Digital transformation requires qualified personnel. The traditional approach is to create your own software development team that provides Java development services but finding and getting the right professionals is not easy. The COVID-19 pandemic is forcing businesses to shift to remote work and making the traditional hiring process with face-to-face interviews of many candidates almost impossible. What should I do if I need an employee urgently? In such a situation, integrating third-party technicians seems like a smart business decision.
Integration into client teams is a certain part of the activity of companies that recognize themselves as service companies. There are companies that create some kind of product, try to bring it to the market, support and develop it. And there are companies that discover (if they have enough strength for this) that they are a service company, that is, they are engaged in serving the interests of other organizations that, for example, develop their product.
Service companies generally have two types of services. Firstly, a service for developing something on a turnkey basis: when there is some technical specification or common tasks, and then it develops as a full-fledged product with our support. But at the same time, in any case, we remain executors and experts who help to achieve the tasks of the company, which is the main beneficiary.
And the second type of service is what we are talking about now. There is a more elegant definition – staff augmentation. We now live in a post-industrial era, cyberpunk is already rushing towards us at full speed, and it becomes obvious that augmentations can be of different types. And, as it turned out, you can also augment engineers in your teams. As a type of service, this is a separate service, and it consists in finding the best people according to the client’s requirements in order to integrate them into the client’s processes, where these people will achieve the goals set by the client company for themselves.
To some extent, this activity can generally be compared with consulting. In our understanding, staff augmentation and consulting are as close as possible to each other. There are big consulting companies, we all know them, these are Ernst & Young, KPMG, in fact, you name it, the big four. They have this only a grain of sand on the whole beach of their services, but, nevertheless, they do about the same thing. If you want to learn more: read here.
Is a person who works in a staff augmentation project overwhelmed by the number of managerial contacts with whom something needs to be coordinated?
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How can this dilemma be resolved? First of all, by narrowing the number of contacts a person needs for normal functioning to plus or minus one. For example, the head of the department is responsible for development – go to him, get some kind of course or development program. But if we are talking about a project, then everything here is quite simple and linear: there is a specially trained person whose task is to “look after” what happens on projects. He is called a client success manager. His task is to make sure that everything is fine, everything is enough for all the people who work on the projects entrusted to him, and they do not have any problems. And if there is, then any person from the team can come and ask for help. Help can be anything: from some internal problems to problems with interaction with the client. And the CSM is obliged to formulate a request, talk to a representative of the client’s management, try to solve this problem for this person so that he does not waste his productive time on some extraneous things.
At the same time, of course, it is impossible to absolutely cut off all contacts with the client side. There, in any case, a person integrates into some kind of team, he has to interact at least with a representative of the technical team. And this is perhaps the only contact that he needs to maintain, in addition to his colleagues. But there is no need for him to go and solve some of his questions and spend time on this. For him, there is always a CSM that will help him do it, or do it for him, and save a lot of time.
Benefits of Staff Augmentation
If you’re still not convinced that this is the direction your company needs to take, let us convince you otherwise. If you continue reading this piece we are going to tell you about a few great benefits of doing things this way. This is not a novelty in the IT sector, it’s just that today you have more and more people do it. So, by now you should be well aware of these advantages. If you aren’t, this is a great time for you to become. It is our job to make it so. And we are going to do our job properly. Let’s see the benefit we are talking about.
High-Skilled labor; Short Term Contracts
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This is amazing no matter how you look at it. With a proper IT outsourcing method, you can get far. If you find the right partners even for the smallest of jobs much can be done. The reason is a specific skill set that can be employed in the short term. This gives a great competitive advantage to your enterprise without having to make long-term commitments.
Bringing in the Experience
This is so vital that it can’t be overstated. For a specific job, you will probably trust your long-time employees. But, what happens if they don’t have the skills? Well, you can hire new people, train them, trust them, and get the job done. But, how long will that take? Too long. If you had to hire new employees whenever you needs a short-time but high expertise you’d go bankrupt quickly. This is why staff augmentation works. You get experienced workers from the get-go. What this means is that every project will be completed in time by highly trained staff.
Cost-Effectiveness
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That’s right. This approach saves money. It saves money big time. As we already pointed out, you get the expertise. The quality of your products or services remains the same or it even improves, without having to sacrifice money to employ and train new money. Teaching new skills costs the most in the new era of business. Thanks to tech development you can go over this obstacle with ease. Expertise at the palm of your hand for a fair price, and little effort on your part. The combination of these things makes it so cost-effective.
Tackling The Competition
This is a brilliant way to take a look at what IT outsourcing is. It is a device to make you competitive, and more. Under more, we are talking about being ahead of your competitors. We don’t know in which line of business you are, but you’re probably not the only one doing what you do. No, there’s probably plenty more. In today’s world of business, the only winner is the one who finishes first. So, if you are planning on creating a new product or a service, some of your competitors are trying to do the same. The best way to beat them is to have short-term highly trained help at your side. This is a recipe for winning. It’s like going against Somali Pirates with SEAL Team 9 at your side. A surefire win.
