Staff Augmentation For Startups | Usefulness And Benefits

Hiring or firing an employee is a time-consuming and exhaustive process for employers. Most companies try to escape the concept of in-house recruitment because it does not work well most of the time. It is often a long, tiring, expensive process. Businesses often require specialized skills for time-bound projects. It serves as the primary reason for staff augmentation. 

Most startups seek to hire employees temporarily because of a lack of funds and resources. In the initial stages of the business, startups aim at saving big time while reaping maximum benefits from temporary employees. Staff augmentation is a flexible, cost-effective, and most efficient method of saving time and money for startups.

IT Staff Augmentation and why do startups seek it?

Staff augmentation is the process of seeking help from external resources temporarily. IT Staff augmentation helps to expand business and in-house capabilities.

It is often called the resource augmentation process. For most startups, the staff augmentation model works because business leaders are sometimes not tech-savvy. They are keen to focus on their core competencies and business augmentation processes instead of hiring full-time employees. When leaders do not want to retain skilled talent, they aim for external resources in such scenarios. 

Benefits of Staff Augmentation for IT Startups

Startups always run certain risks when launching a new product or service and setting off on a new journey. Some of the commonly occurring challenges include:

• finding a credible investment network
• building a stable IT infrastructure 
• hiring the right team for the job

Team augmentation seems a feasible solution to these issues.

Let’s see on a deeper level the benefits of external help to demonstrate the usefulness of staff augmentation.  

Access to a large and right talent pool

The greatest battle for any startup is finding specialized and qualified resources with domain expertise.

It takes time and patience to discover the right people for the right task. It is why the top management finds recruitment and staffing very hard.

Industry experts have discovered that it takes 45 days to recruit a single employee. The recruitment time duration usually expands every year. This can be alarming for most startups as several projects are time-bound. Startups cannot afford the luxury of dedicating this much time to a single employee under such circumstances.

Team augmentation helps startups to start their time-sensitive projects immediately. Startups get instant access to an array of skilled mindsets and IT experts through this short-term hiring. This is why most startups prefer augmenting their teams instead of hiring full-time. 

Secured project delivery

Why do some projects fail? Why do startups fail to make a name in the industry? The biggest reason for the failure of any sort is man-made errors. It was estimated that there are 15-50 errors in every 1000 coding lines. Our data is not safe when filled with loopholes and coding errors. Every mistake opens up a window of opportunity for hackers. 

To deal with this IT fiasco, startups seek perfection through external resources. They hire the most capable IT experts to deal with the security challenges. Not every startup is equipped with skilled and expert IT professionals. 

IT geniuses facilitate the in-house team with coding and programming to minimize the security risk. They go through programming models to identify and extract any potential coding blunders. The augmented staff helps in reducing hacking incidents. 

Flexibility in finances

New businesses should always move towards adaptability and cost-adequacy. These two fundamentals take care of the cost and expenditures. Resource augmentation allows startups to scale the staff up and down as needed. 

Moreover, leaders often do not know how to prioritize tasks to decrease costs and amplify the services in a new business. The external resources businesses to understand the priority tasks and eliminate the excess waste and overheads. It reduces the overall cost of the project as it moves along. 

Hiring resources with a wide range of skillset

Modern technologies like Big Data, AI, ML, Blockchain, etc., benefit new businesses and their routine tasks. But not every company is equipped with all the latest technology and methodologies. Therefore, they require experts and professionals to help them lay a solid foundation and implement the new IT models.

For startups recruiting IT experts on a full-term basis will incur an additional cost. Therefore they go for third-party outsourcing services across different domains. These resources fill up any loopholes and lay offer state of the art IT infrastructure.

Some companies hire app developers with the best coding and programming skills for varied projects. Hiring app developers, IT engineers, and programmers enables a startup’s range of services and skills.

Shorter recruitment cycles

Time matters a lot for most new businesses. To guarantee success and excellence, s startup has to deliver products and services rapidly. Recruiting in-house resources is very lengthy, but third-party resources can immediately get on board. The external team comprises trained professionals who do not require additional training.  

Remote resources have extensive benefits for the organization like specialized talent, reduced hiring costs, and less time to get on board. Staff augmentation eliminates excessive time businesses spend on training the resources. Augmented teams are generally gifted people who can easily immerse themselves in any project at any stage.  

Control and transparency

Staff augmentation offers control and transparency over the project instead of other outsourcing methods. In staff augmentation, the hiring company supervises the development projects, progress, and results.

The company also overlooks continuous task cycles and does not allow outside mediating and meddling. It helps the new businesses to establish control with transparency in the workflow. The hiring party ensures project quality too, since it overlooks the entire process.

Flexible to market trends and fluctuations

To keep up with the market trends and stay ahead of their competitors, startups have to adjust according to the industry practices. To make progress in the IT domain, flexibility is critical. Tech companies cannot operate in isolation, and the market is constantly changing and turbulent.

It is therefore essential to leverage strategic benefit by adjusting to the variations.

There are many projects of different nature, scale, and intricacies. A new business needs to finish projects successfully without compromising quality standards. They require trained professionals with a solid financial plan, a proactive approach to market variances, and flexibility. In such situations, staff augmentation is the only answer.

In a nutshell, augmenting the resources is ideal over any other outsourcing model. It allows full control of the hiring company and complete transparency in processes. The ability of third-party resources to mold works in favor of the new business in any situation.

No matter the market trends and practices, they are trained enough to adjust themselves to market irregularities. They can face uncertainties with caution, experience, and courage. If you are looking to start your own business with limited resources and a budget, staff augmentation is the right choice.