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In need of cutting costs, accelerating project deadlines, or propelling the operational productivity of a business, firms often seek out technical staffing services for assistance. IT Service Providers recommend an array of outsourcing models which are mostly staff augmentation or project outsourcing. Although these models can easily facilitate you with skilled resources and a team to assist your development team to excel at the deadline-centric projects, there are yet some essential differences between these two approaches that one must be aware of.
Let’s have a comprehensive analysis weighing out some main differences between these two approaches: Staff Augmentation and Project Outsourcing. This will enable you to help decide which approach is best suiting your current challenges and ongoing needs.
STAFF AUGMENTATION
Staff Augmentation enables a business to boost its workforce with the required expertise to sustain its projects. It helps you hold onto your competitive edge to outgrow your competition. The best way to utilize this by setting your costs down whilst ensuring top talent readily accessible where relevant.
PERKS
When it comes to ramp the teams up and down, excluding the inconvenience of stressing overtraining, hiring, and coping with the costs to end up with full-time employees, staff augmentation delivers a considerable amount of versatility.
Outsourced staff is in direct contact with your in-house staff, managing your team by keeping an eye over alignment and engagement of their team with yours. The outsourced team’s only purpose is to assist you on projects temporarily, therefore, your full-time employees aren’t supposed to have any concern in regards to the job stability or feel any threat from their end.
Moreover, it assists in filling skill gaps the in-house team lacks. Thus, the model can prove to be very cost-effective by mitigating overhead costs along with associated expenses, when appropriately utilized.
DRAWBACKS
The management resources and workplace need to be modified to ensure that your in-house team is readily available to cope and operate with the augmented staff.
Although it helps you get the most skilled and experienced team, yet to train and inform them regarding your business operations some of your resources are still required to be invested along with time to adapt and align altogether. Therefore, decelerating the efficiency of the production but only until the outsourced team is back in the flow.
PROJECT OUTSOURCING
The project outsourcing strategy enables businesses to leverage external experience, cost control, and risk reduction throughout to direct their existing capital on their core operations by hiring, training, and managing skilled professionals. This team isn’t in direct contact with your in-house team, thus operating independently.
However, the key difference between these two models is that with staff augmentation, you retain entire control over the firm on acquiring their professional services, whereas, with project outsourcing, you decide to give up the ultimate control above other business facets by opting specific and pre-determined outcome, thus splitting the risk responsibility.
PERKS
The most prominent perk of project outsourcing is to reduce costs. After outsourcing your project, you are automatically free to focus on your core competencies and to let them worry about the rest. The vendor is then responsible for the finalized product delivery, therefore, ensuring the quality.
Skilled and experienced staff is readily accessible to you by availing of this approach. Managers can pretty much allocate their development tasks to the outsourced teams, reducing their workload. It can, however, help them get more adaptable to opt for the critical projects falling under the firm’s area of expertise.
DRAWBACKS
The management control is directly handed over to the vendor and the offsite team leading to bad air with protocols. Whilst informing the outsourced team in regards to your development goals, you might face language and culture hurdles.
Being directly linked with this model, might confront you with challenges regarding the quality, thereby, affecting the productivity and morale of your team. Errors originating due to the firm’s diligent standards and technical issues can be quite time-consuming and hard to resolve.
CONCLUSION
Most businesses fail to find a suitable approach. Whilst most are best encountered by staff augmentation, others find IT project outsourcing more beneficial.
To consider an accomplished vendor is best as it assists you in addressing the existing staff challenges and constantly advises you. Whenever appropriate, you will implement another outsourcing model or adapt the existing staffing model to ensure that the company is operated effectively and it is therefore sustainable on the local and foreign markets.
