Over the last decade, staff augmentation services have increasingly become more and more essential to companies everywhere. The logic behind that is simple: With the pressing need of adopting new technologies to do business, companies across most industries are looking for the talent to help them do so. Naturally, the talent in any given city is scarce, so businesses are fighting over the same professionals. That’s when staff augmentation services come in.
Staff augmentation is an outsourcing model that can quickly fill any talent gap. Staff augmentation companies source the professionals needed from different cities, states, or even countries, which is why they always have experts available to cover any requirement.
This almost-instant access to talent is key for modern businesses, as using staff augmentation provides the necessary skills to tackle any project in no time. So, does that mean that you should go out and look for staff augmentation services? Well, it depends. Staff augmentation can always help in some way, but it’s at its best when you’re going through any of the following 5 scenarios.
1. When You Need To Scale Your Team Quickly
There are times when your tech team can’t handle your workload. Maybe you’re experiencing fast growth and need to meet the demands of more and more clients. Perhaps you are tackling complex projects that are packing your backlog. Or maybe you’re making organizational transitions that have left you with less talent than usual. Whatever the reason you need to scale, you can do so quickly with staff augmentation services.
Resorting to a staff augmentation company is a great way of expanding your team in no time. And since this service adds highly skilled and experienced professionals to your staff, you can ramp up your development efforts fast and without delay.
2. When You Can’t Find Specific Skill Sets
There are many types of projects that call for specific skills. That’s especially true for projects that involve cutting-edge or highly popular technologies, such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, or the Internet of Things. Unfortunately, finding those skills can be challenging, be it because there aren’t that many professionals with those skills or because you can’t find a profile that fits your requirements.
Luckily, staff augmentation works wonders in this type of scenario. Outsourcing companies are completely focused on finding the best talent around, including professionals who have unique or rare skills. For instance, at BairesDev we use our own proprietary AI-driven staffing solution, to find the best engineers among millions of applicants. That way, we can find the best professionals in no time, given that we’re constantly sourcing professionals to build the largest talent pool in the industry.
3. When You Need To Reduce Costs
Hiring local talent can get expensive quickly. You need to spend a lot of time and effort finding the right professionals, offer very competitive salaries to outbid other companies looking to hire the same talent and invest even more money on perks and infrastructure.
It’s not surprising that a lot of companies outsource their talent needs because of the cost reduction associated with staff augmentation. That’s because when you use staff augmentation, you can forget all about that, as the only thing you’ll need to pay for is the service itself.
4. When You Need To Be More Innovative
When a development team has been working together for some time, all its members start to think alike. This can end up being very productive, but unfortunately, it can hurt your innovation. How? When developers tackle projects using the same perspectives, they might end up missing alternative paths that could lead to better and more innovative solutions.
By using staff augmentation to add new engineers to an established team, you bring fresh ideas and new ways of doing things. This can quickly shake up your in-house team and help them realize all the other possibilities they have been ignoring. Thus, staff augmentation can jolt your team and help your engineers consider different ways of achieving results.
5. When You Want To Take Your Team to the Next Level
Maybe you don’t actually need new engineers, as your in-house team can handle your current workload and has all the skills you need for the projects you’re tackling. Yet, staff augmentation can serve even in that scenario. How’s that possible? Because adding new engineering talent can offer a host of benefits that can take your team to the next level.
I mentioned above how outside developers can bring innovative ideas to the table. But that’s not all. They can also provide the extra muscle you lack to work on new projects that might give you a competitive edge. What’s more, more engineers can lead to a quicker and more efficient development process, which ultimately translates into a more digitally mature company with enough flexibility to adapt to ever-changing challenges.
A Strategic Ally for All Kinds of Companies
You’ve surely picked up on the multiple benefits I mentioned throughout this article. They alone should be enough to convince you that staff augmentation is a service you should consider for your next digital projects. But even if you don’t go with staff augmentation all the way, you should at least have it as an option for specific scenarios.
That’s precisely what successful companies do—they leverage all the resources available to them to gain more and more competitive advantages. For instance, when Google was about to launch Android TV, the in-house team was too busy working in the system to properly test it. That’s why they turned to BairesDev for help. Through our staff augmentation service, we delivered a team of seasoned QA professionals who quickly integrated with the in-house team and delivered value from day 1.
Pinterest went through a similar process. When the platform saw a spike in user demand, the company understood it was time to improve several systems, including its Ads Manager. Unfortunately, Pinterest was struggling to find full-stack engineering talent near its San Francisco HQ. Seeing the benefits of nearshore outsourcing, the company hired BairesDev to provide critical roles to make that improvement process happen.
Those are but 2 examples of how companies can benefit from staff augmentation. There are many other companies across most industries with stories similar to these. That’s because the tech landscape has shifted significantly over the last decade, and right now, companies undergoing digital transformation or wanting to stay at the forefront of innovation know that the only way of doing so is by having the best talent available. And one of the easiest and more straightforward ways of securing that talent is through staff augmentation.
