexibility in resource allocation
Hiring domain experts can also offer your team flexibility to allocate resources according to your particular needs. You can quickly scale up or down the team size as needed without the overhead of hiring or laying off permanent employees. Hence, staff augmentation allows you to manage resources and optimize your budget efficiently.
9. Reduced recruitment and training costs
Staff augmentation eliminates the need for extensive recruitment and training processes, as the partner company identifies, hires, and trains resources. It can save you time and costs associated with recruitment and onboarding, allowing you to onboard resources and start working on projects quickly.
Also Read: Resource and Staff Augmentation Guide for Service-Based Industries
The cons of hiring a staff augmentation company are:
1. Overloading
Long-term staff augmentation may lead to an overload of additional employees, leading to high-priced overtime pay. When managing important projects, too many augmented employees make it difficult for management to assess their worth, leading to performance problems.
2. Not for long-term projects
Only for small IT firms, a staff augmentation is a fantastic approach. Many large-scale IT firms may or may not use staff augmentation models since they always have bigger projects when out and about.
3. Cost ineffective
If your project or hiring a professional takes longer than you anticipated, it could become useless. For particular tasks, augmented staff always saves you money because they typically cost more per hour than regular staff, but long-term employment might completely blow your finances.
4. Team integration
It might be difficult to integrate new employees into an internal team successfully. It might be challenging to incorporate an outside resource into an established team. It may take some time for new hires and current workers to become used to the new environment, which could temporarily slow down project implementation.
Also Read: Hire Dedicated Software Development Team
What are Consulting Services?
This service is typically used when you require professional advice on matters you lack appropriate knowledge or internal expertise.
Consulting services frequently offer various services under one umbrella, from project conception and planning to staff, project management, and post-launch assistance. They are the perfect choice for businesses that require assistance with creating a project scope, identifying the skills and talents they need, and obtaining the necessary resources to complete the project. The study found that the worldwide consulting market has grown to 160 billion dollars.
Consultants are often senior developers with strong backgrounds in the domain. They may offer professional guidance and assist your in-house developers in project planning, design, and implementation.
Pros & Cons of Consulting Services!
The pros of hiring consulting services are:
1. Higher productivity
Based on a business’s needs and size, consulting services offer the greatest resources to fit those needs. They increase productivity by getting to know each company’s business model, expectations, and unique set of obstacles so that they can provide tailored strategies to those needs. Therefore, production increases.
2. Saves time
You can rely on consulting firms when you are running out of time to complete a project, and the deadline is drawing near. Within budgetary restrictions, their highly skilled developers can complete the project very swiftly and effectively.
3. Assurance
You require top talents who have a thorough understanding of the appropriate tools and technologies to build a unique project without any technical glitches. All these advantages are made possible through consulting services.
4. Cost-effective
Consulting firms are more cost-effective than an in-house team because they have all the necessary resources and charge extremely fair rates for their services.
5. Fresh perspectives and innovation
Consultants often bring fresh perspectives and new ideas to the table, as they strictly consider market dynamics for decision-making. They can provide objective assessments and innovative solutions to address challenges and improve processes. Moreover, consultants can challenge the status quo and introduce new approaches, increasing organizational innovation and creativity.
6. Flexibility and scalability
Consulting services offer flexibility and scalability, allowing businesses to engage consultants as needed. This means you can scale up or down their consulting engagement based on your changing needs and requirements. The flexibility and scalability of consulting services add to their cost-effectiveness as businesses get to pay only for the consulting services they require at a particular time without the overhead of permanent employees.
The cons of hiring consulting services are:
1. Availability
Consulting services may not always receive your requests as they serve numerous clients in one go. Sometimes, you indeed need to get in touch with the firm immediately, but they might not be able to handle your request for a meeting.
2. Higher running cost
Consulting services are costly for businesses if they need specialized skills and technologies. A consultant’s high cost can be attributed to a number of factors, including expertise, skillset, and brief accessibility.
Beneficiary Industries: Staff Augmentation & Consulting Services.
Though both services have the bandwidth to cater to multiple industries, the below-given section points to some sectors that get the most out of each service.
Staff augmentation services can be beneficial to a wide range of industries, including:
Healthcare
Healthcare organizations, including hospitals, clinics, and medical research facilities, often require specialized staff to support patient care, medical research, or IT systems. For instance, medical institutions may require technology developers, consultants, and engineers to build and manage IoT devices used for various healthcare operations.
Finance and Accounting
Finance and accounting firms need additional staff from time to time to support the tax season and audit periods or to address workload fluctuations. Staff augmentation can provide software development, data integration, analytics, and visualization to automate processes and enhance efficiency of finance and accounting companies.
Engineering and Construction
Designing, planning, and executing complex projects can become challenging for you if you are an engineering and construction company. Therefore, you can rely on staff augmentation and hire specialized skills or additional workforce for project-specific needs. The service lets you easily access engineers, project architects, project managers, and more to support your projects.
Manufacturing
Manufacturing companies require temporary or specialized staff to address production peaks, quality control, or process improvement initiatives. Staff augmentation can become a savior for manufacturing companies, providing skilled developers, quality assurance experts, and process improvement specialists to optimize their operations.
Marketing and Advertising
When digital marketing campaigns, events, and other operations are of a big budget, marketing and advertising agencies need additional resources. In such a situation, temporarily hiring professionals to support campaigns, events, or digital marketing efforts can seamlessly execute their marketing efforts. Staff augmentation can provide marketing strategists, graphic designers, and other marketing professionals to augment their team.
Retail and E-commerce
All retail and e-commerce ventures require additional staff during peak seasons, such as holidays or special promotions. Staff augmentation can offer temporary developers, testing support, e-commerce specialists, and more to manage increased demand.
Hospitality and Tourism
Hospitality and tourism businesses like hotels, restaurants, and travel agencies also require temporary staff to address seasonal or event-specific needs. Staff augmentation services provide resources for reservation systems implementations, online booking platform development, guest management solutions, data analytics dashboards, and more for improved operations and guest experiences.
Non-profit and Government Organizations
NGOs and government release new projects now and then. These projects demand additional staff to support their initiatives and events. Staff augmentation can assist NGOs and government offices by providing them with additional skilled workforce to meet their technological needs and execute the project seamlessly and cost-effectively.
Remember that staff augmentation services are open to various industries beyond the abovementioned examples. Hiring them depends on each organization and the project’s specific needs and requirements.
Consulting services can be beneficial to a variety of industries, including:
E-commerce and Online Retail
E-commerce businesses and online retailers rely heavily on their web presence to drive sales and engage customers. Here, technology consultants may enter as heroes providing strategic insights, user experience (UX) design, website optimization, and e-commerce expertise to help businesses optimize their online presence and increase conversions.
Digital Marketing and Advertising
Consulting services become critical for digital marketing and advertising agencies to optimize their online campaigns, landing pages, and overall web presence for a specific time or project timeline. Hiring these services becomes a wise decision for digital marketers as they provide expertise in search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, content marketing, and website analytics to improve online performance.
Technology and Software
Websites, web applications, or software products demand expert consultancy for optimization. Technology consulting offers expertise in web development, user interface (UI) design, mobile responsiveness, and web security to ensure their digital products’ optimal performance and user experience.
Hospitality and Tourism
Hotels, travel agencies, and tour operators depend heavily on their websites to attract customers and facilitate bookings. Technology consulting services provide expertise in website design, booking systems, online payment gateways, and content strategy to optimize their online presence and increase bookings.
Professional Services
In this digitally woke world, professional companies, such as law, accounting, and other professional firms, now need technology consulting services to improve online visibility, enhance brand image, and attract potential clients. Consulting provides expertise in website design, content marketing, lead generation strategies, and other types of assistance for professional services firms to stay relevant and trendy.
Education and E-learning
Educational institutions now also impart knowledge through online or web-based mediums. Therefore, consulting becomes imperative for them to optimize their websites and learning management systems (LMS). Schools and colleges can easily tie up with technology consulting companies to hire website design, user experience (UX), accessibility, or content strategy experts and enhance the online learning experience for students.
Retail and Consumer Goods
Retail and consumer goods companies require technology consulting services to optimize their e-commerce platforms, product listings, and online customer experience. These businesses can easily hire professionals in e-commerce website design, user experience (UX), product information management (PIM), and online marketing strategies to increase sales and customer satisfaction.
Real Estate and Property Management
Real estate and property management businesses also depend on online operations to boost profits. They need technology consulting services to optimize their websites, property listings, and online booking systems. Hiring professionals with experience in imparting guidance in website design, online booking systems, property search functionalities on the website/app, and more can make real estate businesses attract potential buyers or renters.
Note that technology consulting services are relevant for many more industries than the ones mentioned above. Therefore, analyze your business or project’s requirements in terms of their web presence and online performance to ensure you need to hire these services.
When Should You Partner with a Staff Augmentation Company?
Staff augmentation works well for your needs if you run a small- to medium-sized business. This is because investing in operational costs is not necessary. Additionally, you might be able to reduce your infrastructure costs since the majority of augmented professionals work from home or in small offices.
Staff augmentation services are appropriate in various scenarios. Here are the scenarios where choosing these services is most appropriate.
- After experiencing a shortage of skilled employees in your region, you are broadening your search to other locations.
- A staff augmentation company may be an excellent option if you require assistance for a little time or a specific project. In uncertain times, like during downturns or when trying out a new product, this might also be the case.
- You encounter a skills gap and discover that your company needs additional assistance to complete a project.
- You wish to recruit a different team of programmers while having an internal team of engineers focusing on a specific project.
Read More: Offshore Staff Augmentation for Startups
When Should You Partner with a Consulting Service?
If you have the intention of beginning a business, consulting services are great. Consulting services can handle your company’s whole operations if you lack domain expertise, knowledge of the specific industry, knowledge of delivery models or staffing, or lack these skills in addition to others. Additionally, you can stop managing your resources and concentrate on the things that are most important to your company/business.
Consulting services are appropriate in various scenarios. Here are the scenarios where choosing these services is most appropriate.
- You should consider software consulting services if you want to upgrade and optimize your current applications drastically.
- You want to upgrade your existing software.
- You want the best product design and faster time-to-market.
Staff Augmentation vs. Consulting: Which Is the Best for Businesses?
Team Size
You can hire experts as you require when using staff augmentation services. You can hire dedicated developers and only pay for the hours they spend on your project. Whereas the size and makeup of the team in consulting services generally depend on a variety of factors, including your goals and expectations, the project’s requirements, the budget, and the deadline.
Cost
By providing a professional without the administrative costs related to an employee, staff augmentation reduces costs for the business. Contrarily, consulting services might offer a wider range of services in a small contract at a higher price than staff augmentation.
Project Responsibility
With staff augmentation, all project development, feature prioritizing, and important development decisions are made by you and your project leaders. You certainly need to start working with a fully managed staff if you want to delegate technical responsibilities and decisions and concentrate on your business expansion.
Security
As you avoid disclosing sensitive information about your project to outside agencies by employing within the company, staff augmentation is often safer. But, it would be best if you granted consulting teams accessibility to the project’s sensitive information when working with them.
Conclusion
Depending entirely on the nature of your projects and your requirements, you can choose between staff augmentation vs. consulting. You may quickly choose which of these services will be appropriate for you and how you can benefit from it using the pros & cons, and differences outlined above. Also, despite the great reliability of both models, a thorough decision must be taken.
After thoroughly reading this blog, hopefully, you’ll make a wise decision when picking the ideal model for your business. If you require help to support your business, contact us. Matellio is, therefore, always ready to assist you. As quickly as they can, Matellio’s professionals will get in touch with you!
